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Landward episode 21 2025
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00:00As the temperatures plummet, the colours change, we're celebrating all things autumn.
00:08Welcome to Labward.
00:30Hello from the stunning Ben Alder Estate near Dalwini in the Highlands.
00:36The perfect place to see the changes that happen during autumn.
00:40In a moment I'll be heading up into the Glen to hopefully see and hear some of the drama
00:45from one of this season's most amazing natural events.
00:49But first, here's what else is coming up.
00:52Arlene's on a fungi foray, deep underground.
00:56Oh my.
00:59Liana Fernandez discovers why it's a bumper autumn for the oak tree.
01:03Well it happens roughly every five to ten years, but there's no real pattern.
01:08And Rosie meets the man bringing some fizz to the apple harvest.
01:20The clash of antlers, roars that reverberate around the hills, sounds that can only mean
01:26one thing. The red deer rut is on.
01:31And that's what I'm hoping to hear and see today. With wildlife, there are no guarantees of course.
01:37Nice to see you. How are you doing Dougie? How are you getting on the deck?
01:40Very well.
01:41But if anyone can make it happen, it's Savio Giannini, the head stalker on the Ben Alder estate.
01:47I get very excited at the prospect of actually seeing this.
01:56Yeah.
01:56And do you still get excited? Obviously you've been a stalker for a while now.
02:00Yeah, I still get the same buzz as when I first started doing it. I don't think I'd still be
02:05doing it if you didn't. You need to have that passion for it, to want to do it.
02:09And for those who don't know what a rut is... So the rut is the red deer breeding season.
02:16So it's when the stags mate with the hinds. And so in eight months' time,
02:20there'll be red deer calves on the ground.
02:25So all the hinds are hefted to the hill in their own areas,
02:28and the stags all break away from their summering grounds and find harems of hinds.
02:34On a sporting estate like this, Savio has to maintain a healthy herd that will survive for
02:42years to come. And you'll know where they're going to be on the hill, yeah?
02:46Yeah, yeah. We've got a rough idea. Obviously it's a wild animal. You can never tell exactly
02:50where they're going to be, but most of our areas have hinds in them. So if there's hinds there during
02:54the rut, there's going to be stags. And Savio clearly has his eye in. There's a stag with hinds
02:59up on the ridge there, Dougie, out to our left. We'll just stop here and have a wee look.
03:13Just to the left of the peat hags up there, Dougie, on the big green bit.
03:16Oh, yes. I think what we'll do, Dougie, is just head back down the track into the burn,
03:21and then we'll stalk up the burn and get in as close as we can on the left-hand side of them there.
03:24We need to use the lie of the land as cover to avoid spooking them.
03:38You can just see the top of the hinds head out to our left there, Dougie,
03:40so we'll just sneak up this burn onto this bank up at our left here.
03:44Yeah. And then we should get into about 200 yards there to get them to get them properly.
03:47OK.
03:48There's no sign of a stag just yet, but he'll be tucked in a wee hollow there.
04:05He'll just appear out in the next wee while, I would have thought.
04:09Actually, if you just look to the right of the group of hinds there, Dougie, and that rushes,
04:13you can just see the tips of his antler coming up from the right-hand side there.
04:18Yeah, there he is.
04:21He's a big boy, isn't he?
04:22Yeah, he's a good stag. A good young stag.
04:24The type you want to leave on the hill, that's for sure.
04:31This male has managed to gather a harem of 20 hinds
04:35and keep them from other marauding stags.
04:38Are, you know, the biggest stags, are they the most successful ones then?
04:44Yeah, usually, yeah. Usually the bigger stags will have larger groups of hinds and,
04:49but it's not always the case. Sometimes poorer quality stags will hold large numbers of hinds
04:54and that's when you need to manage them and take them out and hopefully a better stag will get them.
04:58It's no different to buying a good tup or a good bull. You want to leave the best ones on the hill
05:03to breed for you in years to come. It's just starting to gee up those hinds a wee bit,
05:08but he's well run, that stag, so when I say well run, he's been rutting for a long time,
05:13this boy, so he doesn't have as much gumption about him now as he would have three weeks ago,
05:17that's for sure. He's getting to the end of his rut.
