[ Slow dramatic music plays ] -We're sailing around the UK in a historic tall ship to explore its secret islands.

To discover the untold stories of the history, cultures, and wildlife that they hold.

♪♪ From 5,000-year-old ruins... to fascinating living cultures with links to Viking heritage.

These are found across the 6,000 islands that make up the United Kingdom.

♪♪ In our journey, we're hoping to unveil the mystery of the islands that form the British Isles.

So, join us in this voyage of discovery to Britain's secret islands.

[ Music fades ] [ Dramatic orchestral music plays ] We set sail on our journey from Greenwich on board the tall ship the Pelican of London.

♪♪ We're sailing thousands of kilometers right around the edge of Britain on our voyage to discover its islands and waters.

♪♪ Now, we're exploring the Hebrides and the remote islands of St. Kilda and Rockall before heading inshore to investigate the myriad sea lochs.

Scotland's west coast has the greatest concentration of islands of the British Isles, divided into the Outer and Inner Hebrides.

[ Birds calling ] The name Hebrides comes from the Old Norse word "Havbredey", meaning the isle on the edge of the sea.

♪♪ There's over 70 main islands which make up the Outer Hebrides, 14 of which are inhabited.

[ Music fades ] Lewis is the most northerly isle and also the largest.

[ Gentle piano music plays ] ♪♪ The once extensive forests were felled after the first humans arrived 8,500 years ago, making the Hebrides one of the earliest places to be settled across the British Isles.

[ Dramatic music plays ] Over the centuries, the traditional dwellings across the Outer Hebrides evolved into blackhouses.

These thick, stone-walled buildings with heavily thatched roofs were so called because the peat fires inside continually burned soot and the tiny windows made it very dark and smoky inside.

Blackhouses were lived in right into the 20th century.

[ Music fades ] [ Ground crunching ] For centuries, people would go out onto the moorland to cut peat.

They would put the cuttings in piles and let them dry for weeks.

These historic crofting techniques are still practiced today.

Crofter Ian Martin is keeping the tradition alive.

-This is the Old Croft House, the original house dating back to 1741.

That's when the original two rooms was built.

And I'm the eighth generation of my family on my father's side on this croft, and the fourth generation of weavers on this croft.

And we, of course, although it's modernized now, the original house was a blackhouse, and with a thatched roof, six-foot-thick stone -- stone walls, which are now, of course, covered with smooth render.

Of course, as you can imagine, back in these days, there was no glass.

-No.

-And in fact, there was no windows at all.

And you had your thatched roof on.

-Yes.

-And of course, the peat fire was the only source of light.

However, the peat fire, until you got the red flame glow, it created an awful lot of smoke inside the houses.

-Right, okay.

During the summer months, local people can still be seen cutting peat on the moorlands.

Being prepared for the winter ahead is still key to living here.

-Once the peat is thrown out, after a couple of weeks, maybe three weeks, when it forms a dry skin, a crust on the surface... -Yeah.

-...you then start to lift them exactly like this.

So, the the bit that is exposed to the sun and the wind is put to the inside, exposing the damper part of the peat that has been lying on the ground to the outside, and then leave them like that in total from beginning to end, two to possibly three months.

Then they're ready to be taken home and put on the fire.

[ Gentle orchestral music plays ] -In addition to cutting peat, generations of people have lived across the isles of Lewis and Harris as weavers.

These islands are famed for producing a special cloth, the Harris Tweed.

This heavily woven cloth from the wool of the Scottish Cheviot sheep was perfect for protecting against the harsh and unpredictable climate here.

The weaving of the tweed goes back centuries.

Today, all Harris Tweed is woven at home or in the weavers shed.

By the early 1800s, the commercial potential of Harris Tweed was championed by Lady Catherine Herbert, the wife of the sixth Earl of Dunmore, who owned an estate on the Isle of Harris and made every effort to promote it.

Hundreds of locals were employed, making Harris Tweed of the finest quality, and the rich, time-honored craft became a cottage industry.

The fabric was exported to over 50 countries, including fashion houses, independent designers, multinational companies, and even famous brand labels.

