As a boy, Michael Portillo used to catch the sleeper train from London to Scotland when he visited his grandparents, and can still recall the thrill of those journeys.
“In those days some of the trains were still pulled by steam engines and I remember being terrified by these enormous panting monsters of locomotives”, chuckles the former MP. “We travelled sitting bolt upright [in chairs] all night.”
The most exciting moment of those childhood trips from King’s Cross to Kirkcaldy, on Fife’s coast, was puffing across the iconic Forth Bridge after passing through Edinburgh.
“You see the huge, rust-coloured struts of iron and steel that hold the whole thing together.” He recalls once waking up at a station in the middle of the night; he could see “York” written on a pillar and peered around for the word “New”.
“My mother said, ‘You cannot possibly believe that New York is situated between London and Edinburgh.’ I was slightly ignorant of geography.”
If his mother had gazed into a crystal ball that night, she might have been surprised to see that her son would one day be Britain’s Defence Secretary and, after he retired from politics, would enjoy a second career presenting popular travel documentaries. For the past 13 years, Portillo has chugged around railways both at home and abroad.
The pandemic has barely slowed him down, but it has emptied trains. “It has produced a real crisis in rail travel,” he muses. “It’s not for me to advise people what level of risk they want to take. I would just say that I have travelled consistently on public transport through the pandemic and I’m here to tell the story.”
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In his latest TV series, Great Coastal Railway Journeys, he meanders along the shores of Scotland, Wales and England, and is struck by their conservation.
“Much of the British Isles’ coastlines are pristine by comparison with Britain’s towns, villages and cities, which are awfully cluttered by traffic, parked vehicles and signage.”
Sea birds on bass rock
His first journey took him back to Scotland’s craggy east coast, from the historic harbour town of Dunbar to the busy fishing port of Peterhead via Edinburgh, Stirling, St Andrew’s, Dundee, Aberdeen and the Forth Bridge, which is still a personal thrill. However, the highlight was a boat trip from North Berwick to the world’s largest colony of northern gannets: Bass Rock, a 100-metre lump of jagged white rock floating in the Firth of Forth.
The Scottish Seabird Centre organises boat tours, including landing trips when the sea is calm enough. “At the time that I visited it was the gathering point for 150,000 gannets,” says Portillo, who’s a keen bird-watcher.
“The northern gannet is very large and rather beautiful, with a yellow shadow all around its blue eye. Most of them were breeding; the couples engage in courting behaviour – they cross their bills and do a sort of dance. In 13 years of making these programmes, I’ve never filmed anything quite like that. I’ve been back since because I wanted to show my family.”
He also explored the Scottish Isles. “This series probably has as many boats in it as trains. We went to Staffa, Mull, Iona, Skye and Harris and Lewis, and the Orkney Islands.”
As well as lovely sandy beaches and wide-open coastal vistas, Orkney has an especially fascinating history. “There are Iron Age settlements and a Norwegian-built medieval cathedral of some grandeur. It’s a reminder that Orkney stood as the very important entrepot between the British Isles and Scandinavia, and it was in fact Norwegian territory until relatively recently.
There’s also a gorgeous Nissen hut painted by an Italian prisoner of war during the Second World War with trompe l’oeil features, to create the impression of a Renaissance chapel.”
Back on the rails, a surprise highlight was the Cumbrian Coast Line, which meanders from the shipbuilding town of Barrow-in-Furness to Carlisle via the shimmering mudflats of Morecambe Bay, the Lake District’s wild dunes and never-ending golden beaches.
“The railway runs along the water most of the way, and crosses lots of estuaries and inlets on little causeways and viaducts. As the tide goes in and out, the scene that you’re looking out on changes dramatically, and there are extensive sand and mudflats that are as spectacular as looking out at the sea”, he tells i.
All aboard the Hogwarts Express
Sixty years after Portillo was awestruck by the roaring locomotives at King’s Cross, he took a seat on the UK’s most popular steam train, It didn’t disappoint. The Jacobite operates on the West Highland Line between Fort William and the fishing town of Mallaig from May to October, and is better known as the Hogwarts Express thanks to its cameo in the Harry Potter films.
Skirting freshwater and sea lochs, the West Highland Line has been voted the world’s best train journey. For Portillo, the high point was crossing the 100ft, 21-arched Glenfinnan Viaduct.
“It was the first concrete viaduct and overlooks the spot where Bonnie Prince Charlie landed from France in order to lead the Jacobite rebellion, which of course ended in disaster from the Jacobite point of view.”
He also bedded down on the night train from London Euston to Inverness, but this time in style: he booked a cabin on the recently scrubbed-up Caledonian Sleeper. “I went in the poshest cabin, so I had a little bathroom with shower and loo, and a large and comfortable bed. A terrific way to travel.”
‘Great Coastal Railway Journeys’ is on weekdays at 6.30pm, BBC Two