Britain is crisscrossed by an amazing network of
ancient trackways.
These remarkable routes are our oldest roads and have been travelled
for more than 5,000 years.
He's quite small, isn't he?
He is small but he's mighty. Small but mighty,
I like that.
Walked by pilgrims and traders, hunters and invaders,
Celts and Romans, Saxons and Vikings,
each track is bound up in myth, mystery and legend.
Of all the archaeological finds I've come across, when I heard about it,
my jaw actually dropped.
I'm on a quest to connect the clues and rediscover the stories hidden
among Britain's ancient pathways.
I want to find out what it is that tempts today's travellers to go
back in time
and rediscover these mystic tracks.
Do you reckon that's the North Star? It's not the brightest star
in the sky, but it's probably one of the most useful.
It's a bit like me!
Smell the leather - you can still smell it.
1900-year-old leather. Isn't that absolutely amazing?
This week I'm tracing the Roman road of Dere Street
north from the English county of Northumberland
to the neighbouring Scottish Borders.
From Hadrian's Wall to the Antonine Wall,
I want to know what this journey from Britannia to Caledonia
can tell me about the history and legends of ancient Britain
through the stories... SQUEAKING
..sounds and sights along its path.
These are the paths our ancestors once followed, the ancient tracks
that we in Britain can still walk today.
THUNDERCLAP
I'm in the very north of England,
where a brooding sky meets a strikingly bleak
and beautiful landscape.
Stunning wild scenery stretches seemingly unbroken
for miles and miles.
But this is a borderland that was so strategic,
the mighty Roman Empire was compelled to build
this great road,
one of their major arteries, running north from York
and crossing into Scotland.
Their auspicious plans forged a fascinating path,
and nearly 2,000 years later, people can still follow its ancient course.
The Anglo-Saxons called this track Dere Street.
Nobody really knows why, although Deira is the ancient
word for Yorkshire,
so maybe it just means the Yorkshire Road, but whatever its origins,
this is no ordinary path.
This marks the site of the great road north built by
the Roman army between AD 79 and 81.
CHANTING
The Romans were superb engineers, constructing thousands of miles
of roads in Britain.
They connected forts and settlements across this rugged landscape
and created a border that divided Britain and ultimately defined
the two nations of England and Scotland.
I'm going to travel north, following Dere Street
through Hadrian's Wall before crossing the border into Scotland,
continuing across the Lowlands and finishing my journey
west of Edinburgh
at another Roman frontier, the Antonine Wall.
Along the way, I'll contemplate the infinite night sky...
..hear the call of the distant past...
..experiment with poisonous potions...
..and confront fearsome Roman invaders.
My Dere Street adventure begins in Northumberland as I approach
Britain's greatest Roman monument,
Hadrian's Wall.
This iconic boundary was built by the Roman army on the orders
of the Emperor Hadrian following his visit to Britain
in AD 122.
The Roman Empire stretched all the way from present day Iraq over
in the east, down to the sands of the Sahara in the south,
but its north-eastern border was right here at Hadrian's Wall.
70 miles long, stretching all the way across northern Britain,
this massive wall was a monumental mark to the power
of the Roman invader.
On this side was the safe, stable Roman province of Britannia.
Over here were the barbarous Caledonians.
Right here where I'm standing was, as far
as Rome was concerned,
the very end of civilisation.
Britannia wasn't only protected by the wall
but by maze-like forts like this,
the incredible Vindolanda.
This hugely significant archaeological site was built,
abandoned and rebuilt over the centuries.
And today archaeologists continue to unearth its many hidden gems.
Most days you seem to find something amazing.
Have you got anything today? We do.
We have a lovely Roman shoe from the site.
They're incredible because each one's a little window into the life
that took place here, but the most important thing first of all is
smell the leather - you can still smell it.
I really can quite clearly smell that that's leather.
How old is that again?
Well, this shoe is about 1,950-60
years old. Smell that.
Get your schnoz round that, viewers.
That leather is nearly 2,000 years old.
That is quite extraordinary.
It is and it's very well preserved, so we can pop it out the bag.
