Saturday, January 27, 2007

Raasay and the Road to Somewhere

Remote places are hard to get to and the problem is usually the final approaches.

People don’t always like to live in places that can’t be reached by wheeled transport and that is why the north end of the island of Raasay gradually became de-populated (apart from the earlier Highland Clearances). Calum MacLeod lived at the north end of Raasay and after several attempts at persuading his ‘local’ council to build a road, he got down to doing it himself. It took him 10 years with a wheelbarrow, shovel and pick-axe. Of course, the story is a little more involved.

furthermore...

The road that Calum Macleod built was eventually coated with tarmac just before he died. Roads like this in the islands of the Hebrides are often built as single track with passing places and cross terrain that is either rocky (some rocks are blasted away) or very boggy.