Week of live broadcasts by Radio 3 Breakfast presented by Petroc Trelawny brings the sounds of a coast to coast Highland trip to listeners
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Join Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny for his Breakfast show on Monday and you could find yourself closer to home than you expected.
This coming week, Petroc and the team will broadcast each day’s two-and-a-half-hour show coast to coast from Cromarty to the Isle of Mull along the Great Glen, from Monday to Friday, June 6-10, 6.30-9am.
Now an annual event for Petroc, it has taken him and the show from UK forests, to following the River Severn and the rivers of Yorkshire. It’s the turn of the Highlands to feature this year.
The live broadcasts will take audiences from the North Sea, on to the Black Isle at Cromarty, a key location in BBC Radio 4’s Shipping Forecast, down the Great Glen, along Loch Ness and Thomas Telford’s Caledonian Canal, towards the Atlantic coast, finishing at the fishing village of Fionnphort on the Isle of Mull.
Live music will come from Scottish musicians. Writers, poets, naturalists and historians will help bring the journey to life. The sounds of nature – birds singing, wind in the trees, fast flowing water – will be heard every day as a series of live slow radio moments.
Music inspired by the Highlands will be heard, alongside live, open-air performance by some of the country’s most exciting musicians, including local fiddle hero Duncan Chisholm with piper and whistle player Ross Ainslie and guitarist Innes Watson.
Performances at earlier outdoor journeys have often been accompanied by a chorus of birds, water or wind.
Talking last week about the trip which has become a popular annual fixture with listeners of the classical music station, Petroc laughed: “I’m down in West Cornwall just now so I couldn’t really be further away from Inverness.
“This is our fourth trip and it started off with a week based around forests – Glen Affric was one of the places we visited for the first one.
“It really captured listeners’ imaginations, being in a place and being there live in the mornings as the day was beginning.”
The logistics are important too…
Petroc laughed: “We have to think of practicalities such as ‘Is there going to be a source of power?’ – we can’t be under lots of trees nor in the middle of a mountain range because we have to be able to see the sky to broadcast.
“And if it’s pouring with rain, we don’t want the musicians’ instruments to be getting wet. So there are quite a series of things to consider.
“It’s the BBC’s centenary year this year and funnily enough this kind of outside broadcast was done quite a lot in the early days of the BBC, sending someone off to set the scene at a place long before television existed.
“The early radio broadcasters would go and describe a wonderful view and you would hear a bit of the sound. And of course it was magic because it was a brand-new thing then. But there is still something magical about it, I think."
Petroc is a well-known voice in the world of classical music, having also presented TV broadcasts for the BBC, from the BBC Proms, as well as the Cardiff Singer Of The World and the Leeds International Piano Competition. He joined BBC Radio 3 in 1998 having worked for Classic FM, before moving on to London News Radio, then the BBC GMR Breakfast Show from Manchester with Victoria Derbyshire.
“I started off as a journalist and never intended to broadcast classical music but I just fell into it and realised this is just a wonderful job,” Petroc, who was brought up in the Meneage district of the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall, said.
Occasionally, it brings the odd unscheduled incident.
“Someone was reminding me, 10 years ago almost right now, we were putting on a charity event and I was narrating at the Zimbabwe Academy of Music in Bulawayo – an amazing music school. And because I worked for the BBC and relations between Zimbabwe and the BBC were not great at that point, they decided I couldn’t possibly be there introducing some classical music and that there must be more to it.
“So I spent a few days under lock and key and managed to dislocate my shoulder and ended up in hospital under guard. But it all ended amicably.
“That was a bit of an unexpected adventure for a classical music broadcaster!”
Radio 3’s Breakfast Coast To Coast: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017v4e
Full details:
Petroc's week of live broadcasts will take listeners on a coast to coast journey across the Highlands.
Monday June 6
From the foreshore at Cromarty, overlooking the Cromarty Firth and the “Sutors” – the large headlands which frame the firth’s estuary into the North Sea – Petroc hears of the Highland Clearances which took place in the area, the challenges of re-building communities, and emigration to Canada. He talks to Barbara Cheney of the University of Aberdeen’s Lighthouse Field Station about the rich marine life of the firth; and there’s traditional folk music played by Highland-based, internationally-acclaimed Celtic harpist Isbel Pendlebury on the clarsach–- the country’s oldest national instrument.
Tuesday June 7
From the north-east shore of Loch Ness at Dores, Petroc explores the geology which created the Great Glen and Loch Ness itself. He discusses the myths surrounding the famous monster with Nessie-hunter Steve Feltham, who has been hunting the beast full time since 1991. Live music is provided by Duncan Chisholm, one of Scotland's most recognised and accomplished fiddle players and composers; piper and whistle player Ross Ainslie, three times nominated for Musician of the Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards; and Glasgow multi-instrumentalist Innes Watson.
Wednesday June 8
From the Caledonian Canal staircase at Fort Augustus, at the south-west end of Loch Ness, the engineering work of Thomas Telford comes centre stage as Petroc hears about how canals brought prosperity and tourism to the area, and about how Queen Victoria traversed the lock’s staircase in a Venetian gondola.
Thursday June 9
From the harbour side at Oban, the gateway to the Isles, Petroc joins Mendelssohn and JMW Turner on their visits to this historic town, nestled on one side of a picturesque horseshoe-shaped bay, highlighting its rich cultural traditions of music-making, with performances from the Oban Gaelic choir, one of the oldest competition choirs in the Gaelic-speaking world.
Friday June 10
At the further point west on the Isle of Mull, on the beach in the village of Fionnphort, overlooking the Isle of Iona, Petroc discovers the rich culture of this Inner Hebridean island; the work of Irish abbot and evangelist St Columba and later the Iona Community providing spiritual sanctuary and sustenance on the isle of Iona; and the unique qualities of Hebridean island life. Live music is provided by local musicians fiddle player singer and composer Hannah Fisher and guitarist Sorren Maclean, who have built busy careers as solo artists and collaborators.
Producers: Richard Denison and Susan Kenyon