It may actually have walked up Dere Street. Quite possibly.
I mean, these guys get to Vindolanda, half of them at least,
by coming up Dere Street. This is their main route coming up and down
and some of the guys here actually serve as guards to
the governor of Britain, so that's their way to work.
Each one of these shoes gives us incredible detail about
the populations here, because we have as many, if not more,
women and children's shoes from the forts than we have men's,
showing us it's not just a male preserve,
their whole communities are here. In my pocket here I've got
a little bit of bronze that's popped out a little bit earlier.
Piece of Roman armour. Why is it so brilliantly clear?
Well, that's been found in the same condition as the shoe.
This is from anaerobic, oxygen-free levels,
so you get no rust, no decomposition.
That's in the same state
it was dropped almost 2,000 years ago.
I could just stay here looking at your finds all day but I'm going to
have to get back on my way again.
Good luck with your hike. Cheers. Take care, Tony, nice to see you.
To feel, touch and smell the leather soles of the same shoes that walked
along Dere Street
is pretty amazing.
This is a tangible connection with the Roman communities who made
the arduous expedition and settled here at the furthest outpost
of the empire.
And it's a contemporary literary connection that links Hadrian's Wall
with the epic Game Of Thrones.
During a visit here in 1981, its writer, George RR Martin,
was inspired to conjure his own colossal wall.
"I stood up there and tried to imagine what it was like to be
"a Roman legionary," Martin wrote.
"Standing on this wall, looking at these distant hills,
"it was the sense of this barrier against dark forces.
"It planted something in me."
But perhaps the word "barrier" is misleading.
As I continue along the wall, a succession of adjoining Roman
constructions makes you rethink your perceptions
of this infamous boundary.
So what is this building?
This is a milecastle. This is Cawfields milecastle and there
would've been one of these
every Roman mile along the whole length of Hadrian's Wall.
And these are basically fortified gateways.
Can we tell much about how it was built?
There were three legions involved in building Hadrian's Wall,
the second, the sixth and the twentieth legions,
and they seem to have been divided up into work parties. But the wall
itself is pretty elegant, isn't it?
Well, this particular milecastle's beautifully made.
There's some very nicely dressed stones.
What I don't get is that the wall goes east-west... Yes.
..but there were still roads going north-south, weren't there,
beyond the wall. It wasn't like the Berlin Wall, where you had no
activity between the two sides.
Hadrian's Wall was never intended to stop north-south movement.
These milecastles were intended for people to be able
to get through, cos Hadrian's Wall is built right the way
through the territory of people who were living here
quite happily before
and there was always going to be movement backwards and forwards.
So Hadrian's Wall actually welcomes the passage of people,
goods and livestock.
My ideas about this frontier are certainly being challenged
and, as I return to Dere Street, my walk continues to retrace
the footsteps of those ancient travellers
who used to trek along this untamed terrain.
So how did you know how far you'd gone along Dere Street?
Well, every thousandth double-step -
I suppose that's a double-step -
they used to put up a cylindrical marking stone and,
as the Latin for 1,000 is M-I-L-L-E,
this is a Roman mille-stone.
But not only did it have on it the distance covered, it also had
the name of the emperor who was around when it was carved,
although frankly this one's been so eroded
I don't think we'll ever know who commissioned this.
It's only just been found and it's been re-erected.
It's rather nice, though, isn't it?
And at least it means I know that I'm on the right road.
With my ancient satnav set to north,
I head into the Otterburn Ranges,
a place where natural beauty meets the battlefield
and where the tranquillity of this stunning landscape is frequently
broken by the sound of gunfire and low-flying aircraft...
..for this is one of the UK's largest military firing ranges.
The land's tightly controlled by the Ministry of Defence,
so I've been given special permission to enter.
But battle cries and the sound of war
have been piercing this silence for centuries.
Long after the Romans had left, this was still the major
north-south political route.
This was the road up which the English came when they wanted
to put down the Scots. For instance, in the year 1298
the English king, Edward I, known as Edward Longshanks,
marched up here with his army when he wanted to put down
the rebellion led by the legendary William Wallace.
