HISTORY
The end of the road
You won’t believe what stoic Scotsman Calum MacLeod did to prevent his remote village dying from neglect.
WORDS KATE ROBERTSON
HISTORY
The end of the road
You won’t believe what stoic Scotsman Calum MacLeod did to prevent his remote village dying from neglect.
WORDS KATE ROBERTSON
Refusing to let authorities kill his remote village by neglect, Calum McLeod built his own road.
They breed them tough on the Isle of Raasay, an island sandwiched between the Isle of Skye and the mainland of Scotland in the Inner Hebrides. The 22-kilometre long island is a picture of rugged beauty with the terrain an intoxicating mix of hills and craggy outcrops, bogland and grassy moors, cliffs and beaches.
Journalist and author Roger Hutchinson has called Raasay home for the past 20 years and says the older generation of islanders have a stoicism and quiet determination, borne of the lack of support they have received from authorities over generations and their need to be self-sufficient. For generations, the island has been home to crofters, as small lot farmers are called in Scotland. Crofters eke out their livelihoods by growing their own produce, vegetable and animal, and supplementing it by fishing.
“The Highlands and the Hebridean communities intrigue me. I like the people — they’re fascinating — and the culture.”
— Roger Hutchinson
The stunning coastal landscape overlooking the Sound of Raasay.
‘Essentially crofts are small strips of lands, enough to keep a few animals and grow some things. They tend to be rectangular, reaching down from the hill to the shore, so they cover what variety of terrain there is, enabling you to gather seaweed at the shore for fertiliser and use the hill at the back for grazing. There's always common grazing at the back, the moorland, which everybody shares for grazing. It’s portioned and managed by a democratic local grazing committee. It's a very communal way of life.’ From the middle of the 18th century to the mid-19th century, the crofters faced waves of forced evacuations by private landowners who wanted to use the land to graze sheep or as a rich man’s playground — stocking it with game to create a hunting estate.
The crofting tradition continues in Raasay and other parts of Scotland.
‘They were literally forced to leave. They were delivered with eviction notices and sometimes carted down to the eviction ships at the harbour kicking and screaming and shouting. It was brutal.’ Some ended up in Canada or Australia with no money and no hope of seeing their families again. ‘The Clearances’, as they were known, ended in 1886 with the passage of legislation that gave the crofters security of tenure but, as the 20th century dawned, the authorities were reluctant to deliver the most basic of services to the hardy crofters. Begrudgingly, they eventually provided electricity and telephones to those living in the south of the island of Raasay, but the north was ignored with the hope and expectation that neglect would force the people living there to leave.
A regular ferry now plies the waters between the Isle of Skye and Raasay.
Roger Hutchinson, author and long-time Raasay resident.
View of the Sound of Raasay from the Isle of Skye.
The most glaring lack of basic infrastructure was easy access to the ferry pier and the main town of Inverarish in the south, with the road finishing over three kilometres shy of the northern village of Arnish. The Arnish villagers had to walk about 50 minutes just to reach the start of the road into town, making transporting produce or getting medical help difficult. ‘You couldn’t even get the hearse in to take the dead away.’ The council’s plan to depopulate the area would have worked if it weren’t for the stubbornness of local postman, part-time lighthouse keeper and crofter, Calum MacLeod. When multiple petitions and letters demanding a road failed to prompt action, and the village he loved began to shrink, Calum took matters into his own hands.
The start of Calum’s Road, on the Isle of Raasay.
‘People just kept leaving till finally there was just Calum and his family, and a couple of others left there, and Calum was getting on in years at that point. He was 56 when he just went, “Well, I'll build it myself”. And he did.’ Drawing on the resilience of his ancestors and his intimate knowledge of the land, Calum spent 20 years building the missing link of road needed to connect Arnish to the rest of the island in a heroic effort that Roger has documented in his book, Calum’s Road. ‘Calum bought a book on road building published in 1900 by a Scottish engineer, which was a kind of do-it-yourself Road Building for Dummies. It was incredibly detailed, and he learned about gradients and culverts and drains and the development of passing places and he just followed it,’ Roger says.
The ruins of Brochel castle on the coastal cliffs of Raasay.
Whilst he had a little help from the military to survey the route and blow up some of the boulders that were too hard to move, Calum built the stone road himself; his only tools being a pick, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow he’d made himself. ‘He worked on it day after day as well as looking after his animals on the croft, growing things and working as a part-time lighthouse keeper,’ Roger says. It was an extraordinary effort, especially considering that whilst Calum did buy a Land Rover, he never drove beyond the section of road he had built with his own hands as he didn’t have a driver’s licence.
“It’s a wonderful island to visit. It’s magical. It's sensationally beautiful.”
Dolphin spotting is a favourite activity for visitors and locals.
Calum completed the road in 1974. A few years later the council finally agreed to surface ‘Calum’s Road’ with bitumen and pay for its ongoing maintenance. The road is still used today, with a wheelbarrow sitting underneath the sign bearing his name. The road has helped triple the population in Calum’s beloved Arnish to about half a dozen residents — a significant number given Raasay’s population totals about 160 people.
Pigs pose a hazard for drivers on Calum's Road.
The island is a magnet for walkers.
‘The roads are now reasonably maintained and there's no reason why Arnish can’t grow in the future,’ Roger says. Raasay is now a remote tourist destination: apart from a hotel, three bed and breakfasts, two shops and one primary school, the island boasts a distillery that makes traditional whisky and gin.
Harbor seal colony in the Sound of Raasay.
Puffins can be seen in the Scottish Hebrides.