05:23Oh, hang on a second. Are we talking too loud tonight? We've spooked them tonight?
05:29Yeah, the hinds have definitely cottoned on to something's going on here, yeah.
05:34These animals are perfectly adapted to this environment, blending into the autumn colours
05:40of the hill. But the milder weather this season has been changing their behaviour.
05:46It's been a very mixed rut for us. The hot weather coming in during the day, it has been colder nights,
05:51but the mild weather, it fairly kills the rut off during the day. It just confuses them a wee bit
05:56and what time of year it is. But once that cold weather comes in in the night time,
06:00in the morning, it does kick it off again. I said to you right at the start, you know,
06:05do you still get excited coming out and seeing them and stuff? And do you're seeing a majestic stag
06:10like that with 20 hinds or so? For me it's a glorious thing, but do you still get it?
06:17Yeah, absolutely, yeah. It still gives you an adrenaline rush every time you do it.
06:21I would do it every day of the year, to be honest, go out in the rut and manage stags. There's nothing
06:25better. And I don't think I've had one person that's come out during the rut and say to me,
06:29I didn't enjoy that. It's a spectacle in itself.
06:41Think of autumn, and you often think of colourful forests carpeted by fallen leaves. But this year,
06:48some trees are dropping much, much more.
06:50The forest is on our way to a forest now to find out how one species is providing for its future.
07:03There's no mistaking the time of year in this oak wood near Aberdeen. The trees may still be a bit
07:10green, but they'll soon shed the rest of their leaves in a blaze of colour, a final flourish before winter.
07:15It's also when most species spread their seed, and the oak is no different, as it's easy to see around here.
07:25Because this autumn is a bumper year for acorns, and it's a phenomenon known as a mast year,
07:31where the trees produce an unusually large amount of seeds.
07:36In a mast year, an oak can produce thousands more acorns than usual.
07:40And here at the National Trust for Scotland's Old Wood of Drum, they're delighted about it.
07:47So how often does a year like this happen?
07:49Well, it happens roughly every five to ten years, but there's no real pattern.
07:54The last mast year was 2023.
07:57Vonwyn Thomas is the woodland manager for the Trust.
08:02The huge abundance of acorns provides a really great food source for a variety of wildlife.
08:08Red squirrels, jays, wood mice, badgers. So the tree providing a huge number of them
08:14is really important to keep those species healthy and growing.
08:19And it also ensures that the trees are able to reproduce and keep the wood growing as well and
08:26continuing. That's because if there's a glut of acorns more than enough to satisfy the woodland
08:33creatures, there'll be plenty left over to take root. And it's worked here for centuries.
08:41So the Old Wood of Drum has a really long history. So it was first recorded as a royal hunting forest
08:47in 1247. And it's recently been recognised as a site of special scientific interest because of its
08:53ecological value. And it has well over 600 old oak trees. 600? Yeah. And I guess like every single
09:00one of those 600 trees are special to you, but which one's your favourite? Well, I do have a favourite
09:05and I can show you. Oh, yes, please. Wow. It's so big. Why is this one in particular favourite,
09:19apart from it being beautiful? It is beautiful.
09:22It's one of the ancient oaks that we have here, which means it's in its last stage of life. And as
09:34trees get older, they get more and more important for wildlife. So they have a really wide base.
09:38They often shrink in on themselves, like they're kind of collapsing down. They have lots of dead
09:43branches and rot holes. And all of these features combine to make a really great habitat for a whole
09:48variety of species. They can support up to 2,300 species. Yeah. And of that number, 300 depend
09:56entirely on oak. So they're really, really important thing to have in a woodland.
10:02Now, while some of these acorns may take root on their own, Bronwyn is going to give the oak a helping
10:07hand. Well, there's definitely no shortage of seed stock this year. What are you doing to grow them?
10:14So we've done a couple of different events with the local community and volunteers and children to
10:20gather the acorns from a range of trees across the site and then taking them to plant in our tree
10:25nursery. So we have the next generation of oaks coming through.
10:33Drumcastle's walled garden provides the perfect place for propagation.