Sir William Wallace was Scotland's Braveheart,
a patriot warrior
who embodied the very essence of Scottish independence and rallied
the troops behind his banner.
In July 1298, the Scottish and English armies met at a decisive
battle near Falkirk, where the Scots were defeated.
The sun had finally set on William Wallace's fight
for Scottish freedom
and, under the very same sky that I am walking now, an epic moment
in Scotland's misty past drifted into history and folklore.
If archaeologists want to reconnect with the ancient past, they just dig
a hole, right? But here on Dere Street at night,
I can do the exact opposite.
I just tilt my head back and I can make the most authentic link
possible with my long-lost ancestors by looking up the night sky.
This window on the past is one of Britain's most spectacular
and protected stargazing sites.
I know the stars aren't static, but would the constellations
the Romans saw be pretty much what we can see up there now?
Very much so. Many of the constellations we see were named
by the Romans, and many of the planets.
Like Mars, the god of war, Venus, the god of beauty.
What was the significance of the stars to the Romans?
I think many people, when they looked up at the night sky,
they were trying to work out what was going on but they're also
trying to use them to predict the future,
so astrology was big in Roman times as well. Mm.
And then also navigation. They had a huge empire, and to navigate
from one place to the other, I'm pretty convinced they must have used
the stars. It's funny, isn't it,
I'm trying to make an imaginative leap of 2,000 years,
but that's peanuts compared with what's up there.
Well, if you take into account that our galaxy, the Milky Way,
contains 300 billion stars and it's about 13.6 billion years,
I think, yeah, sort of 2,000 years is a bit of a drop in the ocean.
There is an immense joy
in just looking up and, with all our street lights
and everything else, we sort of lose track of that, and just sort
of the movement of the stars, the changing of the seasons,
it keeps us grounded somehow... Yeah. ..so by looking up, we get
a better understanding of our place.
Do you reckon that one might be the North Star?
It's hard to say cos we haven't got that many stars out there,
but it's pretty far north. I think you're right.
I think that is the North Star. Yay!
It's not the brightest star in the sky but it's probably one of
the most useful. It's a bit like me!
The universe has no boundaries.
But back on Dere Street, the end of England and the call of Scotland
lead me to ask, seriously,
what is a border anyway?
With Britannia behind me,
I can almost hear Caledonia's call.
ETHEREAL WIND INSTRUMENT BLASTS BRASSILY
I'm continuing my journey north along the ancient Roman track
of Dere Street towards Scotland.
Many people who make this Anglo-Scottish commute
are familiar with the crossing at Carter Bar.
But I'm venturing a few miles east,
keeping on my Dere Street path...
..to unite with a fellow walker,
and someone who might help me work out why our border is a border.
It's a pretty good walking day, now, isn't it? It's lovely.
Fresh, fresh and breezy.
And clear.
And not raining.
Is that a Roman camp over there? That lozenge shaped thing?
yes, I think it's probably three overlapping Roman camps,
and according to the map,
there's also a Roman fortlet.
That skyline is more or less the border
between Scotland and England, following the watershed.
Do you know, even if you hadn't told me that was the border,
I think I would have sensed that in some way it's border country.
Yeah, it's kind of wild and untouched, isn't it?
And that's why they presumably decided they'd draw a line,
and say there's this side, and there's that side,
and there's this... this no-man's-land in the middle.
When you say wild, did there used to be a lot of smuggling,
Border reivers, that kind of thing? Yeah, yeah.
The fact it was unpopulated made it quite easy for the raiders
from either side to drive away
their neighbour's sheep and cattle and horses.
They'd come over at night,
and round them up,
and when they got hungry,
the women folk would serve a dish of spurs on the table,
and say there's no food.
Here's your spurs, get riding. We need more mutton on the table.
Shall we get our spurs on, and get to the border?
Let's do that, yes.
And as I approach the border,
I can really sense a unique identity here,
personified in history, of course,
by the wild spirit of the Border reivers.
These fearless clans emerged in the Middle Ages
to rebel against both the English and Scottish crowns.
