Transcript of AE 689 – Interview: Scottish Wilderness Survival Skills with Tom Langhorne

G'day you mob and welcome to this episode of Aussie English, although today we'll be taking a little adventure into the Scottish Highlands and Lowlands to talk about survival in the Scottish wilderness. So today, my special guest is Tom Langhorne. And Tom Langhorne has a channel on YouTube called Fandabi Dozi. Right, F.A.N.D.A.B.I D.O.Z.I. The link will be in the transcript and on the site, but go and check out his channel, it's really interesting. He does a lot of stuff about surviving in the wilderness of Scotland, right? So there are some crazy stuff that you can learn on his channel about surviving there.

We talk also about history and culture in Scotland, we talk about the Gaelic language, right? The language that was there before they were invaded by England and started speaking English. They actually spoke Gaelic. But, yeah, it's a really interesting episode guys. I know you're going to get a lot out of it, something different. And also, you're going to have a challenge with the Scottish accent. So, Tom, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, mate. I really appreciate it. Smack the bird. Let's get going.

G'day guys and welcome to this episode of Aussie English today. I have Tom here from the YouTube channel Fandabi Dozi. Did I say that right?

Fandabi Dozi, it's close.

Man so I've literally found Tom yesterday and I've dragged him onto the podcast because he's going to be the first Scottish person on the podcast. So congrats, Tom. Is that a Glasgow accent? Can I ask as well?

Well, I'm probably going to disappoint people because my accent is not very strong. I've lived in Scotland all my life. But, you know, Scotland's got a huge range of different accents. You know quite different to the ones you see in movies and stuff. So, yeah, I live near Glasgow. So my accent's probably a wee bit influenced by that. But, you know, compared to a true Glaswegian, my voice, my accents are quite a bit softer.

So they'd hear you and be like "nah man, nah he's not the real thing".

Yeah, they would probably tell that I'm from the area. But if I said I was Glaswegian, I would probably get a lot of abuse.

So can you tell me about your channel and how it got started. So you have this amazing channel. I'll let you explain it.

So like lots of things, it was completely by accident. I started the channel. I put the first video up in like 2012 or something and it was just when the GoPro 2 had just come out, the wee nifty action cameras that was just going and filming my adventures with that, and I named Fandabi Dozi is actually a catch phrase from this 80s Scottish children's TV show. It's like this really cringey sort of past but I named it that because it was a running joke with a friend, but I named it that because I wasn't planning to actually make it into a YouTube channel where people would start watching things.

And what did it mean originally?

It doesn't really mean anything. It's sort of a.. I could send you the song, if you type Fandabi Dozi, it'll come up with my channel but also come up with the song from The Krankies. It's like "Fandabi Dozi, Fandabi Dozi".

So it's kind of like that yabba dabba doo or whatever from the Flintstones.

It means like everything's good, everything's fantastic, something like that.

Like fabulous?

Yeah it was one of those things and then I started making videos more regularly. People started following me and knowing me by the name and then I feel like it's too late to change it.

It gets to that point, doesn't it? There's a guy I watch on YouTube called, I think Sargon of Akkad that I watch sometimes, and he has this thing and he's like, "man, it was just a gaming name that I had once upon a time and now it's just stuck with me, I can't just actually use my real name".

I think that happens to a lot of YouTubers. I've always been interested in bushcraft and wilderness living skills and stuff like that. So I did my first kind of trip, I went out for a couple of days and slept under a rock and ate shellfish and a dead deer that I found and stuff like that and made like light-hearted video of it and people watched it. So I made another one. I just kept on going and then, you know, people asked me to teach them and then moved on to the Highlander stuff, which has kind of taken off recently.

That was what I saw for the first time, the Highlander stuff. What made you decide, obviously from doing the survival skills stuff and going out into the bush and surviving. What made you decide to sort of narrow it in on the Highlander people? And you have it from a specific range, right? From the sixteen hundreds to the late eighteen hundreds?

Yeah. So again, what got me firstly interested was my sister is fluent in Gaelic. So that was the original language of the Highlands. It's still spoken today, but only by a very small percentage and I think we were just talking about the use of the plaid, the plaider, like a kilt. And, you know, because I was really interested in camping and kind of, I really like the simplicity of old school camping gear when it's just like a wool blanket and just like a knife, and I really loved them trying it in the wilderness. She just mentioned how people used to, you know, take it off and sleep in it and how they could turn it into an anorak and stuff. Oh, that's pretty cool.

