In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.
His name was George Bradshaw,
and his railway guides inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop, he told them where to travel,
what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later,
I'm making a series of journeys across the length and breadth of the country
to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.
Using my Victorian Bradshaw's Guide,
I'm beginning a journey up the west coast of Scotland.
The northern part, the West Highland Line,
was recently voted in one travel survey the world's most scenic railway.
Trains brought tourists to places
previously accessible only to deer and sheep.
19th-century novels romanticised Highland culture
and Queen Victoria began the royal habit of holidaying north of the border.
"Bradshaw's" helps in understanding those social changes.
As the railways reached the Highlands,
the guidebooks provided useful tips for those travelling north.
On this stretch of the journey,
I'll be discovering why 19th-century Paisley was a magnet for Italians...
Parla Italiano?
- Si. - Si. Di dove?
...seeing how the railways helped golf to flourish in Scotland...
It was 1925,
and something like 20,000 people came on the railway from Glasgow.
...and celebrating haggis in the home town of poet, Robert Burns.
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Fantastic.
Starting on the Ayrshire coast,
this journey takes me north to join the stunning West Highland Line.
I'll be following its path through some of the Highlands' most dramatic scenery.
And I'll end up on the Hebridean island of Skye.
My route today begins in Ayr, then up the track to Prestwick.
My last stop will be one of the great Victorian textile towns, Paisley.
I'm travelling through a county with a rich industrial past.
This is Ayrshire.
My Bradshaw's Guide says it has "abundant mines of coal".
Also "freestone, limestone, iron, lead and copper".
"And from the great abundance of seaweed which is cast ashore,
vast quantities of kelp is made."
Like in many places, the railways were built originally for coal.
But it wasn't too long before the companies realised
that they had to make provision for passengers, too.
This line opened to passengers in 1839
and in the first year alone was used by 137,000 people.
It developed into a busy commuter route,
linking Glasgow with the pretty coastal town of Ayr.
This is Ayr where this train will terminate.
My Bradshaw's refers to Ayr as a port at the mouth of the Ayr Water,
a picturesque stream.
And says that about 5,000 tons of shipping are registered here.
Before Glasgow rose to prominence,
this was the stepping-off point for trade with the Western Isles.
But even in Bradshaw's day, tourists were coming here.
For this is what my guidebook refers to as the Land of Burns.
Celebrity fascinated Victorians.
Using trains, they could visit places made famous by literature
or gawp at the birthplace of a popular writer like Robert Burns.
It stands close to Ayr, and my guidebook says,
"Innumerable pilgrims from all lands visit these scenes
and the place of the poet's residence
to gaze on what has been charmed and sanctified by his genius. "
Bradshaw's listing for Ayr contains three columns of quotes from Burns.
But no verse, perhaps, is more famous
than that in which the great Scottish poet
elevated a humble Scottish peasant dish
to the status of international celebrity
with his Address to a Haggis.
The poem is recited every January at Burns Night suppers.
Although tongue-in-cheek,
it's undoubtedly a proud celebration of Scottish cuisine.
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Those verses brought haggis to global renown
and the railways enabled many outside Scotland to have their first taste.
I'm meeting award-winning haggis baker, Stewart Duguid
to chart its rise to fame.
While I'm in Robbie Burns country, I thought I'd find out about haggis.
- You've picked the right place to come. - What's the history? How did it start?
It goes back to the days when the gentry ate the lamb
and all the poor people, the peasants, were eating the offal.
They made the offal into a meal.
Traditionally, it was a pudding made for poor people.
Oh, yes. Without a doubt. It's immortalised now, though.
- Immortalised by Robbie Burns? - Absolutely.
Did he write that Address to a Haggis, did he write that as a joke? Forgive me.
No, he didn't. Oh, my God, no. Don't say that to a Scotsman.
- It was a completely serious thing? - That was a serious poem, yes.
- He was very serious about it. - But then it becomes, I suppose,
thanks to Robbie Burns, a dish that is craved, even in London.
- Oh, yes. Not just London. All over. - Yeah.