Somehow the border didn't divide the people living along it,
but united them.
Is this it?
It is, indeed.
There's the promised land, that way.
It's a bit of an anti-climax, isn't it?
Well, that's what you say. It's a land of milk and honey.
Well, it may be, but you don't know it's a land of milk and honey!
Doesn't say Scotland there and England on this side of the gate,
there's nothing.
It's better marked here than some places along the border.
Some of the wilder spots,
there's the odd rotting fence post sticking out of a bog,
and that's all you've got.
How long has this been the border?
This bit, probably since the Middle Ages.
But there's other stretches
where it wasn't decided till the 18th century,
when the lawyers for the landowners on either side got together
to decide what was the borders of their estates.
This may seem slightly heretical,
but given that we're not fighting each other any more,
at least not for the moment,
is there much point in a border?
Well, generally speaking,
they are fairly arbitrary lines on a map,
and the way that they're used in the world today
it's as if they supply some kind of moral authority,
as if you on that side are the undeserving,
we on this side are the deserving,
and you talk to people,
they don't identify themselves as Scots or English,
they might either describe themselves as Borderers or reivers.
I suppose I'd better get on and head into the heart of Scotland.
Yeah! Good luck on your journey.
See ya. Cheers.
So borders define a sort of no-man's-land,
or perhaps more of an every man's land,
where people can live peacefully side by side
with barely a thought for a dividing line.
Pushing north now,
and still following the ancient Roman Road...
..I've arrived nine miles southeast of the town of Jedburgh,
to find an ancient Celtic earthwork.
This mighty hill fort looks down on the Roman road
where thousands of Roman soldiers would have marched by,
a stone's throw from its ramparts.
Surely, then,
this is where centurions and Caledonians would clash.
A battle ground, strewn with fallen warriors.
On top of that hill is a massive Iron Age hill fort,
called Woden Law,
which would have been built by the local people
who lived around here.
The path along which I'm walking,
which you can't really see because it's covered by grass,
is Dere Street, which was constructed by the Roman army.
So what's the connection between the two?
When we made Black Adder Back And Forth in the year 2000,
we were all the Romans on Hadrian's Wall,
and charging towards us came about 1,000 red-headed men
with beards and kilts.
That, to me, is how we English see the Caledonians.
Is there any remote truth in it?
Oh, no. No, no, no.
There's a whole series of myths bundled up into that.
One of the problems comes from the very name itself.
Caledonians is a name we know from the Roman sources
but it does seem to be an Iron Age name.
It's originally a Celtic word,
it means the hard men, or the shriekers.
Hard men, shrieker. My point is made!
Partly true, but in the 19th century the word gets used to mean
everything north of Hadrian's Wall.
So who would the people have been
who would have been living between present day Edinburgh
and Hadrian's Wall?
The only sources we have are Roman ones,
and how much do you trust the Romans?
Cos of course they're writing propaganda, not writing history.
But if you trust them, you'd say the people around here were
a group called the Selgovae.
What would the Selgovae have been like?
What we know really comes from the archaeology,
and the archaeology gives us quite a good picture of the Iron Age
in this area.
Changing through time, so middle of the first millennium BC,
they're probably living in hill forts like that.
By the time of the Roman period,
they're living in smaller farmsteads, small communities,
with a central place where the trade comes together.
Would they have had a relationship with the Romans?
They must have done, surely? There must have been something.
You don't put that many thousand soldiers
back and forth through a country without some kind of relationship
and one of the relationships will have been
soldiers buying or extracting supplies from the locals.
So Rome is a threat, but it's also an opportunity.
Yeah, they've got nice stuff, haven't they? You have a market.
You can trade for things,
you can take some of these wonderful Roman raw materials
melt them down, turn them into their own stuff.
And they develop a lifestyle that mixes the Roman and the local
in this frontier zone, this edge of empire.
And you've found evidence of that?
Yeah, we find it especially in Roman artefacts coming off Iron Age sites.
There's a lovely example from a wee farmstead just over there,
and there, they're making local prestige goods,
really flashy bronze horse gear.