Then the more I looked into that time period, there's this huge wealth of stories. There's a huge wealth of knowledge about the plants and just, you know, lots of real and mythological, what's the word, legendary characters that kind of go out into the wilderness and survive off the land, you know, just wearing their kilt and a knife and a little pouch of oats and stuff. So I just thought, oh, that's cool, a sort of area to focus on, and I think it was just like it's a right sort of timing because people are interested in that time period with, like Outlander and other TV shows. So it seemed to kind of tap into an interest that was already out there that I didn't really expect.

So tell us, what is the Highlands? What are the Highlands like, right? Because, Scotland's kind of divided into these two sections, the lowlands and the highlands. The highlands being the mountains, right? Correct me if I'm wrong?

So there's a couple definition's. There is an actual fault line. So there's a geographical fault line that actually it starts not far from me. I think it's near Loch Lomond, and it kind of cuts diagonally up Scotland up near Aberdeen. And so that's the actual like fault line. But then I guess the sort of Highlands, a lot of people think of it was the sort of, it was the heartland of the Gaelic language during the 17th century. So that is just north of Glasgow, sort of quite close to that fault line, but going all the way up, so people generally refer to that as the highlands.

Far out and so is that where the accents tend to get stronger as well in the Highlands? Because, you know, you always and Game of Thrones is probably the best kind of analogy to give most people who don't know much about Britain, or sorry Great Britain. Their accents tend to get stronger the further north you go right through England all the way into Scotland, at least, you know, broadly speaking. Is that the same within Scotland itself, that the low land areas will have a sort of softer accent? and then the further north you go, the stronger it gets?

I wouldn't say quite as simple as that. I'd say there's just a big difference. So Glaswegian accent, you know, tourists come to Glasgow will sort of think people are speaking German or something. So they get very, very thick Glaswegian accents.

There's a video I've seen of that guy standing on the roof and he's a worker and his mates are giving him a hard time throwing stuff at him and trying to tell him to get down off the roof, and they're telling him. Have you seen it?

Where he's like, "put your foot, put your foot in the fleshing, put your foot in the fleshing". And he's like, "I cannot put my foot in" and he just loses it and you're like, is this even English? This is just like another language and they have to have subtitles on. But it's just phenomenal because he just loses it for like two minutes and you just go blank. So it's not as simple as that, though.

Not as simple. Then if you go up towards the Aberdeen area, there is a dialect called Doric that actually has got Norse influences. So for example, they call children 'bairns'. I've heard that.

Ah, okay!

And 'bairns' is, I can't remember the exactly, it's very close to like Norwegian for children is like and or 'barn' or something.

I'm actually learning it on Duolingo at the moment and "I'm a boy", you know.

There's a 'bairn'.

Yeah, exactly. 'Bairn'.

So, there's influences of that and then the very North Islands have got a different accent and the Western Islands have got a different accent. But now you know, with modern days, everyone's mixing up and Edinburgh has got the stereotype of being a bit posher and the accents not as strong, bit more English.

My sort of exposure to that growing up was always Billy Connolly ripping into anyone and everyone, but he was always a Glaswegian, obviously, with his accent. And I remember sitting there as a kid with my dad, my dad loved him, still does and I would always be like, what is a "wean, a wean"?

And he would be like a young child or something, and then a 'jobi' and like all of these like slang terms and I was just like it took me years of growing up with watching Billy Connolly to finally understand the Scottish accent. How do you find it with foreigners that come to Scotland? Do they have a really hard time kind of making their way around or do they sort of click pretty quickly?

I think most of the time they find it pretty difficult. Usually people are quite happy to find me because my accent is fairly understandable compared to other people. But I can sort of act like a translator because I can understand people's stronger accents sort of middle ground through people. But yeah, some people find it pretty difficult.

So going back to the Highlanders. How did they survive in the Highlands, which is a pretty inhospitable place, right? It's very cold, there's lots of water, snow, rain, sleet, everything like that. How did they survive if the average guy back then just had a kilt and, you know, some woollen blankets, when you started doing this and the survival stuff, did you sort of appreciate that it was incredibly difficult, but at the same time, it was, you know, you could do it?

Yeah, I mean, it was always a learned still kind of learning as I go along what it was like but they were definitely very tough people. Yeah so that the Highlands have changed quite a lot in terms of the landscape and the mountain of forests and stuff. But yeah, it was still a pretty hard climate to be in, especially if you're trying to grow crops and the main kind of economy was around cattle.

