There are 76 occurrences of the word sea/s, 23 of ocean/s, 5 of marine, and 49 of coast/s or coastal. Marine wilderness in the Daily Record is the kingdom of birds. As the winter approaches, the gatherings of dunlins, ‘residents of our upland moors during the summer months but now taking communal refuge in the marine environment, may be compared with the starlings’, with their ebbs and flows. Bewick swans come from ‘wild and distant places such as Siberia and mostly winter in southern England and along Continental North Sea coasts’. Meanwhile, whooper swans’ voices are ‘rhapsody as opposed to rap [of mute swans], fluting and musical ... and wild. Everything about them recalls for me at least, a true sense of the wildernesses from whence they came’ (Graham, 2010a). The swallows ‘must take the rough with the smooth as they journey, battling through storms or skirting them, crossing mountain ranges, seas and deserts en masse and perhaps even living or dying as one’ (Graham, 2010b).
A rather poetic description of the landscapes seen on West Highland Lines rain journeys notes that ‘[t]he line from Edinburgh to Aberdeen allows those who love the ocean the
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indulgence of hours to gaze out over the North Sea’, while seals can be seen in Kyle of Lochalsh, if one looks towards Skye and the Small Isles. The article also lists more terrestrial sights, such as ‘the Rannoch Moor wilderness’, Cairngorms National Park, and the ‘lush valleys’ between Aberdeen and Inverness. One can also take a train to North Berwick, and visit ‘the five-star Scottish Seabird Centre overlooking the Bass Rock in East Lothian, home of John Muir’. (Daily Record, 2013d).
The Daily Record also has its share of adventurers. The ‘polar adventurer’ Anne Kershaw ‘first visited the icy wilderness [of the South Pole] in 1985 with her adventurer pilot husband Giles’, but after his accidental death she first turned his business ‘into a respected airline’, and later started a campaign group to save the South Pole (McIver, 2011b).
There really is nowhere in the world like Antarctica, it's the most special and unique place I have ever seen. For me, a lot of my heart is there. My first husband is buried there and I have worked there for so many years that Antarctica is a part of me as well now. And it's important to me, and to the entire planet, because it is the last wilderness, it's spiritual, hostile and unknown and it's Mother Nature at her finest (McIver, 2011b).
Karen Darke is interviewed, as she is given the Vitalise Woman of Achievement 2010 award (Booth, 2010b). Ed Wardle ‘survived 50 days in the wilderness [of Yukon] with only basic equipment’, filming a document inspired by the life of Christopher McCandless who starved to death in Alaska. Wardle himself had planned to stay in the wilderness for 80 days, but had to pull out earlier than expected ‘as his physical and mental state deteriorated’ (Hendry, 2009).
124 I would visit the river every day looking for these big, red salmon. They just didn't turn up and by day 50 I'd just had enough. I was feeling flaky and shaky and spent half the time trying to motivate myself… I was eating one meal every two days. I was starving… At the time, I thought I was giving up but in hindsight, I think I was pretty strong in carrying on for that long… My love for the wild has only grown. The more you know about something, the more you can be in love with it. I would go back - but for two weeks and take a lot of food and a lot of friends with me (Hendry, 2009).
In I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, the former topless model Sam Fox and TV chef Gino D'Acampo start their experience in the ‘Australian wilderness’ off the Gold Coast by swimming to the island, despite recent sightings of great white sharks (Young, 2009). The TV star Neil Oliver has to experience the dangers of the South Atlantic Ocean while filming The Last Explorers: ‘I worried about hitting icebergs or containers that have fallen off ships, I worried about being swamped by massive waves, I worried about capsizing, I worried about drowning’. Neil McDonald, creative director for the factual department of BBC Scotland, notes that: ‘Perhaps it is something to do with being a country on an island at the edge of Europe but numerous Scots definitely had a desire to go to far-flung places’ (Holmes, 2011).
An article detailing water sports opportunities in Scotland praises the country’s opportunities for coasteering (‘travelling along clifflined coasts, scrambling up and down rocks, inlets and coves as waves crash into the rocks below, cliff jumping into the sea, and swimming with and against the tide’), diving (‘[t]here are reefs, shipwrecks and wildlife to tempt divers to great spots such as Orkney, Eyemouth in Berwickshire and Oban on the west coast’), and power boating and RIB rides (‘a great way to see wildlife such as seals, dolphins, birdlife and whales’). There are also plenty of opportunities for freshwater activities, such as canoeing (‘explore the real wilderness in remote lochs, travel across the
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entire country through the Caledonian Canal or paddle along the popular Tay and Spey Rivers or lochs Lomond, Earn, Morlich or Tay’) (“Get wet, wet, wet for the time of your life on Scotland’s rivers and lochs,” 2013).
There is somewhat less context with the references to coastal and marine wilderness in the
Daily Record than there is in The Scotsman. The marine wilderness is a place to do things
in, even more pronouncedly than the terrestrial one, even if in some cases the activity is just admiring the view from the window of a train. For the adventurers, be they celebrities or sportspeople, marine wilderness adds a whole new level of risk, with its opportunities for drowning and being eaten by sharks. In return, it offers its own kind of wildlife, with birds and marine mammals.