They're also making Roman brooches.
These very marketable objects discovered near Dere Street
reveal that the indigenous people of the Scottish Borders
were in fact using the Roman road to trade goods.
And while doing so,
they absorbed the exotic styles of the Roman Empire,
and created their own unique frontier culture.
After the Romans left,
Dere Street still remained in use for a long time didn't it? Mm, yeah.
In the Medieval period, if you wanted to have a rammy,
head down Dere Street.
First stop Corbridge, burn it to the ground.
The Roman roads were the best roads in this country
until the 18th century.
Many of the would-be kings around this area
are taking on Latin names,
they're using the Latin language.
And the church! The church is a good example.
Early Christianity draws heavily on Roman models,
so long after Rome is a threat, it's still an idea in the mind.
STRANGE FLUTING BLASTS
And in fact, the landscape the Romans marched through
would still have resounded to the sound of
this iconic Celtic instrument called the carnyx.
The fear of an indigenous culture
swept away by the might of the Roman empire
seems to be encapsulated in its haunting calls.
IT HOWLS LIKE A BRASS DIDGERIDOO
This magnificent instrument has been rediscovered, re-crafted,
and brought back to life.
LOW DRONE BECOMES THIN RISING TONE
The ancient cry of a far off people,
and the end of an epoch,
as the Romans marched in.
This really is an epic place.
And as its extraordinary primeval wail sends me off
along my Dere Street path...
..I'm off to witness the restoration of Scotland's ancient landscape,
absorb Sir Walter Scott's spectacular views,
and ascend the tantalisingly-named Fatlips Castle.
The Romans marched on northwards.
With the Caledonians wisely learning to coexist,
the way was paved for a rather less fearsome and rather more efficient
invasion of the Scottish Lowlands.
And just a few miles north of the English border is Witton Edge,
a spectacular feat of engineering that cuts dramatically
through the landscape,
providing travellers like me with a walker's paradise.
This was the major road between the first and the fourth centuries
and it's easy to imagine, isn't it, the legions leaving York
and marching onward and onwards and onwards, until eventually
they disappeared into the misty realms of Caledonia?
As you can probably see, I'm rather enjoying myself.
So many Roman roads
have been covered over with tarmac over the years,
so to be on this flat, straight, very, very ancient road
is, frankly, a bit of a buzz.
Everywhere the Roman legions conquered,
they utilised the natural resources to meticulous effect.
They quarried local stone to build their roads and walls,
hunted the landscape to feed their armies and cut down trees
to construct their forts.
It's incredible to think that thousands of years
before the Romans,
this landscape was blanketed in forests of birch, hazel and pine.
By the time the Romans arrived,
at least half of the natural woodland had been stripped away.
Today only 4% of Scotland is covered with native trees.
In order to redress this destruction,
today's dedicated ecologists
are embarking on the mammoth task of restoring
Scotland's ancient landscape.
I'm swinging west of Dere Street to this 19th-century sheep pen,
or stell,
to meet one man with a commitment to reclaim the past.
It's not a bad old view, is it?
Not bad. Considerably different than it looked less than 20 years ago.
All of this up until Millennium Day, 2000,
was all bare, open sheep walk.
Not a tree to be seen. A few tiny little clumps left,
only in places where sheep
and domestic stock could not gain access.
How did all this start, then?
This started with a group of us.
We have planted circa 600,000 native trees and shrubs.
How did you know what to plant?
We were able to analyse the pollen record stored
up in a high peat bog,
and this record goes back about 9,000 years. From that,
we can then extrapolate what we think
the most common species were and roughly what kind of soils
they were on. Could the stuff that you've introduced adversely affect
the ecology that was already existent?
Since we have started managing this,
everything has got markedly better.
There is more of everything.
You've got vast areas of heathland recovery,
heather, blueberry. On the tops, you've got alpine and notable flora.
They have all now came downslope
and are colonising previously bare ground.
Was this a lot of softie lefty ecologists?
Sort of, yes.
Really, a bunch of tree-huggers who wanted some trees to hug.