Fortunately, the railway station is just along the road there.
We sent a tremendous amount of haggis down south by railway.
Do the railways help the export of haggis outside Scotland?
Of course it did. It was the only way of transporting it in earlier days.
It was a wee bit more difficult without refrigeration,
but it still worked.
Once it's cooked, it's got a seven-day shelf life.
I'm looking forward to seeing how you make them.
We've got the coat and hat. We're ready for you.
I'm ready for it, too.
"Bradshaw's" says of haggis,
"Its ingredients are oatmeal, suet, pepper,
and it's usually boiled in a sheep's stomach. "
But perhaps for fear of putting people off,
it doesn't mention the most important ingredients.
This is what we call a sheep's pluck.
- This is the heart. - Heart and lungs?
- Lungs. - Liver.
Yeah. That's them there, the raw material.
We cook these. Probably cook about 200 pound at a time for a batch size.
- That's the size it cooks down to. - OK.
Once everything's mixed up, it's time to make the haggis.
Sheep's stomachs are still used for the largest
and intestines for smaller ones.
- Right, here we go. - Hand over this end of it. That's it.
- And again. No, hold it firm. - Oh. Oh, dear.
We'll try another one.
Firm. That's it. Keep it on there. Well done.
Same again. Keep it firm.
Let it slide now slightly.
- Perfect. - Lovely.
We're going to open the oven
- and bring out one exactly like that. - Ah, lovely.
You have actually made a haggis.
Aren't they beautiful?
Now's your chance.
- We'd like you to taste this. - That's a great honour.
Before you do so, I'm afraid you have to recite the poem.
We'll ask you to do the first verse. Make it easy for you.
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o'a grace
As lang's my arm.
- Now what do I do? - Slice it open.
Slice it open.
Oh, look at that.
It's not the way I normally do it. I normally pick it up with my fingers.
- Fantastic. - Isn't that lovely?
Marvellous. Really got a bit of an edge to it, hasn't it?
That's a lovely, lovely haggis.
"Bradshaw's" says haggis is "a heavy yet by no means disagreeable dish. "
I don't argue with that.
It's now time to leave Ayr
and catch the train just a few miles up the line to Prestwick.
The tracks running up this stretch of coast
offer wonderful views across the Firth of Clyde.
In the 19th century, the new railway allowed wealthy Glaswegians
to move out to this beautiful scenery,
turning Prestwick into a haven for commuters.
This train is for Glasgow Central.
Next stop is Prestwick International Airport.
This is Prestwick Town, which scarcely gets a mention in Bradshaw's
because it was just a tiny village on the edge of Troon.
But when the rail link arrived here,
that was the moment when the middle classes from Glasgow
could build their magnificent villas here
to take advantage of the sea views
and the vista over towards the Isle of Arran.
With the railway coming here in 1840,
it was just 11 years later that they put in the golf course
and the best view of the golf course is from the station.
When my guidebook was published,
Prestwick was poised to become one of Scotland's most important golf courses.
As club secretary, lan Bunch, explains.
What a fantastic golf course.
- Welcome to Prestwick. - Where we're staying now,
this is actually the home of Open golf in Scotland.
The first Open Championship was held here in 1860.
Only eight people took part in that Open.
And it was Tom Morris, it was his concept with the Earl of Eglinton
and JO Fairlie.
They sent invitations out to the leading clubs
for them to put forward players to play in this Open event.
I suppose then the railways did make it possible
- for it to become a spectator event. - Oh, yes.
The last Open that we held here was 1925.
There were something like 20,000 people came on the railway from Glasgow.
Fantastic. It must have been difficult to control 20,000 people.
That's why we no longer have the Open Championship.
The crowd control, there was none.
Everybody was on the fairways. They followed the matches.
You have all these people bottle necking.
That was the last Open in 1925 that we actually had.
Golf originated in 15th-century Scotland.
But in the railway age, it spread rapidly.
By the 1900s, there were more than 1,300 courses in Britain.
Have the railways been important in the history of golf?
Very important. If you think of a links course, it's beside a railway station.
