O'er moorland and brae: Brown bears and smoked fish

The north and north-west of Scotland is scenically spectacular. Much more so than the east. Mountains of rock rear up out of the blue blue Atlantic, and it looks much like the Rockies in many parts. Which is not surprising, as way back, aeons ago, before Scotland ever collided with the land mass that is now England and Wales, it was part of the continent that we now call North America. Related.

Even skeletons of brown bear and reindeer have been discovered in caves at Inchnadamph, just north of Ullapool, if ever more proof than the geological similarities was needed. Which makes it so much easier to understand the similarities between this part of Scotland and Canada. So, we keep hoping that these similarities, these delights, might have been some consolation to the Clearance folk who were forced to relocate to Canada.

Unfortunately, the sad tales of the Clearances do not stop on this side of the country. A large chunk of this northern shore is still Sutherland holdings, which wraps itself around a bit of land to the north east called Caithness, then heads on over to the west. We have been driving in and around Sutherland land for weeks now: it is vast. And mostly inhospitable.

The 'A' roads, the main ones, are single lane, for the most part. With pullouts every couple of hundred metres for Passing Places. And the signs everywhere warn: Slow Lambs.

Despite its spectacular beauty, the land is all rock, peat, bog cotton, bracken and boggy heather underlaid with running water. Everywhere there is water. You can hear it like a symphony: waterfalls, lochs, lochans, and stone-running streams and rivulets constantly grooving out this harsh beautiful landscape. A Welshman, at coffee yesterday, told us that there are 31,000 lochs in Scotland. And that is not hard to believe.

Just down from Durness, along the western shore of Loch Eribol, James Anderson, during his Clearance improvements, had a harbour built at Rispond. He paid his workers in tokens. These tokens could only be redeemed at his store. His harshness didn't stop there. Anyone wanting or needing to fish, had to pay rent for the use of the seabed. And to land their catch in the harbour they had to agree to this form of extortion to do so. Every which way they turned the Clearance folk could not win.

And all the while James Anderson was enlarging his personal fortune based on fishing and the harbour: better developing the smoking and salting techniques to suit southern tastes; creating markets for the crab and langoustine catch; expanding his harbour so that his growing fleet of fishing boats could take his salted fish to the Baltics. Building an international trade and reputation in Scottish seafood.

Mind you, even today, the tales of woe for the local fishing folk who live in these parts, continue.

As you drive this land you can't help noticing that there are hardly any facilities this side of the country. Not many of the clusters of homes for hundreds of miles even have the luxury of a village store, for instance. Even petrol bowsers are few and far between.

Some householders still warm their homes with the peat they carve, and dry, from the Common lands. We last saw peat harvesting in Ireland, thirty years ago, but haven't seen it there since.

Given the deprivations it was rather a shock to come across a massive large construction on the harbour at Lochinver, then to discover from disgusted locals that it is a monster Fish Market, built with development money from the EU. But, not benefitting the locals one whit.

The boats who use this extensive facility are mainly French, it appears. French fishing boats lie in the harbour resting, when they are not on the far side of the Outer Hebrides, fishing.

When the boats do bring in their catch it is loaded from the floor of the Fish Market directly on to massive refrigerated French lorries, ready and waiting for the haul to be unloaded and reloaded. Within hours of being pulled from the sea, the catch is on a Channel ferry, then just as quickly offloaded and displayed for the early morning fresh fish markets in France.

But, it doesn't stop there.

The very same trucks which collect the fish from the seas off Scotland's islands bring to the fishermen left on these remote Scottish shores all the French food and French delicacies that they need until they bring in their next haul of fish. Along with bucket loads of French wine. In stainless steel vats, in the back of the lorries.

The little man, the Scottish fishermen for whom the fish market was built, had smaller fishing boats which could not go out to sea as far as these French boats. Now, the French draglines mean that fish don't make it into the waters where the Scots' fishing boats can reach.

So, local fishing industry is all but dead. And the French buy virtually nothing locally as they go about emptying the seas.