What kind of animals and insects do you see around here now that
you'd have struggled to find 20 years ago?
Huge explosion in birdlife,
largely due to our planting trees
and the insects that then use the trees. All the plant life now
is now flowering regularly.
Under grazing, a lot of plants never get a chance to flower.
You're not some southern hippie who's come here telling Scots people
what to do, though, are you?
Quite definitely not. I come from generations of Borders shepherds
and I'm, in fact, the first in my family not to become
either a shepherd or cattleman
here in the Southern Uplands of Scotland.
So, essentially what you're doing is the exact opposite of everything
that your family has devoted their lives to? Yes.
How did they feel about that?
My father actually passed away. A lifelong shepherd.
I'd won him round to the idea
and his sort of exact quote was, "Look, son, plant your bloody oaks.
"The sheep are done."
Really?
And plant oak trees he has, producing this panorama of
indigenous plants and trees.
And I'm delighted, too, to help revive this ancient landscape.
What is it they say about small acorns?
So this little fella is going to become part
of the woodland community.
Yeah. So...
Whack it with my heel.
Yes, heel it in a little. Yeah.
See how naturally I planted that?
Yeah, it's not bad.
I'm going to go now. I've been slightly midge-bitten
and I'm a bit wet but it's been worth it, hasn't it?
Yes, it has been.
Thanks for looking after me. See you.
Today this land is, of course, at peace.
But some of the most iconic buildings in the Borders were built
as great fortifications to maintain control of the Scottish Lowlands.
One such edifice is this much-loved local landmark.
It had fallen into a sorry state of disrepair
but, much like the replanting of the Lowland forests,
restoration work has sympathetically revived
this rather seductive-sounding structure.
This place is actually called Fatlips Castle
and nobody quite knows why, but I've been given
three different explanations.
See which one you think is the most plausible.
Number one is that there used to be wild goats around here that had
fat lips, and one particular goat saw the English coming and bleated
so loud that it warned everyone in the castle.
The second one is that the family who owned it
had hereditary floppy lips,
and the third is that one particular owner
used to like snogging the women as they entered the castle.
Which one?
Frankly, I think they're all rubbish.
Castles like this were built throughout the Scottish Borders
and used as lookout points and places of refuge.
They gave warning during centuries of turbulent clan feuds
and English invasions.
Well, we might not know how it got its name but it's pretty obvious
why it was built here.
This is border country
and you needed something strong and defended,
something that would make sure that no-one could ride over the hill,
come up here and give you a fat lip.
I could stay up here and enjoy this spectacular view all day.
But more architectural gems lie further along
Dere Street's ancient track.
I'm continuing north to the river crossing near Melrose and a site
with centuries of engineering excellence converge.
In this field full of crops, which look to me remarkably
like turnips, there once stood a mighty Roman fortress called
Trimontium, which was built in order to protect the crossing
of the River Tweed, which flows all the way down there. You can see
that bridge which the Victorians built in order to let
19th-century travellers cross it.
It does have something of the Roman about it, doesn't it?
It's well engineered, it's confident, it's massive but, sadly,
like the Roman army, it's now history.
This magnificent 19-arch Leaderfoot Viaduct once conveyed
railway passengers across the River Tweed.
Now the railway is no more,
so I've got this extraordinary brick colossus
all to myself.
Today, as I stand on this bridge and listen to the burbles
of the River Tweed,
I can bask in the delights of the serene Scottish Borders.
And in doing so,
I'm walking in the footsteps of a true Scottish legend,
a man who spent a lifetime embracing the wonders of this region and
whose classic historical novels
include Ivanhoe, The Lady Of The Lake
and the Robin Hood of Scotland, Rob Roy.
It is, of course, Sir Walter Scott.
This place is called Scott's View
and the story goes that
Sir Walter loved this panorama so much
that whenever he was passing, he would stop here,
until eventually his horses would pull up
without being given any instruction to do so.
And even when he died in 1832 and his funeral cortege
was going past on their way to Dryburgh Abbey,
which was his last resting place,
the horses just stopped.
