meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Scotland Outdoors

Walking the Old Lumphanan Road with the Late Stanley Robertson

Scotland Outdoors

BBC

Nature, Society & Culture, Science

4.7709 Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2024

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Stanley Robertson was from the Travelling People and in the 1980's he published a book called 'Exodus to Alford' featuring stories associated with a particular road his people used to take each Summer when he was a boy. Former BBC Producer Doreen Wood went there with Stanley in 1988 and recorded an interview with him describing his memories of this special place. In this podcast, Mark Stephen and Helen Needham go in search of the Old Lumphanan Road with the archive of Stanley in their ears, offering a fascinating insight into the culture and beliefs of him and his people and a way of life that no longer exists in this part of the world.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Did you know that you can listen to many of your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds?

0:06.6

Like Desert Island Discs, where you can hear castaways like Cher,

0:10.4

Gareth Southgate and Nick Cave, and enjoy longer versions of the music they've picked.

0:15.7

Good things come to those who don't wait.

0:18.7

Listen to your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds.

0:22.8

This Scotland Outdoors podcast with Mark Stephen and Helen Needham from BBC Radio Scotland.

0:33.0

This first part of our standing on is the corner of the Glenmullen Road

0:39.8

and it starts to the Old Grove Road, where many of the travelling people used to come.

0:46.7

And right here at the beginning, there's a beautiful old church.

0:59.0

On our right-hand side, there's a really imposing church. One of those things, it looks like a sort of spaceship pointing up to God, built of grey granite.

1:06.0

It almost looks like the guardian of the road.

1:16.6

We're in rural Aberdeenshire, a wee village called L'Enfahan. And the reason we're here, well, that takes a bit of explaining.

1:19.6

I've become a bit archive obsessed recently, actually.

1:23.6

And one piece of archive that we found was a recording that a former colleague Doreen

1:30.2

Wood did with Stanley Robertson. Stanley Robertson was from the travelling people and they came

1:39.0

walking along this road. I think it must have been about 1988 because he had a book called Exodus to

1:47.4

Afford which he published in that year and I think that's why he was talking to Doreen.

1:51.6

And it's a wonderful, wonderful bit of archive about place, about history, about tradition,

1:59.5

about storytelling. So we thought we'd come and walk in his footsteps.

2:06.8

It's a spiritual place.

2:08.8

It made me feel spiritual inside.

2:10.9

And that day when I was walking up

...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -348 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.