The material is even protected by its own Act of Parliament, the Harris Tweed Act of 1993.

It's not just the houses and industries that are traditional across the isles of Lewis and Harris, but there's a unique cattle breed here.

These are Highland cattle.

They're famous for their beautiful red hair.

They actually have a double coat, a long shaggy outer coat and a much finer, denser undercoat.

Even if they get completely wet, the undercoat is so much denser and finer, it stays dry and keeps them warm, even in this windswept landscape.

Despite their name, Highland cattle originate not just in the Scottish Highlands, but also across the Hebrides.

They were bred from the Hamitic Longhorn cattle, which were brought to Britain by Neolithic farmers 4,000 years ago.

They still retain their wild instincts.

The cows hide their newborn calves in this landscape while they graze, a survival adaptation back to the time when there were predators such as bears and wolves.

They're the most hardy of all cattle breeds and really epitomize the landscape here.

♪♪ We're leaving Lewis behind and traveling 120 kilometers west to the St. Kilda group, home to some of the most remote and beautiful islands in all of the British Isles.

St. Kilda is so remote, it's off many marine charts.

[ Music fades ] Even these British Admiralty charts have "unsurveyed" in the waters around St. Kilda, and the few depth points that there are are from lead-line soundings from the mid-19th century.

[ Orchestral music plays ] ♪♪ The islands of St. Kilda are home to the tallest sea cliffs in all of the British Isles.

♪♪ The archipelago is made up of five main islands that are the remains of a volcanic caldera, some 65 million years old.

The island of Hirta is legendary for its archeological riches.

People lived on the island for thousands of years, but today there are no permanent inhabitants, which adds to the mysterious landscape of ruined dwellings.

The people who lived on St. Kilda were truly at the edge of the British Isles.

Recent archeological finds have shown that people have lived here since the Neolithic Era 4,000 years ago.

As with other parts of the Hebrides, Hirta is famous for its myriad of small drystone buildings, which included blackhouses.

Like the ones on the Isle of Lewis, the blackhouses here were small with rounded corners, with their backs to the ocean and the entrance facing away from the direction of the weather.

The islanders also built stone storage huts, which were used to store and dry meat.

These were dome-shaped structures made of flat boulders with a peat covering as a roof, like a cap on top.

The oldest dating back to the Bronze Age.

There's over 1,200 of these little stone structures scattered across the island.

They're known as "cleits."

And the St. Kildans used them as larders.

As the island is treeless, the wind passing through the cleits preserved the drying meats, eggs, manure, and hay.

This was essential to prevent starvation during the winter months.

A legacy of the islanders is the Soay sheep.

This unique breed has been isolated on St. Kilda since the Bronze Age.

Much smaller than most modern sheep, they're robust and goat-like and have become a distinctive feature of the landscape, representing an ancient breed and descendants of the most primitive domesticated sheep alive today.

Now, St. Kilda is a nature reserve and is home to unique wildlife like the St. Kilda field mouse.

It's thought to have arrived as a stowaway on the Viking ships more than a thousand years ago.

Larger than its mainland counterparts, it feeds on insects, seeds, and snails.

Like the mouse, the unique St. Kilda wren is bigger and heavier than its cousins on the mainland, allowing it to be more suited to living in the stormy weather.

It feeds on insects and their larvae.

[ Birds calling ] St. Kilda is most famous for having one of the largest bird colonies in the world and the biggest in the UK, home to nearly a million seabirds.

It's a birder's paradise with razorbills, fulmars, guillemots, gannets, as well as the biggest puffin colony in the UK.

The most spectacular colonies are found on the sheer cliff sides.

The St. Kildans were one of the last hunter-gatherer societies in the Western world, and dependent on the sea birds as an important resource.

These cliffs were where the St. Kildans used to come to get their food.

But catching the birds was not easy as they clambered down the highest sea cliffs in the UK.

Dangling on ropes, they collected young birds and eggs from their nests.

Nothing was wasted.

As well as eating the meat, the skin was used to make shoes and the feathers to stuff pillows.