10:37So we've got a couple of pots here, which have been filled three quarters full of compost. And we're
10:44going to plant them sideways, actually, because that means it doesn't matter which end is the root
10:48and which end is the shoot. So they can decide which which way they want to go. And then we're
10:52just going to add another layer of compost on the top just to fill up the pot. Is that OK?
10:58Maybe a little bit more. A little bit more. OK. How long, now that we've put it in,
11:03will it take for this acorn to produce acorns of its own? It'll take about 40 years. So it's a bit
11:09of a way to go. Yeah. This is definitely a future plan. Yeah.
11:21The saying goes from little acorns, mighty oaks grow. And for this year's bumper crop,
11:26it'll certainly boost the next generation of trees in this beautiful ancient woodland.
11:33Autumn is the prime time for gathering all sorts of seasonal foods. But I think it's safe to say
11:43we've never been on a foray quite like the one Arlene's about to go on. She's in Edinburgh,
11:49about to go underground.
11:50This is what's left of Barnton Bunker. During the Cold War, this was Scotland's command centre
12:08for monitoring the threat of nuclear war.
12:10There was a network of bunkers like Barnton built across the UK in the 1950s. And the structure
12:20burrows a hundred feet under Kerstorfen Hill in the west of Edinburgh. Of course, nuclear war never
12:27happened, but everything is still here. So, what do you do with a decommissioned Cold War bunker?
12:35Christopher Valentine Allen had an idea. Chris. Hiya. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Come on in.
12:48The bunker is privately owned. And while it's open for tours, it needs to be fully restored before
12:55becoming a museum. But it is home to some tenants. They're a community of small businesses that rent
13:02space, which helps fund the restoration. And you're one of those small businesses doing something,
13:08well, slightly odd. Yeah, let's go see. Okay.
13:20Oh my.
13:24They are phenomenal. I know they're mushrooms. What are they? So these are lion's mane mushrooms. We grow
13:30them because they're very popular with vegetarian and vegans, because they've got a very meaty-like
13:34texture, but a nice, delicate mushroom flavour. Christopher started growing mushrooms to keep
13:40busy during lockdown. And he now farms 120 kilos of them every week, selling to high-end restaurants.
13:48And the bunker is the perfect place to grow them. So this is the fruiting chamber. This is the last
13:54stage of the mushroom production. In this, we're controlling temperature. And the bunker is a great
13:58temperature year-round for growing mushrooms. Humidity. It's quite damp in here. So I don't
14:04really need to do much control of that. And CO2. Mushrooms put out CO2 like we do. So when the CO2 levels
14:10get too high, fan kicks in, bringing them in some nice fresh air. How did you come up with this idea?
14:16So I came across the bunker a year ago, and I've always been interested in growing food in derelict,
14:21abandoned spaces. And when I came across this, I was like, I've got to grow a mushroom farm here.
14:26This sounds perfect. And they're ready to be picked.
14:30They're actually quite sturdy. All we're going to do is we're just going to grab with both hands and pull it off.
14:37Oh, look at that. Do you want to have a go? Yes, I do. Right, I'm grabbing it.
14:43Both hands and pull. That feels so slight twist. Oh, I don't want to break it.
14:48Look at that. Shall I pop that in the basket? I feel like I'm in surgery. This is the strangest thing.
15:09Once picked, the mushrooms are trimmed. Then it's next door where Christopher is growing oyster
15:15and king oyster mushrooms. This is one week's growth. The primordia are just starting to come through
15:22and that will take another week to get to that size. It goes from that to this in a week. Yeah,
15:27they're very fast growing. These will go to some of Edinburgh's finest restaurant. But Chris was and
15:34still is a chef. So who better to cook them up? And I doubt there's a more unique place to try them
15:41than the roof of the Burnton bunker. I wonder if this is the appropriate time,
15:47Chris, to tell you that I'm not the biggest fan of mushrooms. I mean, I can convince anyone to like
15:53mushrooms. Well, I'm hoping you will. First out of the pan is the lion's mane.
15:59That is so good. Wow. You can taste the little throngs, can't you?