So that was yeah, there's lots of cool stories of, you know, people stealing each other's cattle and kind of running through the mountains and, you know, sleeping out and stuff. So, yeah, there are definitely very tough people. But you can see that it is possible. It's just lowering your kind of comfort level, basically, like as long as you're keeping your core body temperature warm enough, that's kind of it. As long as you're keeping your core temperature warm enough so you don't die. It's not comfortable, but you can see that it was definitely possible.

So is that why you guys or Scottish people in general, especially the Highlanders, always have that stereotype of being incredibly tough, incredibly strong? Like even on The Simpsons you've got Willie. He's just like shredded with a kilt everywhere, but like, he's the one that always goes in and deals with anything that's dangerous, or you know, he fights the bears or whatever it is. Is that where it originally comes from? Like obviously having to be an incredibly tough group of people to survive in those conditions?

Yeah, I think so some of it, you know, could have just been romanticised from Victorians and stuff, but compared to like the rest of Britain, you know, up until the Jacobites were defeated in that kind of British industrial society and took over the highlands and the Gaelic culture. You know, they were definitely, their culture hadn't changed for 400 years. That was sort of a little pocket of unchanged culture.

That was, you know, people and every lad would have been trained to be a warrior. So it's just like compared to the other societies which were sort of changing into more industrialised societies, the Highlanders were still sort of stuck into their way of life and they were very, very fierce warriors and they were always fighting each other and they're incredibly tough. So I think there is truth to that kind of, especially that sort of time period.

And then when Jacobites were defeated and, you know, that's when a lot of Scots went to Australia or, you know, America or somewhere during the highland clearances. But a lot of them joined the British army and they made Highland regiments and they were considered amazing warriors because, you know, they'd been fighting from the age of 10 years old. They didn't really need to be trained. They just go in the army and they turned out to be amazing soldiers.

This sounds like the sort of Maoris, right or the Polynesians where as a people they tend to be just huge because the tribes have been warring each other for thousands of years or whatever and there's just no small people left. That kind of blew my mind when I was looking into that, and there was that, you know, there's always been that rivalry between England and Scotland, right? At what point in time did that kind of finally sort of quell down was that after this period, is that the mid eighteen hundreds when that started happening?

So the Jacobites were defeated in 1746, 1745? That was a last... that was the... They had a series of uprisings. I'd say there still is tension between Scotland and England. But the actual last war, you could say, was then. But again, people think of it as Scotland versus England. But it was more highland, a number of Highland clans mixed with Spanish mercenaries and stuff fighting against the British colonials you could say. So a lot of the redcoats that were fighting were lowland Scots. Yeah very, very complex politics and stuff. So not necessarily Scotland v England, tht it seems like it's that in movies.

Yeah. It seems like it's such a crazy, complicated history. I mean, I was looking into it and I remember watching again, Game of Thrones and seeing the Red Wedding. And I take it you know what that's based on, right? In the history of Scotland? Is it a Glencoe massacre? And the black? Is it the Black Dinner? Do you know those two stories from Scotland?

I know the Glencoe massacre. I don't know Game of Thrones very well, I'm afraid so.

That's alright, sorry. So anyway, there's effectively a scene where these people are in, they're about to marry one of the daughters off to this guy's kids and then the guy effectively has the guards come in and massacre everyone in the family. It was the funny thing, the reason I kind of like Game of Thrones was because a lot of his, pretty much all of his, stories were taken from real life.

And so it leads you down that path of learning about these things and the Glencoe Massacre, right, was where you had two families or two clans, one was meant to be on the other one's land or, you know, being the guest of that group and the other group just massacred them, even though they had the law of hospitality right at the time where you weren't meant to kill anyone who was living under your roof or you were meant to be giving shelter to.

So I'm not like an absolute expert on it, but as far as I'm aware, yeah, there was a big culture of hospitality in the Highlands, and that was partly because people needed to survive when people were travelling around then, you know, it's not very comfortable sleeping out in your plaid in the pouring rain every night. So people would just knock on each other's doors and it was a custom to let people in and give them food, even if it turns out it was your enemy, you still sort of it was honourable to still take them in and feed them.

It was that issue, you don't want to be the one who says "nah we're not taking you in". Because then if you're ever in need, everyone's going to be like, "sorry, champ, you're on your own".