Eggs were stored in the cleits, preserved in peat ash for use during the winter.

Despite the hunting, the islands of St. Kilda are home to some of the most important seabird colonies in all of the British Isles.

The cliffs are covered with gannets.

Today, the collectors have long gone, the colonies are at peace, and the numbers of gannets have skyrocketed.

The birds are only here for half of the year as they head out into the Atlantic during the winter months.

♪♪ St. Kilda isn't the most westerly of the British Isles.

That accolade goes to the island of Rockall, where we're heading next.

[ Adventurous music plays ] [ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪ Rockall lies 300 kilometers west of Scotland.

It takes three days of sailing to reach the tiny rock far out in the North Atlantic.

It's the most remote British Isle of them all.

At this lonely little rock, the last of the British Isles end and international waters begin.

This tiny, uninhabitable rock of granite, 25 meters wide and 17 meters high, is the remains of an extinct volcano and is at least 55 million years old.

Yet, despite its small size, it's seen a turbulent history since the 7th-century Irish navigator St. Brendan first described the island, along with its dimensions.

It's been the source of an ongoing ownership dispute involving the UK, Ireland, Denmark, and Iceland, for mineral rights in the seabed, as well as fishing rights in the surrounding waters.

In 1955, two Royal Marines landed on Rockall.

They hoisted the British flag in an attempt to annex it during the Cold War by cementing a brass plaque on its storm-washed summit.

A year later, a deal was passed to formally incorporate Rockwell into the United Kingdom as part of Scotland in an effort to prevent the island from being used by the Soviet Union.

But despite not recognizing the UK's sovereignty over Rockall, Ireland has not sought to annex the island, either.

Irrespective of which nation lays claim to Rockall, it's clear the seabirds that nest here are the real owners of the island.

[ Birds squawking ] From Rockall, we sail to calmer waters and the Inner Hebrides.

They're closer to the mainland, making up a chain of 79 islands that are divided into north and south.

[ Calm percussion music plays ] ♪♪ Thirty-six islands are inhabited, the largest being the Isle of Skye.

Today, thousands of tourists from around the world visit Skye, famed for its natural beauty.

It's a honeypot for tourism and the second most visited place in Scotland after Edinburgh, with iconic landmarks such as Neist Point Lighthouse and Dunvegan Castle, which is the oldest inhabited castle in Scotland.

It started construction in the 12th century and was built on a rocky outcrop.

♪♪ The island is famous for some of the most spectacular scenery in Scotland, including the mighty Cuillin Mountains.

The story of these peaks began over 61 million years ago, when Europe was joined to North America.

Molten rock surged upwards, causing a split between the two continents, and the massive upward current of magma formed the mountains on Skye.

The remnants of the explosive volcanoes can be found throughout the countryside.

The Black Cuillin Ridge is all that remains of an eroded magma chamber from a huge volcano.

It's also the UK's most challenging mountain range to climb.

Over 11 kilometers long and above 900 meters in places, with 11 Munros and 16 other summits.

Just as distinctive, the Old Man of Storr, a large pinnacle of rock which was created by an ancient, massive landslide thousands of years ago.

The resulting standing stone came to be known as the Old Man, maybe because the rock face has similarities with its weathered features.

It leaves a huge impression on visitors and is one of the most photographed landscapes in the world.

♪♪ Another landslide is believed to have created the Fairy Glen.

Skye has a long history involving fairies, and according to local folklore, this is the place to find them.

From the bottom, it's a 10-minute walk to the large basalt outcrop that towers over the glen.

This geological feature was formed by a landslide and reshaped during the last ice age and through natural weathering.

From a distance, the basalt looks like a ruined castle, and when you climb to the top, you're rewarded with breathtaking views.

But aside from the volcanoes and landslides, there's other evidence of the prehistoric past hidden in the ancient geology here.

♪♪ The Isle of Skye has a rich fossil heritage and has even been called Scotland's "Dinosaur Isle".

It's become a new frontier for discoveries and has one of the greatest concentration of dinosaur footprints in the world.