16:07Mm-hmm. It holds its juiciness. It doesn't have that kind of rubbery sliminess
16:13that regular mushrooms have. That's why I've never really liked mushrooms.
16:19Can Christopher do the double and turn me on to oyster mushrooms as well?
16:24I love that. I love them both. Thank you. Yeah.
16:28All right. I'm going to have some more. I didn't think I was going to like this.
16:35So Christopher is two for two and I'm surprised that I'm now officially a mushroom convert.
16:42Just as surprised as Christopher that he's growing food in a Cold War relic.
16:47Did you think in 2020 that this is where you'd end up?
16:52I couldn't imagine that I'd be here in this amazing venue, growing more than my own body weight
16:58in mushrooms a week and selling it to some of the best restaurants in the country. It's,
17:03yeah, genuinely a dream come true.
17:09Autumn is a time of movement and migration in nature. And in our rivers right now, salmon are
17:16returning to their spawning grounds. Shabazz is in Aberdeenshire now finding out how some fish
17:21have been given a clearer run.
17:31The Atlantic salmon's epic journey from river to sea and back again is one of nature's greatest migrations.
17:39By early autumn, adult salmon have swum thousands of miles across the North Atlantic to get back home
17:51to their ancestral rivers.
17:57They do this to lay their eggs and amazingly, many of them end up at the same stretch of river
18:02where they themselves hatched.
18:06But getting back to their home is becoming increasingly challenging for the salmon.
18:12Since the 1970s, numbers of returning fish are estimated to have dropped from 1 million to 400,000.
18:20And the species is now officially endangered.
18:25Pollution and rising water temperatures are part of the problem.
18:29But despite their ability to leap, obstacles in rivers and streams are also stopping them getting
18:35to their spawning grounds.
18:40This is a great stretch of river for spawning because of the variety of gravels and the sizes.
18:46Richie Miller knows the burn of King Edward, a tributary of the River Devrin, very well.
18:52And more importantly, they're clean and free from siltation, which can suffocate eggs and they can't survive.
19:00He's the director of the trust that looks after much of the catchment of the river in Banffshire
19:05and is taking part in Project Devrin.
19:10So Project Devrin is a 10-year partnership between ourselves, the Devrin-Bogan Islay Rivers Trust,
19:16and the Atlantic Salmon Trust. And we also have support from the Scottish Government via the Fish
19:21Counter Programme. And the main aims of the project is to monitor the status of the salmon populations
19:28in the river and restore them back to good health.
19:32And part of the project involves making the burn as easy as possible for the salmon to get through.
19:38As Richie said, the riverbed is a great place to lay eggs, but the root here left a bit to be desired.
19:47So there was an old weir here, been here for over 100 years, and it was restricting fish access,
19:54salmon, sea trout, for over 11 kilometres upstream. And through a project, we removed the barrier
20:02and now fish are free access upstream.
20:06So when this old weir was removed earlier in the year, did that make a difference to the salmon numbers?
20:10So in the immediate area here, we've seen the juvenile salmon move in to the habitat that's available
20:18here with the tree roots and the clean gravel. And we hope to see a big upturn in juvenile salmon next
20:25year, after the salmon come back from the sea this year and spawn around here and also upstream.
20:31And how important are projects like these to the wider ecosystem, not just the salmon who benefit?
20:38It's hugely beneficial to the ecosystem because through Project Everin we can find out
20:44the status of the stocks, the water quality and vertebrate numbers,
20:48and then take steps to restore this for the future.
20:56Project Everin and restoration work like it is vital for the future of the Atlantic salmon,
21:02if numbers are to bounce back.
21:03By reconnecting rivers and protecting their natural habitat, we're giving Scotland's King of Fish the
21:13best chance of survival for generations to come.
21:25With berries in the hedges and fruit in the trees, there's a wealth of flavours to be enjoyed in autumn.
21:34Wow.
21:35Rosie's in Aberdeenshire, discovering one delightful way to do it.
21:50Scotland's orchards are filled with a glut of fruit and apples feature on every seasonal menu, pies,
21:57cakes, pastries and, of course, the ultimate cosy comfort, the humble crumble.
22:05But German-born Christian Stolt likes his apples with a bit more sparkle.