It was more holidays, Industrial Revolution,
the working week came down to 55 hours, so people had more time.
They were actually able to play golf.
You didn't have a car boot to sling your golf clubs in.
- You wanted to take them on the train. - It was horse and cart or a train.
Railway companies offered cheap tickets and deals for golfers.
And here railway staff made special arrangements
so players didn't miss their train.
In days gone by, the station master used to have a bell which he would ring,
which would ring in the bar
to advise that the train was going to arrive within five minutes.
So we had a wonderful relationship with the railways in days gone by.
- Just time to drink up and go. - Absolutely.
In Prestwick, the memory of the railways' heyday is cherished.
I've got a good story about railways and golf.
The lady was playing at Prestwick long ago in the '20s of steam trains
and the train came into the station as she drove
and she sliced it over the wall out of bounds, hit the train,
came back on the course.
And as she walked up, the driver leaned out and said,
"That was lucky. Are you playing tomorrow?"
She said, "Yes, I've got a tee time at one o'clock."
He said, "I'll try and be here."
Have the same luck twice.
Golf is something I'm leaving for later life.
So I had best just head off in search of tonight's hotel.
Prestwick's good rail links to Glasgow
led to a building boom in the 19th century
and rows of elegant terraces sprang up.
And one of them is rather special.
I'm now just a stone's throw from the golf course
and my bed tonight will be in one of those mid-19th century villas.
This one was built for John Keppie, who was an architect.
He was a friend of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
I'm hoping that when I embark on my journeys tomorrow
my head will be full of grand designs.
Mackintosh, Scotland's most famous architect,
often spent time in this house.
It's easy to see why he loved Prestwick.
This quiet coastal town provided him with the necessary peace for creativity.
Thank you. That looks lovely. Thank you very much indeed.
After a hearty Ayrshire breakfast, it's time to continue my journey,
starting back at Prestwick Station to catch my next train.
I'm on my way to Paisley, travelling through Renfrewshire.
Bradshaw's says this county contains "many manufacturing towns and villages".
"It's bounded by the Firth of Clyde and the Clyde River."
And then he talks about "the industry and enterprise of the inhabitants",
about "extensive machinery in immense buildings
where hundreds of human beings are actively engaged in manufactures."
It's a very telling description of an industrious and industrialised county
at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century.
In Bradshaw's day, these parts were being transformed from tranquil villages
into substantial industrial towns.
My next stop is a good example.
This is Paisley Gilmour Street. This train is from Glasgow Central.
I've now arrived at the very Victorian-feeling station
of Paisley Gilmour Street.
My Bradshaw's says of Paisley, "Paisley is a thriving seat of the cotton trade,
with a population of about 47,952."
Don't you love that combination of approximation and precision?
In the 19th century,
Paisley was one of Britain's most productive textile towns.
It gave its name to the Indian-inspired shawls
patterned with the iconic teardrop.
But Victorian Paisley also produced a fabric with origins closer to home.
In the mid-19th century, Paisley was a town of weavers
and the cottage industry had pretty much given way to big new mills.
And with tourists pouring into Scotland on the trains
and with the royal interest in all matters Scottish,
there was a tartan craze
and the mills were churning out mile after mile of the stuff.
It was being exported everywhere,
beginning its journey, of course, by rail.
Sad to remember, just a century before Victoria's reign,
tartan was almost lost forever.
The Highlanders who had supported Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion
had been defeated by government troops at the Battle of Culloden.
The director of the Scottish Tartans Authority, Brian Wilton,
knows the story.
After Culloden, what happens to the Highlanders?
I think the first blow was that tartan was banned
from 1747 until, in fact, 1782.
That resulted in many of the old looms being lost,
many of the old patterns being lost.
That very proud and unique identity of the Highlanders
was taken away from them. They were made to wear trousers.
Trousers, as far as they were concerned, were terrible things.
- Impractical, not Scottish. - Hmm.
So that was a great slap in the face for them.
The authorities tried to suppress the rebellious Highlanders
by destroying their culture.
But they didn't quite succeed in killing off tartan.
