Crianlarich Station: a chance to stretch legs on West Highland Line
Glasgow to Mallaig is one of the great railway journeys of the world, although you might not guess it from the rattling old rolling stock First Scotrail puts on the line. At least this time we can see out of the windows. A guard once explained to me that the coaches are cleaned only every few weeks; get your timing wrong and you peer at some of the finest scenery in Scotland through a film of mud.*
Looking forward to next week’s trip to Eigg and already memories come flooding back before we even set foot on the Shearwater, which will carry us from Arisaig to the island. The last time I visited Eigg was almost 35 years ago when I was a Financial Times reporter researching ferry policy.
Photographer Cailean Maclean
It is a puzzle why the undoubted success of 20 community buy-outs of land in the Highlands and islands over the past 20 years has attracted so little political support. In his book From the Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops Jim Hunter recalls that only one Scottish First Minister has ever visited a buyout (Jack McConnell, Assynt in 2002). Despite a supposed commitment to land reform, the SNP has done little to advance the cause during six years in power.
Lines in the sand on Canna
In recent years, communities in the Scottish Highlands and Islands have taken ownership of more than half a million acres – an area equivalent to that of an English county like Nottinghamshire or West Yorkshire. In places long characterised by contracting economies and shrinking populations, this remarkable development has resulted in new homes, new businesses, greatly enhanced self-confidence and the attraction of lots of new residents.
Thanks to the Gaelic poet and writer Angus Peter Campbell (and incidentally, my former colleague at Grampian Television) for the link to the Global Jukebox, which has put online 17,000 songs and stories recorded by Alan Lomax, perhaps the greatest folksong collector of all time. Among them are dozens from Scotland, including many from Daliburgh and Garrynamonie in Angus Peter’s native South Uist.
There was an inevitability about the meeting of John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw; their paths and their interests had been intertwining for years. Several times they had been in the same place at the same time, but had not met until a wet night in 1934, when he took the Lochearn to South Uist to address a meeting of the Sea League. Continue reading
The dining room in Canna House
Margaret and John would not be best pleased, but there is a curious connection between Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and the Laird of Canna’s Royalist ancestor Major-General Archibald Campbell.
Before the hurricane struck, I was looking for words to end the old year or, since the clock was ticking, start the new one. I found Margaret’s letter typewritten late at night during another storm-tossed Christmas. At almost the same time I came across the December West Word, an action packed newsletter written by gas and candle light as the western highlands and islands recovered from a battering which felled trees, flattened outbuildings, lifted roofs and wrecked power and water supplies. Continue reading
Pictures of Margaret with kind permission of Kildonan Museum.
“Margaret Fay Shaw I always remember from a 100th birthday photo in the South Uist museum: fag in hand, dram on the arm of her chair!”
Memories, memories. With the anniversary of Margaret’s death coming up these pictures gain special significance. Martin’s comment – which I found quite by chance on the excellent Scottish Island Explorers blog – got me searching through pictures and memories of my own. I had also seen that 100th birthday photo in the very fine Kildonan Museum on South Uist, or Comann Eachdraigh Uibhist a Deas in Gaelic.
Interesting to see that this year’s theme for Faclan: The Hebridean Book Festival, is An Dà Shealladh, or Second Sight, although how Alistair Darling snuck in there I don’t know. The former Chancellor has a holiday home in Lewis, as well as a new book to promote, but doesn’t seem to have inherited any of his ancestors’ gift of foretelling the future. If he had, perhaps he might have avoided the banking crisis.
The Man Who Gave Away His Island, A Life of John Lorne Campbell of Canna, by Ray Perman is available now on Birlinn. Click here to order your copy.
Photos of Canna