Exactly. But as far as I'm aware, it was to do with the Glencoe Massacre I could be wrong, but what I'm aware of it was the British government told the Highland clans to sign a peace treaty, they had to sign up and say, like, oh, you're with us or against us. And the chief of the McDonald clan was actually on his way to sign the treaty, but either got the wrong place. I think he was going to Fort William when he was meant to go to Edinburgh. I can't remember where he was meant to go, but he went to the wrong place.

So he was on his way to sign to say like, oh, you know, we're with you. We're not going to fight against you. But basically because he didn't sign it in time, then the British government were like right, he's against us and there happened to be the McDonald's were housing a regiment of red coats and red coats got the message to say, oh, these guys are actually against you, so kill them. Then there was also this I think a lot of those redcoat, something to do with Campbell's again, that there was some clan rivalry within that. But there was this kind of mishap, or this mistake of not getting to this place in time to sign this agreement and then there was a big massacre in Glencoe.

Far out. I was watching something and it was talking about how I think in the 1300s, Robert the Bruce escaped and went and got shelter with the Campbells because they were having a feud with the Douglas's or something who were fighting for England or something like that, right? And that led to this, you know, big thing and I think that got taken, that story got taken and put in Braveheart the film. Where it was like, in reality the timelines are like totally different or something.

But I remember seeing Braveheart for the first time and seeing just how kind of brutal life looked like in the highlands there and that you had these like no trees or at least very limited forest cover. Has the forest been gone for a very long time in the Highlands?

So, no, not really. So it's quite an interesting story, the forest. So it used to be like all of Britain absolutely covered in forest. I think actually, you know, the name Caledonia. I think it has some reference to, like forested place and Lochton or something like that. And so, yeah, there was still a lot of forest. But yeah, through the ages it was slowly cut down and then when the highlands were cleared a lot of it, as far as I'm aware, were cut down to fuel kind of iron smelts and different mines.

Then when people were cleared off the land of a feudal system appeared and, you know, wealthy people had big estates and they wanted a lot of deer for their friends to come shoot, and they wanted lots of sheep for the wool industry. So they put as many sheep and deer as they could on the land, which stopped any trees rejuvenating and then with the British building their oak ships. I think a lot of the oak forest went during that sort of eighteen hundreds.

And then the First and Second World War, I think the First World War took a lot of trees as well.

No kidding.

Yeah for the war effort. So you have like lots and lots of big events, that's taking away the trees and then because there's so much sheep and there's so many deer, there's not any rejuvenation. So there's only like one or two percent of that old forest left in Scotland.

So it was actually everywhere. Was it originally up in the mountains and everything? And now the sort of scene that we get to see where you just have, it looks like Iceland, right, where it's just a lot of these grass hills with rocky outcrops and everything? So that was actually very uncommon back then and only happened more recently when it was just totally cleared.

Yeah. So, yeah, it was a slow, slow process, but it's definitely not a natural looking landscape. So you'll notice if you see these, like Glencoe or these famous pictures of Scotland with the big no open expanse mirrors, you'll notice that all the trees that you do see are either of islands or of cliffs where the deer and sheep can't get them.

No kidding.

So if you think like if a tree can grow out of that little cliff with hardly any soil, then obviously it could grow everywhere else. It's just it can't because there's so many herbivores to not allow that to rejuvenate.

Is that the problem today as well? They still have farms do they? With heaps and heaps of sheep and everything that's compacting the soil or eating the trees as they grow?

Yeah. So another thing, the deer population is way higher than it should naturally because they're bred for people to come hunt.

They have no predators, right? There's no wolves. There's no bears because they're all gone.

Exactly. The last wolf was shot in 17 something, bears were killed out in the Roman sea. There's no predators. Also during this period of the highlands I was looking at. There's a lot of cattle, less sheep, less deer. But cattle grazed the ground differently. They're more selective of what parts to eat.

It's not just a blitzkrieg of "just take everything that's green".

Yeah, exactly. So they would have created more biodiversity because they're more selective with their grazing and deer are not. But it's kind of, it's a big topic in Scotland. And there is organisations that are replanting the forests and either shooting lots of deer or putting up deer fences to try and let the forest rejuvenate. There's organisations like Trees for Life and there's an estate in Glenfeshie, which he's trying to rewild it. So he's shooting as many deer as he can and he's planting lots of trees to try get it back.

So do you think that's feasible? It's something that's going to eventually happen where they will hopefully be a heap more native vegetation and forests back in Scotland and even England?

