Calum's Road

I took prettier photographs today, but this was the most meaningful. Here is the start of Calum's Road, at Brochel on Raasay. There are 2 miles of it to the small cluster of crofts at Arnish. It switchbacks over the uneven boggy and rocky ground, swings round tight corners and takes precipitous lines along cliff tops. When you drive it, it feels longer, and there is no point where you can see more than a few hundred metres of it.

The story of Calum's Road has become legendary, it has radiated from the small island of Raasay across Scotland, throughout Britain and to distant parts of the world. A journalist called Roger Hutchinson who went to interview Calum when he was building it and wrote a book of it called simply 'Calum's Road'. My blip friend Sydney has a copy waiting to be read when school is out this Summer. When I said I was going to Raasay, blippers asked me did I know the story. Coincidentally, the very day that we should have travelled to Raasay last Autumn (when we postponed because of Bob the Cat's illness), Radio 4 broadcast a dramatisation of the book. I had read it, but I had to see it for myself to really appreciate what Calum did with only his own manual labour, armed with a wheelbarrow, pick and shovel; and a half crown book on road building.

Calum single handedly built a road to his community at Arnish from where the road ended at Brochel. He gave up waiting for the Council to build it, they had consistently prevaricated and refused to help. His community of crofters were gradually leaving for want of a road to connect them to the rest of the island. It took him over ten years and a thousand long days of labour. When he finished, it was a stony cart track, now it is adopted by the Council and is tarmac all the way.

When Calum completed his road, he and his wife were the last people left at Arnish. But today there is a community of crofters and holiday cottages again. There is a well known TV chef who has a property between there and the tidal island of Fladday.

We ran the gauntlet of the free range pigs and made it onto the island which has its own lochan, on there we saw a pair of great skuas, and in the distance a small herd of red deer. The weather was as good as it gets in April in the Inner Hebrides, a beautiful day, a great day out.