This week we will be priveledged to see Griff Rhys Jones undertaking an incredible journey as he travels the length of the UK on the country’s highest mountain peaks.

Griff begins his exploration of Britain’s mountains in the breathtaking wilderness of the North West Highlands of Scotland.

The vast and empty landscape in the far north of Britain can seem uninhabitable, but those who live here have an extraordinary connection with the land. The people have been shaped by the landscape in which they live, and by its rich history and culture.

Nowhere else in the country makes the visitor feel more like an explorer, as Griff finds out when he steps on to a frozen wilderness closer to the Arctic Circle than to his native London. The mountains seem to be a testing landscape for the outsider, yet, many years after the Vikings left, these Highlands were home to half of Scotland’s population. Today, this part of Britain is only marginally more populated than the Sahara.

To try to understand what the mountains mean to those who live here, Griff meets a crofter trying to encourage people back to the land, an innovative artist who settled here because of its emptiness, and, on the Isle of Skye, he explores the mountain range that is privately owned, but up for sale.