I would love for that to happen. It needs to happen very gradually and with all these lands users in mind. Because obviously the shooting industry is big in Scotland. But I mean, in my opinion, if you see the red deer that you see in Norway and stuff like red deer have evolved to live in forests, and if you look at red deer in Norway, they're huge and they've got massive antlers, lots and lots of prongs.

If you compare that to your big stag in Scotland, it's really scrawny and it's antlers are not as impressive because there isn't enough food and there's too many deer. There isn't enough to really fatten them up.

So I think it'd be nice to bring back the forest. You can still have your shooting industry, but you just have less deer and the deer that you do have are bigger and healthier. So I think the changes are happening but just like everything in modern life, very, very slowly.

That's so interesting because it's as sort of analogous thing happening in Australia with kangaroos, though, that are the problem, where there's two kangaroos for every person in Australia and it's because the land was clear, and that's just the one species, the grey kangaroo, right?

So we came in and, like Scotland, except way more recently, have just totally cleared all the forests and turned it into farmland and the kangaroos go nuts, they go bananas because they're insane breeders. They can have like three babies at different stages at any one time, but they have to go in and kill them because if there's too many of them in one location, aside from competing with the sheep and the cattle on these farms, they eat everything and they starve to death because there's just too many of them. So they can't get big, they're all emaciated.

So it is funny when you get rid of those big predators and there's obviously people encouraging more of this animal, that it becomes a serious problem. So going back to Highlander's, did they have to on average, know how to survive because of the conditions up there and the sort of lack of, I don't know what I assume was good roads and buildings and everything like that, too? Like did the average Highlander compared to a Lowlander, obviously going up and down this crazy environment in these these mountains and everything, they had to have these kinds of skills and have them sharpened to be able to survive?

So, yeah my knowledge on the Lowlands of that period that I don't know as much so I can't really compare them. But what I do know, the Highlanders in the 17th century is, they would have obviously spent a lot more time outside when clans were fighting each other or stealing each other's cattle. There was a sort of fierce or very strong warrior culture.

There's a really good book called School of the Moon that talks a lot about this, and it's basically people of different clans, sneaking through the mountains at night, stealing other people's cattle and sneaking them back through the mountains at night and kind of sleeping out in the plaids and living off the land. And you'll fight each other in the mountains.

So the cattle was the main economy. You didn't really have money, so to sell them to different markets they would have to be driven, and yeah until General Wade's roads, there wasn't any real roads in the highlands. So for hundreds of years, there was a huge industry of people driving cattle. Right from the Hebrides, like small islands on the coast, they would swim cattle across the mainland. Yeah, it's crazy stories and drive the cattle down to markets in Falkirk and Edinburgh or sometimes all the way to England. They're called drovers, the people that did that, and those guys were incredibly tough. So they're, you know, swimming their cattle across the ocean, moving their cattle.

There was inns and there was options to stay at people's houses. But to protect your cattle from people nicking them it's best to sleep right next to them, with your dogs, they would usually have big dogs to help protect the cattle as well. So most of the time, they're just wrapped up in their plaids and wool blankets, sleeping out, keeping an eye on the cattle. Get up, move them another 10 to 15 miles. Do the same again. And you know, if a rival clan tries to steal it, you have to fight them off.

So, yeah those guys are tough. And that's sort of like with my series, I don't want to romanticise this type of history because obviously it was tough, you know, we don't really want to go back to it, but it's those skills, the knowledge of the medicinal plants and the culture is much deeper in terms of the mythology and the stories of the land and, you know, the beliefs and the different magic and the different powers and the different spirits of the land and stuff. So that's what I'd quite like to reconnect with and kind of regenerate, that sort of knowledge.

So what was the average kit that they had with them, too? And what kind of skills did the average Highlander require when going through the mountains in order to survive? Because I saw one of your videos where you sort of laid out all the different main, I think there were five or so different objects that they tend to have with them, what did they need? They needed to be able to make fire, find shelter, what other kinds of things did they have to be able to do?

So that video I was looking at what they carried and relating it to kind of modern survival concept. Yeah so they would have the plaid, the plaider, the great kilt was one of their main kind of ways of shelter and sleeping in, they would have carried some extra wool blankets, some sort of cutting tool, the sgian-dubh is a famous knife.

And can you explain again, what does that mean again? The sgian-dubh, they are Gaelic words, right?

