Chronicles of the Glens episode 3 - Spring
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00:00The Glens. Nine glacial valleys moulded in the Ice Age, cutting their way through the Antrim
00:11Mountains towards the Irish Sea. Situated in the northeast of Northern Ireland, they were
00:20once part of the ancient kingdom of Dalriada that included parts of Scotland often visible
00:27just across the water. The kingdom is no more, but many of its myths and traditions survive.
00:38Told across four seasons, this is the story of moors and farmland, forests and rivers,
00:46of a proud people fighting to preserve their way of life.
00:57Spring begins hesitantly, but soon winter's shackles will be thrown off as the Glens
01:19embrace longer days and the strengthening sun.
01:26From the high hills to the jagged coastlines, there are furtive signs of new life everywhere.
01:32It's been a long dark winter, but a new year has begun.
01:47The southernmost Glen is Glenorne. Since the 16th century, this castle has been the seat
02:02of the Earls of Antrim, the MacDonalds. It's late February, and there are signs that spring
02:08is just around the corner. But inside the castle, winter has left its mark.
02:21Can I go to the roof?
02:23Do you want to come and see this? Do you want to come and see this?
02:27Do you want to come and see this?
02:30In charge of day-to-day maintenance is the housekeeper, Elaine Boyle, and Glenorne's
02:35estate manager, Adrian Morrow.
02:38Ah, this is my exercise.
02:41This is Adrian's gym.
02:45Do you think we would need to get the painter in to do that?
02:48It seems to be the roof where the problem is, you know, and before you know it would just
02:52be a complete disaster.
02:54You know you're heading for trouble when you come up in here.
03:01There's going to be something.
03:06So I think the problem is, this lead tray now has just run its life by the look of things.
03:13I can see already a dish in it here, which means the timbers underneath that have collapsed
03:19and rot it.
03:20So this is all going to have to be ripped out and new timber put in there.
03:27Now, there could be a 30 or a 40,000 pound job and, you know, we're a small team and that's a lot of money.
03:34That's always been the nature of the beast here.
03:39I'm used to it.
03:40I mean, if you look at the four torrets there in 1982, I think it was, the steel weather vanes had corroded
03:47and it exploded the sandstone.
03:49So there was no option other than completely take them down and rebuild them.
03:53I was building my house at the same time.
03:57It cost me the same price to build my house than it did to do the repair on one of those torrets.
04:05So each time I come up here and look at those four torrets, I can see four bungalows, one on each corner.
04:10Oh well, money, money, money, money.
04:19Just wouldn't matter how much money you bring into this place, it just goes into a hole.
04:24But that's, that's the historic fabric that needs a lot of maintaining and looking after.
04:40It's March. In a few weeks, the grouse on Glenwery Moor will begin to nest.
04:49Before they do, head gamekeeper Alex Rogers wants to get an idea of how many breeding pairs have survived the winter.
04:57Are we ready?
04:59There are hundreds of acres of moor to search in the next few days.
05:04So Alex has enlisted the help of some highly trained assistants.
05:07We've got Gina, best pointer in Northern Ireland.
05:11And then we've got the two Irish red setters there as well.
05:15Poppy and then Rusty.
05:19The grouse are going to start forming eggs.
05:22Some of them may even be nesting as well.
05:24So yeah, we like to get this done before April.
05:28You'll find plenty of this round here.
05:31So that's your standard grouse droppings.
05:33If you've seen plenty of sign of droppings, then you have got grouse.
05:37We're going to head down and then try and get it because the thing is, with the pointers and setters, we have to, well we don't have to, but it's better to count with the wind in our faces.
05:51That way the scent's blowing in towards the dog, so the dog gets a better scent.
05:56The dog's quartering the ground, so the dog's using the wind to its advantage.
06:09So it's quartering from right to left, up and down, just waiting to catch that scent of the ground.
06:15Once it does, it'll stop dead, so it'll start pointing.
06:24The dog's started setting now, so it's telling us that there's a bird in here somewhere.
06:28It could be a grouse or it could be a snipe.
06:31They're actually spotting us as we're coming up, so they're lifting.
06:35They're not sitting tight today, so it's quite hard to actually get them right in front of the dog.
06:52So, just keep seeing grouse head out in the distance that they've seen us.
06:59It's quite frustrating because we're wanting to be counting pairs, and sometimes today we're seeing a single bird get up,
07:07and then we're getting to where that bird got up, and then another bird's got up, you know, from the same area.
07:12So, I mean, you can class that as a pair, but it's just, it's better to see them both together.
07:17That tells you that they're a real good solid pair, so they're definitely going to mate.
07:20It's not just the moors that are eagerly waiting for spring's promise of new beginnings.
