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Private Notes
The first episode of a stunning new STV series which starts on Thursday, Scotland Revealed begins on an amazing journey to look at the country’s breathtaking landscape.
As geographer and presenter Vanessa Collingridge says at the start of the show, Scotland is a land of dramatic contrasts and extraordinary beauty, containing Britain’s highest mountains, wildest coasts and some of its most memorable cities.
The first episode starts in Edinburgh, which hosts more than two million tourists every year. It turns out that the cosmopolitan capital conceals a fascinating history - a history you can see only if you know where to look, and architectural historian Charles McKean is on hand to explain how this unique city developed.
Then there’s a hundred-mile journey of the borders and cities of the bustling central belt. As Vanessa puts it: “The Borders may not provide the dramatic scenery of the Western Highlands, however the beautiful but blood stained landscape of this Anglo-Scottish border has massively shaped its culture and history.”
She gets to explore a civil conflict which lasted for around 300 years - one which featured the infamous Border Reivers - before getting straight to the heart of Glasgow.
The nation’s biggest city is also its most densely populated with almost 600,000 people in its centre and 1.8 million living in the greater Glasgow area, and there’s a special look at the impact of the River Clyde with city historian Neil Baxter.
After that it’s time to head north to the gateway to the Highlands, Stirling, exploring Scotland’s amazing canal system. In 1777 The Clyde and Forth Canal was the only one to cross an entire country linking sea to sea. A project to restore this navigability brought us the magnificent £84.5m Falkirk Wheel, which allows boats to once again make the 35 metre leap from one canal to the other.
Then focussing on Stirling, historian Fiona Watson explains why during centuries of English inv
In the second episode of Scotland Revealed the celebration continues when Scotland’s best loved photographer Colin Prior reveals the hidden attraction of the nation’s favourite mountain, and a fascinating Jurassic past is uncovered...
Geographer and presenter Vanessa Collingridge’s journey this programme starts in Argyll, where you can find over five thousand years of human history in just one glen. For her, it’s the most magical place in the whole of Scotland.
Kilmartin Glen is nestled between the Sound of Jura and Loch Fyne , a quiet and unassuming landscape holds some extraordinary secrets, with over 350 ancient sites making the area one of the richest archaeological landscapes in Britain. Sharon Webb, curator of Kilmartin House Museum, explains its importance.
While Kilmartin was the centre of the kingdom over a thousand years ago, it was Inverary that took over when the rule of the region was in the hands of the Duke Of Argyll. This quiet town on the shores of Loch Fyne has a fascinating claim to fame, because before Cumbernauld and before East Kilbride, this was Scotland’s first planned town.
Then there’s the Western Highlands: scenery the world wants to see, judging by the bustling tourist trade. Nowhere delivers a view quite like Buachaille Etive Mòr, which Vanessa believes has to be one of the most photographed mountains in Scotland - and you can see why from the show’s stunning footage.
The route to Skye reveals a stunning view, a rugged shoreline with thousands of headlands, created by sea lochs as they drove their way inland. Two of the largest lochs - Loch Sunart and Loch Linnhe - were created by ice ages from the last two and a half million years. Stuart Munro, Scientific Director of Edinburgh’s Our Dynamic Earth, is on hand to detail how exactly this happened.
The programme then leaves the island behind to travel even further back in time, to over 400 million years ago as an exploration of the Great Glen unravels so
In this third and final episode of Scotland Revealed geographer and presenter Vanessa Collingridge travels east from the Cairngorm Mountains to Aberdeen, then down the East Coast to explore more of the country’s beautiful scenery and delve into its past.
The programme starts with a story which began around 250 million years ago, when masses of granite rock burst through the earth’s crust to form mega mountains, 20 times bigger than the ones we see today.
The Cairngorms is still Britain’s highest land mass; with four of the five highest peaks in the UK, the range reaches heights of over 1300 metres.
Though the mountains seem serene and enticing when Scotland Revealed looks down on them, in snowy sub-zero temperatures the summits are treacherous. Vanessa finds out the dangers first-hand from John Lyle, who has been a volunteer with the Cairngorm Mountain rescue team for 20 years.
The travels continue with Vanessa’s first-ever lesson in fly fishing on the River Dee courtesy of Ian Murray, who knows the river inside out. It’s believed this graceful sport was invented here around one hundred years ago.
Today, salmon and trout fishing is a twelve million pound industry and last year 6000 fish were caught on the Dee, making it the most successful salmon river in Scotland.
Further downstream is Balmoral Estate, the Scottish home of Her Majesty The Queen. This stunning 50,000 acre estate and castle has been in royal hands since Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought the land in 1848.
Nestled between the Dee and the river Don, Aberdeen is a coastal city - and Scotland’s third-largest city - with a bay that serves as a gateway to the North Sea.
This provides a fishing industry, and a lucrative oil and gas empire. Vanessa visits the Granite City to find out how Aberdeen remains the “Oil Capital of Europe”, explores Union Street and discovers the local source of the unusual stone that gives the city its nickname, Rubislaw Quarry.
A celebration of the transformation of Scotland when snow blankets the landscape, including some stunning aerial footage. Vanessa Collingridge travels across Scotland, starting her journey in Glencoe, where she reveals its glacial and volcanic history. She then travels along a misty and atmospheric Great Glen, explores the winter adventure playground of the Cairngorms and wonders at a silent and snowy capital city, Edinburgh.
Aerial views of the Cairngorms, presented by Vanessa Collingridge
