| In the summer of 1968 - a strange season of riots,
invasions, and assassinations - I took a train from Newcastle to Inverness, en
route for the Cuillins of Skye. In the late morning the train stopped at a place
with an impossibly long platform, in a broad valley with purple hills to east
and west. Rolling down the window, I looked out over a marsh with reeds waving
in the breeze, a heron lurching overhead like a Lancaster bomber. It was quiet,
only the noise of a chuntering locomotive. A man in tweeds got off with one gun,
two dogs, three children, and a vast amount of luggage, beautiful leather cases
but very old. A laird with his family perhaps, up for the shooting. A man in a
cap blew a whistle, and the train moved off, leaving Kingussie behind. |
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Thirty years later, to the month, I took another train and returned to that
place. Nothing much had changed - except for the train, which was much shorter -
the same marsh by the River Spey, the same purple hills. This time I got off.
I'd come to research a projected television drama about the struggle of an
impecunious young laird to hang onto his birthright in the face of pressure from
his unsympathetic bank and interference from his impossible father. |
| I'd come
here because the company I was working with - Ecosse Films had shot some scenes
for their film Mrs Brown at a house nearby called Ardverikie and the owners had
kindly agreed to show me around.
It was during this short visit to that turreted
pile by the water, crumbling but impossibly romantic, surrounded by by forest
and moor, snow still clinging to distant peaks, that Monarch of the Glen really
began to take shape in my imagination. Walking from room to room, wandering down
to the shore, the characters began to emerge too, and the idea of a community,
the never-never land of Glenbogle, to which viewers would be transported on a
Sunday evening and find fun, laughter. a few tears and a certain innocence. |
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From that moment on, there was never any real doubt that Monarch wouldn't be
shot in this area. The house was the centre of it, but Badenoch and Strathspey
had so much to offer us in terms of locations - villages, railways, rivers and
lochs, above everything else scenery whose majesty simply cannot be beaten - as
you are about to discover. I'm looking forward to spending a fourth successive
summer of visits to Monarch of the Glen Country, hoping regularly to sneak off
work to walk/mountain bike/sail/generally chill out in its quiet places. My
favourite? A glen called Feshie, where once on a blazing day a family party slid
down smooth rocks and swam in cool, peaty waters. Balm to the body and soul. But
you'll find your own magic place - there's enough to go around.
Michael Chaplin
Creator and writer, Monarch of the Glen
March 2001 |
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