22:11I'm joining him in Cluny Castle Gardens to see how he brings some fizz to this taste of autumn.
22:19We had a few apple trees in the back garden and I just started to make some cider.
22:23And the first cider wasn't very good, only my best friends liked it and it worked, of course,
22:30after a round of tennis, but it wasn't very good. And then I remembered how I quite liked
22:35the cider made in France, in Normandy, and then I started making cider that way.
22:41More on the method later, but Scottish apples, like these James Greaves, have proved to be just the trick.
22:47The apples are perfect for making cider here. It's colder here, so the acidity is higher,
22:55and in Scotland the days are longer during the growing season, so that means they get more daylight.
23:00For cider you always need a blend of different apples. You need acidity, like from the Bramley,
23:05you need sugars, like from the James Greaves we've seen, and need some tannins. So you need all three
23:10to make a nice cider. And each variety comes with its own legend.
23:15So what have we got? So Rosie, this is a bloody plowman. Beautiful colour.
23:19And it's originally from Maginch Castle, which is halfway from here to Perth. And the plowman
23:26stole some apples from the landlord, and he was rightfully shot dead. And his wife was furious,
23:32of course. Of course. And yeah, and she found some apples in his pocket, so she dumped his body on
23:37the compost heap. And the following here, there was an apple tree growing with red, red, dark red apples,
23:44and it was dripping with blood.
23:49What started as a hobby is now a business called Cider, the Gaelic for sea breeze.
23:59Christian collects fruit from 12 castle gardens around Scotland,
24:03and back at his base near Aberdeen, makes small batches of cider. The flavour of each,
24:08unique to the orchard it came from. The first step is the chop.
24:18The smell is so strong, it's beautiful.
24:20The pulp is then pressed.
24:35Oh, that is apple juice. So this juice now goes into fermenters and stays there for about a year,
24:42half a year to a year, before it goes into bottles for the secondary fermentation champagne method.
24:47And that's the French technique, the méthode champenoise. The second in the bottle fermentation,
24:55adding the fizz. Wow, look at this. This is a cider den, Christian. What an amazing place.
25:03These bottles are all under pressure, hence the safety glasses, should one be knocked off the shelf
25:09and explode. What happens in here? So this is the riddling room. After a year in tank,
25:15and then a year in bottle, one to two years in bottle, it goes into the riddling room, the yeast
25:19is shaken up, and then they're turned every day by about a third turn for a month or two,
25:23until all the yeast is in the neck that you can see here.
25:25Ah, okay. And then we will freeze this neck and remove the yeast.
25:30So can we maybe take this bottle? Yeah, we could do that.
25:32Five minutes in the freezer, and the yeast is hard enough to come out.
25:38You can see that the yeast that has been collected is now locked in an ice plug.
25:42Yeah. We're going to take that ice plug out.
25:44Now we're going to take the crown cap off.
25:45Oh my goodness. So now it's clear.
25:52My goodness. Okay, so what do we do now?
25:54So now the yeast is gone. We can reintroduce a little bit of sugar.
25:57That was amazing. Christian adds some sugar solution, the dosage, for the perfect taste.
26:06Tops up what was lost in the pop, then it's corked.
26:11And another uncorked, for a bit of well-earned sampling.
26:16Cheers, sludge.
26:22Oh, that's just so beautiful.
26:25French technique, German know-how, and of course, Scottish apples.
26:31The perfect combination.
26:39That brings us to the end of this programme.
26:41If you'd like to watch it again or catch up with some of our previous episodes,
26:45go to the BBC iPlayer and search for landlord.
26:49Now, here's what's coming up next time.
26:52We're taking a very special trip to the Queen of the Hebrides, the Isle of Islay.
26:58We'll be soaking in the stunning landscape of fertile farmland, high moors and amazing beaches.
27:05Oh, and there's a distillery in every direction.
27:09Watch next time as we meet the people who live and work on this unique island.
27:14Please join us for that and much, much more if you can.
27:18In the meantime, from all the landmark teams all around the country,
27:22and especially from me here in stunning Ben Alder Estate,
27:26thank you so much for your company.
27:28Bye for now.
27:29Have a great day.
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