07:47The villages that hug the coastline rely on the influx of visitors that better weather can bring.
07:54Five years ago, in Cushendall, retired teacher Stephen O'Hara started up a cafe with his wife.
08:07The Glens is a funny place. You have to live here a long time before you're a local.
08:13I've only lived in the Glens for 50 years of my 55 years, so I'm afraid I'm still what's known as a runner.
08:21This story concerns a very important figure in Irish mythology known as Oshon.
08:28People may not know Oshon very well, but they will know his father. His father was Finn McCool.
08:33This is no ordinary cafe. It's a storytelling cafe, embracing an art form long celebrated in the Glens.
08:42How many Glens men does it take to change a light bulb? It takes five. One to actually change the light bulb and the other four to sing about what a great light bulb the old one was.
08:53She said, there is one way. If you take my horse and you go back to Ireland and you stay in the saddle, at no point can you dismount.
09:03You will be able to visit your country and then come back to me.
09:08So he was riding around Ireland, but of course in 300 years, the whole country was inhabited by a race of weak and puny Irishmen, men like me.
09:17He spied a group of these ten puny Irishmen trying to move an enormous boulder and he leaned over from his horse to help them.
09:29And as he did so, the girth of the saddle snapped, the saddle slipped and he fell to the earth and he immediately aged 300 years.
09:36Now these men, they carried him like a king and they took him here to Cushendal and they buried him in Ossian's grave.
09:47Which some people, archaeologists for example, say that it's a Neolithic passage tomb, but we know what it really is.
09:55The glens are full of stories of brave warriors from the distant past.
10:16Today's fighters carry sticks, not spears, but their battles are no less intense.
10:22Get off the feet! Get off the feet! Get off the feet! Get off the feet!
10:25You're only nine and a half more to go!
10:27Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave!
10:30Camogie and Hurdle will be a massive part of Cushendal.
10:32At underage, you're walking down the street with your hurdle in your hand and anywhere you look, somebody has a hurdle.
10:38Let's go! Come on, please! Arms! Arms! Arms!
10:41Orla and Amy play for Rurie Oak Camogie team.
10:44There's just a couple of months of training left until the new season.
10:48So normally at the start of the season, we are really intense few months.
10:51It normally consists of strength and conditioning work and a lot of running, trying to build up your aerobic endurance for the year ahead.
10:57So it's normally quite brutal.
10:59We know it's horrible! We know it's horrible!
11:01Two more to go!
11:05Get off the hill! Get off the hill! Come on, please!
11:09We actually kept it quite PG tonight compared to what it usually is.
11:13Yeah, it was quite good tonight.
11:14It's more your lungs are burning like...
11:18I feel as if I'm swollen blood.
11:20Yeah.
11:22We were in a championship final two years ago, which was probably one of the most proudest moments of my Camogie career.
11:29And hopefully we could be there again this September would be a massive stepping stone for our club.
11:36From Glenarm in the south to Fairhead in the north, spring has arrived in the glens.
11:46It's an ancient story slowly unfolding to the same rhythms year after year.
12:07But this spring of 2020 is also a spring like no other.
12:25The coronavirus is the biggest threat this country has faced for decades.
12:30You must stay at home.
12:34We will immediately close all shops selling non-essential goods and other premises,
12:41including libraries, playgrounds and outdoor gyms and places of worship.
12:48The way ahead is hard.
12:50The Camogie pitches of Christian Dahl will stay silent.
13:01The season pushed back and all training cancelled.
13:05At Glenarm, there will also be no Easter visitors.
13:09We had our plans laid out for our tulip festival.
13:12We had 10,000 tulips planted.
13:14All of a sudden, Covid-19 arrived at our door.
13:18In Carnlock, Robert will not be welcoming back tourists to his family's caravan park.
13:28It was weird, you know, walking around and no one being here with the friends and family that were vulnerable.
13:35It was just a little scary.
13:39Robert had just opened a cafe with his wife Tiffany.
13:43It's also shut until further notice.
13:45In the spring and summer is really when we start to see the village come alive.
13:50Yes, tourism is good for the village in general, but tourism is bad for a pandemic.
13:56We just shot the whole place down pretty much overnight.
14:02We were devastated because our expectations were so much different than what the reality has turned out to be.
14:09But not all industries in the glens can grind to a halt.
14:24On the Devlins farm in Glenshesk, they are lambing and Frank is finishing the early morning shift.
14:33His son, Owen, will take over in a couple of hours.
14:36So we go up sort of half, five or six.
14:40Go round the things, check them and then come on for breakfast.
14:43I would do the night shift, I'd go right through to normally about half, three or four.
14:49Depending on how busy it is, sometimes it can be up to five o'clock.