Yeah. Sgian is knife and dubh generally means black or dark, and so some people believe sgian-dubh the name, it's either because the handle was made from a black oak or dubh means something dark, like dark deeds. It's like a hidden knife. So yeah, it could have come from different meanings. A dirk, which is a big dagger. That was a main weapon, 17th century. Maybe later on if you're protecting your cattle, so if you were a drover driving your cattle hundreds of miles, you know, maybe you would have a bow and arrow, maybe you'd have a pistol and if you were rich enough, you would have a sword.

So that's the thing, right? Any metal was very expensive back then, right? So it wasn't like every man had a shield and a sword and could just run around willy nilly.

Yeah, I think yeah. That's what I believe. So maybe the average or the poorer person wouldn't have all the armour and all the swords and the shields and all that stuff.

Yeah and then oats were the main thing, the main kind of stable carbohydrate that people would have carried, you know, butter or a different like a black pudding, you know, dried meat, dried fish, depending where you're from.

Haggis?

Haggis, I don't know if you would have carried it, but yeah, apparently people would make black pudding on the move. So basically you bleed your cow out. So you would get a cow, and you would cut a small hole in its neck.

That blew my mind when you were saying that. You take the blood from the cow and you can mix it with your oats. And obviously it's a higher protein food, and I think I'd only ever seen, is it the Masai Mara in Africa or whatever doing that? Mixing it with milk and urine and everything and you're just like "What!? The Scots did this?".

Yeah. It must just be if your main economies are cattle like the Masai is it's obviously just a very useful way.

It's the same thing for them, right? They have their main economies, literally cattle. They don't have money, they have cattle. It's amazing to see those sort of two cultural practises in completely different locations in the world, right?

Yeah, I've thought about doing a video comparing them, because even if you look at the Masai's dress, it's like a big blanket, it's checkered.

You're right. No kidding. No kidding.

It's weird hey?

But I think they'd probably have a harder time living in the Highlands than the Highlanders would have living in Africa, although they might get a bit more sunburnt, right?

Yeah at least we don't have lions and stuff to deal with.

So were there any other really surprising things that you learnt that, because I can imagine if I went into learning about even indigenous culture in Australia or the first settlers in Australia, I'm sure there would be things where I'd be like, how on earth did they do that? How on earth did they overcome these barriers and survive in this way, right? Because you get that romanticised kind of idea of "oh yeah they just lived off the land", right? No problem. Easy peasy. But when you go out there and you learn how to do it, everything first hand and you're researching it, were there things that you would just like, these guys like, how on earth did they survive? You know with a handful of different foods for years at a time.

Yeah. I guess the main thing is we're so spoilt in modern day that we can go to the supermarket and buy anything we want. And our diet is so high in carbohydrate and sugars and stuff, which just, you know. Yeah. I mean, the time period, 17th century, it's not that long ago. But people definitely didn't have all that stuff.

So even just going out for two or three days and changing your diet to eating some oats and, some stuff that you find, you can feel very, very low on energy because your body is used to you know, I'm used to eating breads and pasta and these really high energy stuff that you can just stuff in your face three times a day and even two or three days your body's kind of not used to that. Planning to do a longer trip where I would, you know, eat these things for longer and then maybe my body will kind of get used to it more.

Fatten up first to do a binge. Three months of junk food and then, you know, then you'll be like, yeah, she's sweet. I just drank water. I survived fine, just water and it was like a month and it was all good. Survived off the land, box ticked.

Yeah. The more I research about it there's hundreds of things. Just the general discomfort that someone would experience and just living in, you know, the wee houses that they would have lived in in winter, they would have shared it with their cattle.

Yeah, no kidding. For the sake of warmth or to protect the cattle as well?

Probably both. You might have had a divide, but, yeah, you know, sharing your house with a few cows that's going to be pretty smelly and pretty dirty. But also like a big cow that's going to give off a lot of heat. So it kind of makes sense to share your house with that in the winter.

You got these portable heaters. So before we finish up, can you tell me a bit more about Gaelic? How did your sister learn Gaelic to fluency?

Because I know obviously in Ireland there's a big push. But even then, I think you've got what is like a small percentage, 200,000 people or something who speak it and that's not even as a native language. It's even smaller in Scotland, right? But you guys have Gaelic and that originally came from Ireland, right?

So, yeah. My knowledge of it going way back I don't know so much. Gaelic, Gallic or Gaelic, some people say it slightly different.

