Calum's Road by Roger Hutchinson - first published in the UK in 2006
This book tells the story of a remarkably determined man called Calum MacLeod, who lived on the island of Raasay off the east coast of Skye. He got tired of waiting for the local council to build 1.75 miles of road from Brochel to his home community at Arnish and decided to build the road himself.
Calum's Road has to be seen in the light of the last 200 years of the history of Raasay and its inhabitants. In the mid 19th century the people of Raasay were cleared from the more fertile areas of the island to make way for sheep. Many emigrated and those who remained were banished to eke out a living at the north end of the island and on the tidal islands of Fladda and Eilean Tigh or on the rocky island of Rona to the north of Raasay. George Rainy, who owned Raasay from 1846 to 1863, had a 6-foot high dry stone wall constructed across the island at its narrowest part. The islanders were not permitted to live or graze their animals on the south side of the wall.
In 1921 desperate crofters from Rona settled illegally on the south east side of Raasay and reclaimed the land, from which their ancestors had been evicted 70 years earlier. They became known as the Raasay Raiders. After a court case, the matter was finally resolved when the island was sold to the Scottish Rural Workers Approved Society. They leased the island to the Board of Agriculture, who created new crofts on Raasay.
In the 1920s the inhabitants of Fladda unsuccessfully petitioned the local council for a footbridge over the tidal causeway, so that the children who lived on Fladda could walk to and from school. Instead of a bridge, the council built a small school on Fladda in 1936. In 1962 Calum asked the council for a causeway to Fladda but he was told the cost was too high. In 1965 the last three families left Fladda.
In 1931 the inhabitants of north Raasay petitioned their local council for a 3.5 mile road from Brochel Castle to Arnish and on to Fladda. Beyond Brochel Castle the only access was a narrow footpath. Gradually the population of north Raasay decreased, mainly because of the lack of road access. Calum hoped that this decline would be reversed if a road was built. Despite decades of petitioning for the road, the local council always refused to build it.
From 1949 to 1952 the local council paid Calum and his brother Charles to build a track from Torran to Fladda.
Calum began building a road from Brochel to Arnish in around 1964 using only hand tools and a second hand book on road construction and maintenance, which was published in 1900. Calum got through 6 picks, 6 shovels, 3 wheelbarrows, 4 spades and 5 sledgehammers while building the road. He did the road building in his spare time - he was a crofter, postman, boatman and an assistant lighthouse keeper on Rona By the time he finished the road he and his wife were the only residents left at Arnish. He did all the work on the road himself, apart from some help with blasting through some sections to form the foundations and create aggregate, which the Department of Agriculture paid for, and some surveying, which the Royal Engineers did for him.
Calum's road was finished by 1974 but was only accessible for tractors and 4-wheel drive vehicles. After much discussion and procrastinating, the local council tarmacked the road in 1982. Calum died suddenly in 1988.
This book is more than just the story of a road. It is about what one individual can achieve if they are determined enough.