14:52A few weeks, see, it's the heaviest of it by.
14:57After that you can sort of ease off in eight shifts a bit.
15:01Probably six weeks we'll get rid of the lamb completely.
15:07So normally you'd want front legs coming first with the head sort of in between, just sitting on top of the legs.
15:12In that case, the head was turned back on itself.
15:17So there's no way that eel could have lambed that.
15:20So the lamb, if left alone, the lamb probably would die inside her.
15:24And then she would probably get poisoned by the lamb.
15:28A lot of eels, especially first timers, might lamb their lambs and then just go up and walk away because they don't know any different.
15:35So sometimes it's a matter of holding the sheep with her head down to the lambs because her own lamb will have a very distinct smell.
15:46That's where the bond's made between the lamb and the eel.
15:56A few miles away on Fair Head, the McBrides are also welcoming ewe life.
16:01Farming went on as normal, busy times and if they were distracted from the news, it could be a bit alright.
16:08As well as new calves, there are over 700 lambs.
16:15They're all lambed indoors.
16:18They have maybe up to 40 ewes lamb in one day.
16:21If you had a really big day, you could have up to 50.
16:25At that there time of the year, we're usually locked down up here anyway.
16:28So you always forgot about it.
16:31Having lambing to work through that was definitely good.
16:38I enjoy lambing.
16:45After a cold long winter, it's nice to see lambs sporting about and playing with each other.
16:50It's good to see that life coming back onto the farm again.
16:53It's April, a month into lockdown, and a warm dry spring has turned the glens into a riot of colour.
16:56It's April, a month into lockdown, and a warm dry spring has turned the glens into a riot of colour.
16:59At Tivora View allotments in Cushendal, there are potatoes to be planted.
17:02They will be hard to eat.
17:03It's April, a month into lockdown, and a warm dry spring has turned the glens into a riot of colour.
17:20At Tivora View allotments in Cushendal, there are potatoes to be planted.
17:28They will be harvested in autumn, as they have been since Margaret MacKillop set up the allotments with other Cairns Estate residents seven years ago.
17:35When we first got locked down, obviously, you only had an hour to come out and socialise, so most people were using their hour to come up to the allotments.
17:48When we started the project, it was more to bring the community together and, you know, to help with the mental health side.
17:56We never perceived that we would be standing here in the middle of a pandemic, but thankfully we've had the space to enjoy through it.
18:15On the grouse moors of Glenwerie Hill, it's a crucial time.
18:19Hidden in the undergrowth, endangered ground nesting birds are now incubating their eggs, watched over by gamekeeper Alex Rogers.
18:32I've always sort of isolated.
18:35Being up here in the hills and stuff, you know, you'd be lucky if you saw anyone or spoke to anyone in a week.
18:42I always like to get my hide set up first, so it's really important that you get a good backdrop, so it could be a dry stone wall, it could be a hedgerow or a run of trees or anything like that.
19:00Alex's job now is to protect the nests from one of the moors' most prolific predators, corvids.
19:07It's not Covid, Corvid, so your Corvids are like your crow family, so your rook, your carrion crow, your hooded crow, jackdaw, magpie and things like that.
19:24At the minute, I'm just setting my decoys up. These particular ones here work really well. These have like, almost like a felt cover on the back.
19:32So, from a distance, they look really dark and they're very easily noticed a crow.
19:40It'll see your decoys from quite, you know, quite far away and it'll be attracted to them straight away.
19:45This time of year, it's so crucial that we get on top of the population because they're so damaging to the ground nesting birds.
19:55Reducing predator numbers is a difficult but necessary job in conservation, vital for the re-establishment of endangered species, especially in breeding season.
20:06I know the sheer damage a crow can do to a ground nesting bird. I don't find it a privilege, you know, to take an animal's life. It's a necessity.
20:22There's a lot of responsibility and you want to do it as quickly and as cleanly as you possibly can.
20:26It's May, lambs are growing fast and a glorious spring has burst out across the glens.
20:51In Glenarm, the only people around to enjoy this year's tulip festival are the estate staff.
21:03The spring still goes on. The seasonality still runs through.
21:08So, we did enjoy 10,000 tulips on our own.
21:12And the garden looked amazing and there we were standing on our own.
21:21The trees was budding. Lifestyle goes on in the glens.
21:25So, and that keeps you sane.
21:28You do forget about all this wonderful nature around you.
21:31But Mother Nature will send you a reminder now and again to lift up your head and look around you and appreciate where you are.
21:37And we do do that.
21:40The sun beats down.
21:42It's one of the driest springs in memory.
21:45And only the people of the glens are here to appreciate it.
21:52Here we're kind of a little bit naturally cut off.
