Review: Coastal Adventures on Channel 5 is a feast for the eyes

The Herald Scotland

5 days ago

****
IF there is one thing television doesn't need, it is more celebrities going on holiday. But in the case of presenters Helen Skelton, Jules Hudson and JB Gill we can make an exception.
The farming and outdoors trio are so often up at horrible o'clock in awful weather it seems churlish to deny them some sand between their toes, or the stench of a prison in their nostrils (to be explained).
Particularly if they are as complimentary about Scotland as they are here. Helen started the ball rolling with a video selfie on the beach. 'Have a look at this,' she said, panning the camera across the scene. 'It looks almost tropical, but I'm not in the southern hemisphere, I'm just north of the Scottish border in Dumfries and Galloway.'
The coastline was close to where she had lived and worked for years in Cumbria, yet she never thought of it as a holiday area because it was on her doorstep. Not any more.
'This is landscape that rivals the kind of thing you would go to New Zealand for.'
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While she headed for Bainloch Deer Park and JB was dispatched to the Suffolk coast, Jules was shown around HMP Peterhead by someone who had worked there for 27 years. The former guard could still remember the smell of the chamber pots waiting to be emptied when he arrived to start his shift. The scene was described so vividly I could almost smell them myself, and I fear Jules was the same. The prison was defunct, and had been since 2013, but not defunked.
The banners from the 1980s riots, hung on the walls, told their own story. It was a fascinating if grim tour, with the prison, dubbed 'Scotland's toughest jail', not changed much since it was built in the Victorian era. If misery has a smell that must have been evident too.
Helen took an SUV tour of the 860-acre deer park. All the animals, some 600 of them, were brought to the park, some after road accidents. 'I've never been close to a deer,' said Helen. 'I don't know why but it makes me quite emotional.' That's the second presenter in a week to be moved to tears, after Rob Rinder was overcome with the majesty of Glenapp Castle in Amazing Hotels: Life beyond the Lobby. Is it something in the water?
She was sent to look for an antler to take home as a souvenir, a task she thought akin to being asked for a tin of tartan paint, but she soon found one.
In Johnshaven in Aberdeenshire, home to The Lobster Shop, Jules was trying lobster for the first time. 'Delicious,' he said, demolishing the stuffed roll in a few bites.
Helen had the last word. 'The most perfect landscape,' she said, looking out to sea. 'I can try to think of something profound to say but I don't think words do this justice.'
This lot can come again.