These three clawed prints belong to a meat-eating dinosaur, an older cousin of T. rex.

Dugald Ross from the Staffin Dinosaur Museum has studied the paleontology of the Isle of Skye for decades.

So, when another discovery is made on the island, he knows exactly what type of dinosaur has left its marks in the rocks.

-You can see it's got the distinct shape.

You can see the clear toes.

There's the back of the heel.

-Oh, yes.

-There's the middle toes.

Now, this is a fantastic example of a Stegosaur footprint.

-The fossils date back to the Middle Jurassic Period, some 170 million years ago.

At the time, Scotland was much warmer and the peninsula was a huge estuary where many animals search for food amongst the mud flats.

-These indentations that we see in front of us, Stewart, are actually footprints.

They're quite astonishing... -They are.

-...you know, the size of them.

And the stride pattern -- left, right, left, right.

They were huge animals.

Some of them weighed up to 30 tons.

And the scientists inform us that they were -- they were actually wading in shallow water.

You know, people may wonder, what were they doing?

Why were they wading in the water?

But they may have been cooling off, you know, in the same manner as, you know, animals do today in -- in warm weather.

-Footprints were left behind in the soft mud and rock, and over time, were filled with sand, which hardened into stone.

And there are so many here on the Isle of Skye.

-We have recorded over 3,000, including, you know, Stegosaur, Hadrosaur, Megalosaurus, Coelophysis, Cetiosaurus.

You know, the large herbivore.

You know, we're astonished at the amount of evidence, but it's really just a lucky coincidence -- that of nature, you know, nature's luck that we are finding them here in this northeast coast of Skye.

And it's really down to previous tectonic plate movement where these levels have been left in the surface.

And we are finding them, you know, sporadically along the coast.

-And we can learn much about the behavior of the dinosaurs from these footprints.

-Even with footprints, we can learn a lot about, you know, what they're doing, the speed they're traveling at, you know, for example, if they're running, you know, the the toes would be dug in and the heels would be up.

But in most cases, we're seeing them -- the footprints are ambling along at a very sedate pace.

And family groups, you know, the junior and adult footprints together.

The world in which these dinosaurs lived in was, you know, quite different, you know, to what we see nowadays, unless we go south of the equator, because, you know, that's where the landmass, this landmass was at that period.

There is less than 10 locations in the world that has that Middle Jurassic Period.

And this happens to be -- to be one of them.

And it's really, you know, an absolute paradise for paleontologists.

[ Waves crashing ] [ Gentle harp music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -From Skye, we sail south to Rum, the largest of the smaller islands in the Inner Hebrides, measuring 13 kilometers wide by just over 13 kilometers long.

The name "Rum" comes from Old Norse meaning "wide island."

The island is believed to have been inhabited for over 8,000 years, reaching a peak of 400 inhabitants in the late 18th century.

For over 100 years, Rum was a private sporting estate, part of the Victorian obsession to build faux castles and pleasure palaces.

One such was Kinloch Castle, which was built by the fabulously wealthy industrialist George Bullough at the turn of the 20th century, who inherited Rum from his father.

♪♪ ♪♪ Today, only 30 people live in the village of Kinloch, and the once exclusive castle is now uninhabited.

The island was bought by the Nature Conservancy Council in 1957, and is one of Scotland's finest national nature reserves.

[ Dramatic orchestral music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ From Rum, we travel south to the unique Staffa Island, one of the smallest in the Hebrides.

♪♪ ♪♪ This tiny, uninhabited island is less than a kilometer long and wide, but it's been pulling in tourists for centuries because of its spectacular scenery.

♪♪ The name "Staffa" is taken from the Old Norse word for "staith" or "pillar," like the type used in wood buildings, a reminder of the region's Viking history.

The island became part of the Kingdom of the Norse, who ruled for over 400 years until sovereignty was transferred to Scotland in the year 1266.

Staffa was inhabited until the 1700s, but now the seabirds and tourists have taken over.

♪♪ Approaching Staffa by boat is breathtaking, with its incredible landscape of great basalt columns and deep sea cliffs.

