TV adventurer Ben Fogle goes to Stroma and Swona in Lost Worlds series
TV adventurer Ben Fogle takes a trip across the Pentland Firth to Stroma in the latest episode of his Channel 5 series.
He meets the island's owner, William Simpson, a farmer who has kept sheep there for the past few decades, and discovers that in 1958 Stroma was offered as a prize on an American TV quiz show.
Stroma was inhabited about 1000 years ago and was known by the Norsemen as Straumey, “island in the stream”. Its population peaked at almost 400 in the early 20th century, but by the 1950s it was in serious decline and the last islanders left in 1962.
Episode three of Lost Worlds with Ben Fogle – to be broadcast this Thursday at 9pm – also features the nearby island of Swona.
Ben spends time with three generations of the Annal family, who are working to restore the island’s crumbling buildings and preserve their ancestors’ legacy. The Vikings were among the first to settle on Swona and by the mid-18th century it sustained a population of nine families.
In the 1920s a collapse in the fish market made it harder for the Swona community to survive and the final two residents left for good in 1974.
Ben then goes on a voyage to St Kilda, with its towering cliffs. At its peak, St Kilda’s population was approaching 200.
The presenter spends a night camping on the island, which lies more than 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides. He meets archaeologist Clare Henderson and marine ranger Craig Nesbit, as well as John MacDonald whose parents are buried on St Kilda and who has created a museum to show what life was like there.
Ben first came to the attention of the public when he took part in the BBC reality show Castaway 2000, which followed a group of 36 volunteers on the island of Taransay for a year as a social experiment.
Ben once said of his Castaway experience: "My time there changed me profoundly. Returning makes me think about why I find islands such deeply moving and spiritual places."