Walter Scott enjoyed travelling through the borderlands, collecting
stories, poems and songs passed down by word of mouth
from generation to generation.
And it was in his mythical landscape that he built his home, the truly
breathtaking Abbotsford House.
This remarkable residence encompassed everything Scott adored
about his homeland.
And this love of Scotland was immortalised in verse,
as he wrote very enthusiastically,
"O Caledonia! stern and wild,
"Meet nurse for a poetic child!
"Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
"Land of the mountain and the flood,
"Land of my sires! what mortal hand
"Can e'er untie the filial band,
"That knits me to thy rugged strand!"
From the modern point of view,
this house is a bit barmy, isn't it? It is a bit.
Scott himself called it his Conundrum Castle.
It's very much an antiquarian's house and, in one sense,
Scott takes that very seriously,
cos he's passionately interested in history,
but there is a part of him
where he's poking fun at himself.
He knows this is a bit overdone.
He was so successful, wasn't he?
He was the JK Rowling of his day in terms of sales.
Throughout the 19th century, down to about the 1880s,
Scott outsells everyone else.
What do you think it was that people liked so much about his work
at that time?
He is one of the people that brings back ghost stories,
the Gothic. At a time when Scotland is beginning to be seen as a place
that's primitive and attractive, Scott is writing about these wild
and wonderful and mysterious places,
and he's also a great teller of ripping yarns.
Is it fair to say that he was one of those late 19th-century people
who reinvented a notion of Scottishness,
if not for the Scots, certainly for the rest of us?
Part of Scott's genius, and even though today he's sometimes
blamed for creating a version of Scotland,
Scottland with two Ts, Scott, following Robert Burns,
is the man who broadcast to the wider world
the notion of what Scotland is, which still substantially
we have today.
This custodian of Scottish history and cultivator
of Caledonian culture
will be forever revered among his compatriots.
And as I travel further into Scotland's lure,
I'll be finishing my journey at the water's edge...
..if I don't fall foul of an ancient potion first.
In medieval times,
this section of the ancient Roman Dere Street
between Edinburgh and the abbey town of Jedburgh
gained the Latin name Via Regia,
or Royal Way.
It was in fact by then a very important route of pilgrimage.
And here at its midway point,
Scotland's King Malcolm IV founded a resting place
for weary travellers called Soutra Aisle.
Dere Street and Via Regia transported not only pilgrims,
great armies and livestock into this area,
but also herbs and spices,
from the far-flung corners of the globe.
It may seem like a desolate place today,
but Soutra Aisle was once a centre of medical excellence.
The largest hospital in medieval Scotland
once stood here, just by the side of Dere Street.
It was run by the Augustinian monks,
and it was surrounded by vast church lands
which funded its medical activities.
It's just a tiny little byway now,
but in those days it would have been full of travellers and pilgrims.
Imagine the sounds and the smells and the noise.
MOOING
Bit like today, I guess.
Augustine monks were actually the leading practitioners
of herbal medicine.
They were completely self-sufficient,
growing their own herbs for both the dining table and the infirmary.
Incredibly, more than 200 different plant species,
some used in medical application, have been found at the Soutra site.
This is wild hemlock,
a poisonous little beauty,
that's still survived from those ancient times.
I'll leave the sampling of that to someone else.
And today, just north of Soutra,
at Edinburgh's Royal Botanical Gardens,
playing with potions comes with the territory.
Modern-day botanists have recreated the hospital's ancient herb garden,
cultivating this quite dazzling display of herbs, poppies,
and, of course, hemlock.
I'm about to take part in a cookery class
from the distant past,
and, rather riskily, I've offered myself up as a guinea pig
for a medieval potion made from delicate red poppies.
The poppies are our homage to an ancient medieval formulation
that was known as dwale,
and it included opium poppies,
which these definitely aren't.
These are our common red field poppies.
But the dwale itself had opium poppy,
hemlock, henbane, mandrake root...
..so all the really quite potent herbs.
It would knock you out for hours, about 12 hours,
and it was used as an anaesthetic.
An anaesthetic?!