Its hexagonal columns were formed 59 million years ago by volcanic eruptions and the vast blankets of lava that spread into the Atlantic.

As the lava slowly cooled, contraction fractures formed cracks within the solidifying mass, creating the pillarlike columns of rock.

♪♪ Over the centuries, the columns have been eroded by the crashing waves, which creates caves like this one.

The island came to prominence in the late 18th century after a visit by Sir Joseph Banks, who renamed the main sea cavern Fingal's Cave.

♪♪ [ Music fades ] The pillars reach a height of 22 meters, and the cave itself is 82 meters long.

It's like a cathedral of stone.

Over the centuries, many people have come to Staffa Island to visit Fingal's Cave -- amongst them, William Wordsworth, John Keats, and even Queen Victoria visited here.

Jules Verne wrote about the cave in his book "The Journey to the Center of the Earth."

William Turner even featured the island in a painting.

Felix Mendelssohn was so inspired by the weird sounds and echoes in here that he wrote an overture called "The Hebrides."

♪♪ Despite the German composer becoming so seasick on the journey, the sound of the waves crashing into the cave must have made a lasting impression on him, as he wrote his famous overture after his visit, inspired by the eerie noises and echoes.

The cave was also known to the ancient Celts as the Cave of Melody because of the weird acoustics inside.

♪♪ Fingal's Cave shares many similar features to the Giant's Causeway on the north coast of Ireland, and the amazing geology of the hexagonally joined basalt has inspired local legends.

One Irish legend in particular explains the existence of the cave as well as that of the Giant's Causeway.

It's said that there were two giants, Fingal in Scotland and Finn McCool in Ireland.

When the Giants started to argue and insult each other, Fingal threw rocks at Ireland, and Finn McCool picked up mud and threw it back.

As more rocks and mud were thrown, a causeway was formed across the Irish Sea.

The name "Fingal's Cave" was inspired by the giant in the legend, and entering the cave leaves you with a powerful and lasting impression.

Staffa has drawn countless notable visitors over the centuries.

But there's one true resident which the island is even more famous for.

[ Dramatic music fades ] [ Gentle string music plays ] ♪♪ A variety of wildlife can be found surrounding Fingal's Cave, and the volcanic rock columns are home to many seabirds.

[ Birds squawking ] Large colonies of puffins breed on Staffa Island every summer.

They congregate on the northern cliffs and nest in the burrows and rocky crannies.

Puffins pair for life and return to the same clifftop year after year.

They lay one egg during the summer months and fly all the way to the Mid-Atlantic for the winter.

Despite their comical appearance, they're agile fliers and also incredible swimmers.

Their main prey is sand eels, and they can dive 20 meters into the sea to catch them, returning with a beak full of fish.

Staffa Island is one of the best places in the UK to see these charismatic birds.

[ Orchestral music swells ] ♪♪ From Staffa, we head towards the mainland and the myriad islands which make up the sea lochs.

[ Gentle piano music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ Sea lochs are tidal inlets of the sea scoured out by glaciers during the last ice age and protected from the open-water currents by the tidal narrows and shallow sills.

They are famed for having some of the most spectacular diving in all of Northern Europe, giving divers a chance to see many creatures that are normally found at much greater depths, as well as giving insights into the region's geology and surprising history.

Diving into the cold water is a bit bracing.

But nowhere else in Britain is underwater bedrock found in such sheltered conditions, and the sheer cliffs are teeming with communities of marine life.

[ Orchestral music plays ] ♪♪ The underwater cliffsides fall away to more than 30 meters, and the exposed rock provides a great range of habitats.

♪♪ These still waters have an otherworldly beauty, very different to life above the waves.

♪♪ Feather stars are common on the rocky sides of the sea lochs.

A relative of the starfish, they use their intricate arms to draw morsels from the water.

Many people do not realize corals grow in Scottish waters.

These cup corals are found at depths of up to 50 meters.

Each coral polyp grows slowly in the cold water, but they're just as colorful as their tropical relatives.

