Walk on the wild side - past and present

An area I've been keen to visit for a while is the most south-easterly point of South Uist. Today was the day.
A six kilometre walk on a fairly well-constructed track - that is not to say there weren't any very boggy bits - to the deserted village of Thairteabhagh. Building the track must have been an enormous and important undertaking. You can see a section in the image following the shore.
Half way along the track were the foundations of a school serving three villages, all about 4 km from the school. Attendance records, stored in the local library, showed that 20% of the pupils didn't make it each day and I can quite understand why. "The car wouldn't start" pales to insignificance by comparison to "It was blowing a gale and pouring and I had to walk two and a half miles over a moorland pass to get there in some pretty rubbish shoes and clothes."
Me, I used to dream of living in a cardboard box..........