I find that really interesting, actually,
because for years I've been making documentaries
about various aspects of medieval medicine,
and the assumption always is that everybody who underwent
any kind of operation would be screaming with agony.
No, they weren't.
They were out for the count,
and for hours on end.
And if this noxious little nostrum didn't kill them,
they would regain consciousness,
and they would make a full recovery,
just minus one or two limbs, perhaps.
You do realise you've just debunked 12 years of my work, don't you?
Sorry about that, Tony.
But we're not going to make some kind of killer anaesthetic.
We can make a very simple, very safe red field poppy syrup.
So it's just a small amount of the field poppies
going into warm water.
God, that's changed colour just immediately.
It's completely changed.
Yeah, this is our indication that some of the compounds are...
..are coming out of the poppy.
How's this doing? That's done.
We can strain out the petals of the poppy. Mm-hm.
It's a lovely colour.
It's exquisite, isn't it? Yeah. Really nice.
We're going to add sugar.
When this dissolves,
we'll have our... red field poppy syrup.
There we are.
Wow.
That's very nice. I could put myself to sleep with this.
Yeah, absolutely. You can imagine taking that
just before you snuggle down into bed at night.
That would just bring you a very restful sleep.
Thank you very much. Very welcome.
YAWNING: Right, I'm going to go to bed now.
LAUGHTER
There's no rest for the wicked allowed, anyhow.
I need to keep a clear head if I'm to reach the end of my walk.
I can feel in my bones that we're nearing the end of Dere Street.
It must have terminated somewhere around here,
because we've got to the sea!
That's the Firth of Forth.
We think it probably ended just up there, at Cramond,
which was a key strategic Roman fort,
although the only evidence that the Romans left there
is some shadowy earthworks next to a church.
Actually, that's not quite the only evidence.
HE GROANS
It's a bit of a struggle to get up here.
Can you see that sign that Historic Scotland have put up?
"The worn carving above has been supposed to be an eagle
"carved by the Roman garrison of Cramond.
"Whether it is an eagle,
"or whether it is even Roman is uncertain."
That is Roman, isn't it?
That is definitely Roman.
Couldn't be anything else.
Well, I'm convinced.
You certainly need to be eagle-eyed to be absolutely sure.
LATIN MARCHING CHANT
But one thing is certain.
Cramond served as an important strategic harbour
for the Roman garrisons,
who were stationed along yet another imposing wall.
The mighty Roman Empire was defined by its ever expanding borders.
And in 140 AD,
just over 20 years after the construction of Hadrian's Wall,
his successor, Antoninus Pius, made another push 100 miles north...
..building a turf and timber frontier
between the Firths of Clyde in the west
and Forth to the east.
But the Antonine Wall turned out to be
the Roman army's final assault into Caledonia.
And in the end,
nothing more than a last gasp for the mighty Roman Empire.
Presumably, the Antonine Wall was built to protect
the province of Britannia from the Caledonian hordes.
But within 20 years, this great bulwark,
this wonderful engineering project
that was pushing the Roman Empire forward,
and attempting to stabilise its northern border had failed,
and the Antonine Wall was abandoned.
Then the Roman army went in to retreat
back down Dere Street,
until finally they got to the safety and security of Hadrian's Wall
once again.
I've been on a wonderfully epic journey
along Dere Street's ancient Roman road.
The connection with land and history is tangible,
from gazing at the boundless night sky,
to contemplating centuries of bloodshed,
and a haunting call from the mists of time.
Like all great journeys,
this has been an experience, and an education.
A chance to reflect on Dere Street,
and the Britain it dissects.
I've always known that somewhere round about the Scottish border
there were two massive walls,
which stretched from coast to coast and were built by the Romans,
but it's only now I'm beginning to appreciate that
that's only half the story,
because at right angles to those walls are roads,
roads which people have constantly rebuilt and maintained.
And unlike the walls,
they're not about stopping people,
preventing them from having access.
The roads are about movement,
they're about cultural exchange.
It's roads that unite us,
roads that give us knowledge and trade.
Ultimately, it's roads that civilise us.
Subtitles by Ericsson