Dahlia anemones and colonies of sea squirts also grow on the rocky outcrops and filter the water for edible particles.

Another filter feeder is the brittle star.

This type of starfish uses its long arms to catch floating plankton nearby.

Thousands congregate together to form a thick carpet on the sea floor.

They're able to slow their metabolism in the colder waters, an incredible adaptation for surviving in winter.

Kelp beds are found around Britain's coastline.

This large brown seaweed thrives in shallower parts of the sea lochs, where nutrient-rich currents upwell into sunlit waters.

♪♪ [ Orchestral music transitions to gentle piano music ] In many island communities, kelp washed ashore was used as fertilizer for crops, spread out over the topsoil.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Scottish crofters also collected kelp for other uses, such as producing soda ash, soap, and even sweets.

The kelp forests provide habitats for sea urchins, which graze amongst the kelp holdfasts.

An inquisitive harbor seal is searching for fish and octopus hidden amongst the kelp.

Another resident of the kelp forest is the spiny starfish, which grows up to 70 centimeters across.

The spiny starfish and its relative, the seven-armed starfish, have keen senses to detect and hunt clams and other mollusks in the seabed.

Surprisingly colorful fish are found in these Scottish waters, including the rainbow cuckoo wrasse, which looks more like a tropical fish but is very much at home here, feeding on mollusks and crustaceans attached to the rocky outcrops.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Music fades ] We journey inland and travel to Inchconnachan Island in the middle of Loch Lomond.

[ Whimsical music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ Inchconnachan is a 40-hectare wooded island which can only be accessed by boat from the village of Luss.

The island is covered with ancient woodlands and is abundant with nature, including otters, deer, and nesting ospreys.

[ Otter squawks ] It's one of the few places in Scotland that the magnificent capercaillie, a giant turkeylike grouse, can be spotted in the woods.

But there's another resident of the island, which is even more unexpected.

These red-necked wallabies from Australia were introduced in the 1940s.

The population over the last 80 years has thrived.

There's now about 60 of them on the island, and they've spread to other islands nearby.

The wallabies were brought to the island by Lady Arran Colquhoun, who loved exotic animals.

After World War II, she moved her animals to her holiday home on Inchconnachan.

The wallabies quickly multiplied, spreading to other islands nearby.

And it's one of the few places where you can see them in the wild outside their native Australia.

While the red-necked wallabies are a non-native species and are not meant to be here, it's fascinating to see how they've adapted to this habitat and learnt how to eat plants here, which are completely different from their native ecosystem on the other side of the world.

[ Synth music fades ] [ Dramatic music swells ] ♪♪ Scotland's lochs also include unique manmade islands called "crannogs."

Crannogs are a type of ancient loch dwelling found throughout Scotland and Ireland.

The earliest loch dwelling is some 5,000 years old, but crannogs have been used right up until the 17th century.

♪♪ ♪♪ The prehistoric crannogs were originally timber-built roundhouses supported on piles or stilts driven into the loch bed.

Usually, a mound of brush, timber, or stone was built, into which piles could be sunk to support the dwelling above.

As rocks and debris were dropped around it, the island built up underneath the crannog.

Most crannogs seem to have been built as individual homes to accommodate extended families.

The inhabitants were skilled woodworkers, using the ancient woodlands to make everything from the timber construction to food bowls.

Wood was used to keep a central fire going and even fashion musical instruments to provide melody during the long winter nights.

♪♪ The importance of the crannogs was central to the Iron Age farms.

From each small island jutting out from the shoreline, a farmer would have a good view of the surrounding land.

As well as home dwellings, they also had defensive purposes as protection from passing raiders.

The use of islands in Scottish lochs continued over the centuries.

Many of Scotland's most spectacular castles were built on islands in lochs over the last 1,000 years, such as Eilean Donan, which dominates the point where three lochs meet, having ramifications for the clans in the valleys for miles around.

Across Scotland and the rest of the British Isles, islands have shaped not only the landscape, but the history of how people have lived here for millennia.

[ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ [ Wind rushing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Music fades ] ♪♪