Tartan goes from being banned to being a fashion accessory
for the English upper classes. How did that happen?
That was due to a remarkable, lucky coincidence of events.
The first one was probably George IV, who was invited to Edinburgh in 1822,
a trip that was orchestrated by Sir Walter Scott.
When George IV arrived in Edinburgh,
he was kitted out from top to toe in tartan.
He even, it's said, wore some pink tights,
which didn't go down too well.
In the invitation to the clan chiefs to come to meet the King,
Walter Scott said, "Dress in your clan tartans."
Many of them didn't know what their tartans were
because of the previous ban. They were scrabbling around going to the weavers.
They were talking to old people in the clan saying,
"Can you remember our tartan?"
At this point, two young men appeared.
The Sobieski brothers professed to be grandsons of Bonnie Prince Charlie
and claimed to have discovered an ancient document
that could solve the Highlanders'problem.
They also let it be known that they had a very rare manuscript
which detailed in minute detail the Scottish clan tartans,
not just for the Highlanders,
but also for the Lowlanders and people on the borders,
families on the borders who'd never had tartans before.
Walter Scott was very suspicious of this
but the rest of Scottish society welcomed these with open arms
because of this romantic wave.
The brothers produced a dictionary of tartans,
allowing many clans and families to lay claim to an ancestral pattern.
Tartan sales began to take off.
Do you think the railways helped to spread the tartan mania?
We're positive that they had a very great effect.
Not only did they provide a marvellously improved means of transport
to get tartans from the Highlands down to the market in the south,
but they also on the return journey brought the tourists with them,
who would come into the Highlands and would buy tartan.
So I think it was a marvellously symbiotic relationship.
The public was so infatuated with tartan
that the book's authenticity went largely unchallenged.
Very many of today's tartans turned out, at the end of the day, to be forgeries.
- The book was a fraud? - Yes.
Gifted forgeries because they were very imaginative.
But the clans accepted them
and that makes up many of today's clan tartan books.
What tartan are you wearing now?
That's the Fraser tartan.
- Your family tartan? - My grandmother was a Fraser.
You're sure it's genuine?
It had better be. She'll be in trouble if it isn't.
It seems that many supposedly ancient tartans
were in fact invented in Bradshaw's day.
Now anyone can design and register a new one.
But for traditionalists, the idea of clan weaves has stuck.
We're an offshoot of the Mackay tartan. I don't know a great deal about it.
Do you have any idea what it looks like?
It's a green background, I know that. But the other colours, no.
- Do you lay claim to a tartan yourself? - No, I don't.
- I'm Italian and English. - Would you ever wear a tartan?
I know that I can't.
I've been told I can only wear black watch because I'm not Scottish.
Did you know about a connection between Paisley
- and an Italian town called Barga? - I didn't.
It's all to do with fish and chips and ice cream.
Is it really? Italians know their food.
The Italians know their food. They do indeed.
Paisley has an Italian community that dates back to Victorian times
when the railways brought thousands of immigrants to Southwest Scotland.
I'm meeting Scots Italian Ronnie Convery
in one of Paisley's oldest fish-and-chip shops.
- Hello, Ronnie. - Hi, Michael.
- Lovely to see you. - Nice to see you.
What's the connection between Paisley and la bella Italia?
It goes back a long way. I suppose the main thing to say is that Italy,
which we now regard as a kind of cultural and stylistic capital,
in the 19th century had some of the characteristics of a developing country.
There was incredible poverty, failures of harvests and so on.
So Italian immigrants left Tuscany,
which we now regard as the ultimate holiday destination,
to come to places like this. This was regarded as a place to make a new life.
They came basically through London and then spread out from London
following the railway lines to centres like Glasgow and Paisley.
So that here in this part of Scotland the majority of the Italian community
come from one tiny little village high in the Apuan Alps in Tuscany
called Barga.
In the 19th century, the people of Barga were hit by famine.
As the railways spread through Europe, some were able to escape.
Many ended up in Paisley, hoping to make their fortunes.
Why have we met in a fish-and-chip shop?
Now, that is another story.
