Grand Tours of Scotland's Lochs

Paul Murton travels through old Perthshire, shrouded in a mythic past when kelpies lurked in the lochs of the Trossachs. He lends a hand bringing in the cattle and hears how Rob Roy MacGregor might not have been the romantic figure of popular fiction. Was he a hero or just a cattle thief? At Rob Roy's graveside, Paul meets a man who casts doubts on the clansman's last resting place. He then travels along a disused railway above a beautiful loch to a place where the earth once moved for folk at the 'Shaky Toun'. A trek on horseback takes him to Loch Tay, where he goes back to the Iron Age and learns how to light a fire without matches. Scaling a local giant, journey's end is on the summit of mist-wreathed Ben Lawers.

Paul's loch-hopping journey starts on the west coast on a wild and windswept stretch of Loch Hourn. Travelling inland, Paul reaches sheltered Loch Quoich, where he hears tales of Scotland's last outlaw. On the shores of Loch Lochy, he meets a couple who had a memorable encounter with a monster from the deep called Lizzie. A detour south leads to a ruined bridge where the first shots were fired of the '45. Paul then walks an old railway line above the Great Glen and inhales diesel smoke from a reeking shunter at a station undergoing restoration. A canal journey takes him to Fort Augustus, where he searches for the original fort. On Loch Ness, Paul meets a man who, when still a schoolboy, met the fastest man on water, John Cobb aka the Gentle Giant.

Paul explores the forgotten lands of Morvern. On the shores of Loch Aline, he sees the devil in a fossil and then plunges deep underground to discover an unlikely connection between sand and WW2. Above Loch Arienas, he hears the moving testimony of a family who were cleared from the land in the 19th century. Paul then has an al fresco art lesson and tries to paint the scene. At Fort William, he paces the ruins of the original fort and learns that the town that now surrounds it was once known as Maryburgh. Following a Jacobite theme, Paul encounters the Strange Plate and discovers the secrets of Jacobite paper money. Journey's end is a 'loch that never was' beneath the magnificent 300ft Steall Falls.