21:55So, from that point of view, we were kind of lucky.
21:59Life was just a lot simpler and slower.
22:00And Jacob would probably benefit the most from everyone because we were obviously at home 24-7.
22:14So, he thought it was great.
22:16I certainly did appreciate it. The time that we did have to kind of slow down a little bit.
22:23You know, I think everyone probably was questioning, why do we do it? Why do we run around and create so much hassle and panic and fuss?
22:32Whenever you see the lambs in the sunshine running across a wee hill all sporting about, kicking the legs and just generally having good fun.
22:50Gives you a wee smile to the fair.
23:00See the wee lambs that come down and look at her now?
23:04It's late May.
23:06And a slight easing of COVID-19 restrictions sees a tentative return of visitors to the glens.
23:12One of the nicest parts is deciding what you're actually going to paint.
23:18Artist Audrey Kyle from Island Magee has come to Glenariff Forest Park.
23:26Glenariff is known as the Queen of the Glens.
23:30And spring is when she reveals her full majesty.
23:37The inspiration just comes from the wildlife and also from nature.
23:41And the feeling that you get from the freedom and the, you know, everything being reborn.
23:56The trees were acid green. It was just, it was beautiful.
24:00There were people about, obviously, enjoying the spring day, which was delightful.
24:05There were people swimming in the waterfall.
24:06And that's what gave me the idea, rather than just go for a waterfall scene, to actually include a memory in it.
24:15So my palette changes as the seasons change.
24:19So for this painting, there's a lot of active greens in there and lots of bright tones.
24:24It's June, nearly summer, and more COVID-19 restrictions on travel and hospitality are lifting.
24:42Good news for Robert and Tiffany in Carnlock, whose business relies on the tourist trade.
24:49We're starting to see a pick up. We opened the coffee shop for takeaways about four weekends ago.
24:54And we said Saturday and Sundays only. And in that time, we have seen actually a lot of footfall in the village.
25:00I think as, as restrictions have loosened up, we've seen people starting to take, you know, their day trip out to the coast.
25:08We're extending our hours this week to include Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, but I need to plan orders.
25:13So I'm taking averages from before we closed.
25:17Just trying to come up with some sort of predicted amount so that I can get orders out to our bakers.
25:21Although it's so challenging to predict what customers will be after.
25:33You know, on the caravan part sort of things, we're opening again and the caravaners seem to be really excited.
25:38So they'll be down on Friday. It's even more special this year just because of what we've been through in the spring.
25:44It's been a weird three months, especially the weather we've had.
25:52It's been perfect for the caravaners to be down enjoying the sights, but unfortunately they haven't been able to get down.
25:59So, yeah, it'll be good to see them back again.
26:03That's a double-glades central heat up van.
26:06It's only nine years old, so that could be there for the next 15 years.
26:11It was a little scary there for a while when we didn't know the kind of length of the period of lockdown,
26:22whether we were going to lose the entire season.
26:24So it is a bit of a relief to get back open again and start to see some turnover in revenue coming back in again.
26:33Hopefully we can continue to open things up and get the businesses back up and running.
26:41Keep this going through this year and then we'll see what next year brings.
26:46There was a lot of concern that the virus would be brought into the area.
26:51I think that'll probably still be there, that's just not going to disappear overnight.
26:56But tourism is a lifeblood down here for a lot of people, so there is a need to get it back up and running in a measured way.
27:06It's been a strange spring in the glens.
27:13It's beauty bearing witness to the struggles of the people who have made the glens their home.
27:21People like Stephen O'Hara at a storytelling cafe whose future is still uncertain.
27:28Social distancing rules. In a three metre wide shop it's difficult to get people socially distanced.
27:35And it would mean we couldn't serve enough people to make it profitable to open.
27:40So we're sort of hanging on as long as we can.
27:43But obviously there's a limit to how long we can go on financially.
27:47Owning your own business and having regular people who depend on you, it gives you a sense of purpose.
27:56And without them it's difficult to have a sense of purpose.
28:03It's affected everything. It's affected every aspect of life.
28:06I hope we don't lose the ability to put our arms around somebody.
28:12I hope we don't lose the good things.
28:18I don't think we're ready yet for telling stories about 2020.
28:25But in the fullness of time we will.
28:29웅infectise quiteいた.
28:31Just a moment.
28:32Just a moment.
28:34And once a moment may remain amplified.
28:37I've never heard from you.
28:39But another thing.
28:41Some words may be folded.
28:46First question angry.
28:47The moment crisis trends market.
28:48We'll Unautis.
28:49Have no idea that's it.
28:50Oh my God probably islets.
28:53Everybody once knew it.
28:56You can edit on the show.