When those first immigrants came, they were essentially hawkers.
Ice cream became their trade on barrows.
An interesting thing is, in our health and safety obsessed world,
in those days they used to sell ice cream in little glass cups.
People would lick the ice cream out of the cup and hand it back.
It was only in 1905 that an Italian from Manchester invented the cone
and thus made our current ice-cream cone.
That's got us to ice cream, not fish and chips.
OK. Ice cream's not a great seller in the winter.
So Italians being here, not wishing to take the jobs of the local community,
had to find something new and original.
Fish and chips isn't actually original to Italians.
It had been sold in London by Greeks, actually, in the 19th century.
But seeing the market, they took it outside London.
It's a very easy thing to set up.
There's an endless supply of potatoes in Britain
and a reasonably endless supply of fish.
How big did this trend grow?
Were there lots of Italian fish-and-chip shops and ice-cream shops?
Between 1890 and 1910
the Italian population of Scotland quadrupled.
But the number of ice-cream and fish-and-chip shops increased tenfold.
Tenfold.
Out of the large number of Italian fish-and-chip shops
that once graced Paisley, only a handful have survived.
I was struck, I've just come into this Italian fish-and-chip shop,
- but it has a Scottish name. - Exactly. Allan's.
That's quite typical. There are a few called Savoy Café and things.
The reason is the wartime experience of the Italian community was awful.
When Mussolini entered the war in 1940,
Churchill famously said, "Collar the lot,"
meaning collar the whole community.
So men from about 14 to 60 or 70 were arrested and interned.
So the impact of that wartime experience was extreme on the Italian community.
It was a real scar on their psyche.
So much so that after the war there was an incredible desire to integrate,
to not stand out from the crowd.
Scots Italians now feel so at home here that they invent their own tartans.
Recently a member of this community,
another chap who owns a fish-and-chip shop,
decided it would be a good idea to create a Scottish Italian tartan.
He used all the colours and the blue of the Italian national football strip,
the green, white and red of the flag,
applied to the Scottish Tartans Authority
and obtained their permission to have the first approved ethnic tartan.
Given your shirt and tie, you may actually get away with that today.
That's an example of integration, isn't it?
That is super. Do you know, that is fantastic,
but I wouldn't have known that wasn't just a pure Scottish tartan.
It could be Macbeth or MacDonald.
But here I see the blue of the Italian football team
and the green, white and red.
That's the giveaway, if you know where to look.
Parla Italiano?
- Si. - Si. Di dove? Where are you from?
Io sono Scozzese ma parlo anche un po' d'Italiano.
"I'm Scottish but I speak a bit of Italian."
So you know about your Italian roots, do you?
- Yes. This is my grandfather's shop. - Your grandfather's shop?
How lovely. Do you do ice cream as well as fish and chips?
Yes. But our speciality is haddock and chips.
I've got a nice haddock coming out of the pan if you want to see it.
I just had spaghetti. I'm so sorry.
You come to do a programme about fish and chips and you eat pasta.
I had a pasta. I'm so sorry.
Look what you could have had.
Oh, isn't that beautiful?
As Italian as they come.
My "Bradshaw's Guide" has helped me to understand the traditions
and the myths that make the Scots special.
It struck me on my journey today
how very influential Scotland has been in the world.
Golf is a game that's played everywhere.
And Scotch whisky is enjoyed universally.
Wherever you go in the world,
people know that haggis and tartan are Scottish.
For such a small country to have such an impact strikes me as remarkable.
And since my mother is a Scot, I feel entitled to feel a little proud.
On my next journey, I'll be discovering how Queen Victoria
attracted trainloads of tourists to Loch Lomond...
This is very valuable. I can see it's signed by Victoria.
That's a real treasure that you've got that.
...finding out how Scottish timber fuelled the railway boom...
We have fast-growing trees for things like railway sleepers.
That was one of the big demands in the 19th century.
...and learning how a great sailing ship took her name from a witch in a poem.
It's from a Burns poem, Tam o' Shanter.
He can't help himself. He jumps up and shouts, "Weel done, Cutty-sark!"