Yes sorry that's my pronunciation, so I'm not sure. I just know Gaelic football.

Yeah, it's OK.

Don't say Gaelic to the Irish, right? If you say it to the Irish they would be like it's Irish. It's not Gaelic.

Yeah. Very similar. Yeah. The Gaelic culture it's still, there's a big push to generate it in Scotland. Yeah a very, very small percentage of people actually do it. My sister got into it just cause we all went on holiday in the Highlands and she was really interested in the stories of the land. So she just went to university and learned it and then went to a Gaelic college. Niall of Sky and then that's how she became fluent.

She's got lots of friends who are native speakers. So I am terrible at learning languages, I think I find it very, very difficult to learn, and the Gaelic I have learnt is to do with plants. Yeah, cause I'm into biology, that's what I did at university so I can somehow stick that in my mind okay, because I like plants and I know stuff about plants so I can sort of glue those words in my head. I'm trying to learn more, just general everyday.

It must be so difficult, though, when it's not in your face, right? Because it is an endangered language there, I believe, right? Like there's only what ninety thousand people who speak any of it, let alone fluently in Scotland. So it's a tiny, tiny percentage, which is a real shame because it is, I remember growing up and thinking, you know, Great Britain. Yeah. English. That's where English is from. They all speak English and they have for thousands of years. And then you realise that there are so many of these other dialects that are completely different and based on Gaelic languages, right? Originally that aren't necessarily from English or related to English, and that there are totally different cultures there. You know, you've got Cornish and Manx and everything like that as well.

Yeah, yeah. So you have the sort of things that are generally called the Celtic languages. Yeah. Cornish and the Welsh and the Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic. And then you have the Doric. As I said influenced by Norse. So yeah huge, huge variety and it is so rare.

The thing that blew my mind too about Celtic languages is that they I think when you look at the family tree of those languages, they go back to split with Germanic, I think. And they actually originated on the mainland of Europe and spread across. And so when the Romans and everything, before the Romans sort of spread west, all of those languages throughout there with Germanic and Celtic, and that's why there's still that language. And I forget the name of it in France, right?

Oh, "Bretonie?". Bretonie that's it

Yeah. Yeah. Which is a Celtic language and it's so funny hearing about like this language that's obviously spoken in Scotland now, effectively originated from a language that would've been spoken in Europe, but yeah don't give up man. You've got to get on there. Learn some, you know, tie it in with the Highlander culture.

Yeah, yeah, I'll try my best. That's the way I'm learning it is through doing the series. Yeah, my girlfriend's French as well and I'm trying to learn French, but it's difficult. It feels like I'll put a word in and another word pops up the other side.

The good thing with French, though, man, is that 70 per cent of the words in English are French. So you'll recognise it that's the sort of cheat, when I was learning French. You just have to be like "ah this is the French pronunciation" and then you just sort of every time you don't know a word, you kind of just use the English and put a bit of a French twist on it and you know, 70 percent of the time you're just like, nailed it. So what's the future plan for the YouTube channel? What's next?

I'm kind of, this year has kind of gained popularity in the last few months. And, you know, I just finished my summer job or finished my job a few months ago. So I'm kind of like, I want to invest lots more time in it and kind of see where it takes me. And people have already asked me to teach some sort of island bushcraft courses. So I've got a few gigs coming up this year and yeah for videos, I'm going to keep up the Highlander stuff, tie in lots of the Gaelic knowledge, the mythology of the plants and do more survival trips I'm planning. So I want to talk about the drovers. I want to try find an old route that they did in the Highlands and follow it for a few days carrying equipment and food that they would have had.

So lots of ideas, and then I want to tie that eventually into broader things to do with, you know, rejuvenating culture, rejuvenating human's connection with nature and how that can be beneficial to our health and wellbeing. So, yeah, that's maybe a longer term plan, but definitely within the next few months. Lots and lots more videos about Highlanders.

Brilliant and so where can everyone come and find out more about you and watch some of these videos?

Alright so the YouTube channel is called Fandabi Dozi.

How do you spell it?

Fandabi Dozi, F.A.N.D.A.B.I D.O.Z.I.

I had to write it down that's how bad I am with languages.

All good.

Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram. It's called Fandabi Wilderness, got a Facebook page Fandabi Dozi Wilderness Adventures and yeah, you'll find me there.

Awesome. I'll put up all the links in the transcript and again, Tom, thank you so much for joining me.

Cool, thanks so much.