Calum's Road: how an Isle of Raasay crofter built his own road

Yet it has become the stuff of Hebridean legend, honed from the rock and boggy land by crofter Calum MacLeod in a single-handed mammoth effort that took more than a decade of hard graft to complete.

This year marks 50 years since the crofter and part-time lighthouse worker completed his astonishing challenge of constructing the 1.75 miles of road from scratch, using just his wheelbarrow, pick axe and shovel, armed with a dog-eared copy of a ‘how to build a road’ manual, his own brute strength and typical islander’s determination.

His immense task would come to symbolise Hebridean traits of hard work and resilience, a physical representation of the centuries long fight to halt the flood of people leaving the islands, and of islanders’ readiness to thumb their noses at puffed up authority that dared to get in their way.

Today the road, which cuts through heather, bog and boulders to connect the small north crofting community of Arnish with the south of the island and the onward route to its ferry, has become tourist attraction, drawing visitors keen to see for themselves the extraordinary results of one man’s endeavours.

While for those frustrated motorists driven to despair over the potholed state of modern roads, such a no nonsense approach to taking matters into his own hands may well be nothing short of inspirational.

Born in 1911, Calum had spent almost his whole life in the small sheltered township, growing up in a world preserved in Gaelic, crofting and fishing.

As time moved on, its community fractured and eventually their numbers would dwindle from more than 100 to a mere handful.

Changing times were not helped by Raasay’s not terribly extensive road network. It ended almost two miles south at Brochel, leaving islanders like him and wife Lexi ent isolated with just a narrow path  to link them to the more populated south of the island.

Years of campaigning to the local authority for a proper road had fallen on deaf ears, says Roger Hutchinson, whose 2007 book, Calum’s Road, highlighted the crofter’s remarkable effort.

As frustration grew, the lack of a road became increasingly personal.

Calum’s daughter, Julie, was set to head to secondary school at Portree in the early 1960s and with no proper road she faced having to remain on Skye when other children made their way home.

“It was taken for granted that she would stay at a hostel during the week,” says Roger. “But the children on the south of Raasay could go home at weekends.

“With no road between Brochel and Arnish, Calum and his wife couldn’t get her home. So, when she went to school, he set out to build the road.”

But the existing narrow track – barely enough to cope with a narrow axle horse and cart and with countless twists, turns and inclines – could not simply be converted into a road capable of handling a motor vehicle.

And there was the challenging landscape to tackle, with huge boulders and sheer drops and, where the stones and heather eventually gave way, sodden bog.

Undeterred, and despite being in his 50s, Calum set off on spring morning with pick axe, hammer, barrow, shovel and lunchbox, determined to dig a route to freedom.

To help, adds Roger, the crofter, postman and part-time lighthouse keeper paid a few pence for a copy of Thomas Aitken's manual Road Making & Maintenance: A Practical Treatise for Engineers, Surveyors and Others, a 60-year-old publication that would guide him through the basics of how to build a road.

Some help came from an Army engineers’ contingent on Skye who learned of his feat and offered help plotting parts of the route, ensuring it would be suitable for modern vehicles.

But his mission impossible, starting from the tarmacked council road at Brochel, past steep banks of thick vegetation, green pastures of grazing sheep and the ghostly remains of long since abandoned communities, would be accomplished single handedly and take more than ten years to reach its end.

In his book, Roger tells how Calum cleared clumps of wind-blasted native woodland, chopped down trees and hauled up their roots to widen the track into a road.

Bigger obstacles, including a six-foot stone wall built by a 19-century landlord to keep people and stock away from his land, were simply blasted away.

“He got dynamite to blow bits of the countryside apart but it was all for the greater good,” reflects Roger.

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But some obstacles were mourned more than others, among them a large rocky column known as Cailleach – meaning ‘old woman’, and considered a cousin to the Old Man of Storr.

“It stood just up the coast, south of Arnish and was quite a unique piece of landscape,” says Roger. “He blew it up because it was in the way.”

The huge physical task was in itself impressive but Calum’s Road would also be a true feat of engineering. One engineer’s manual later described its “fearsome hairpin bends, one in four gradients and a coastal section cantilevered over the sea”.

It added: “The structure was a layer of locally gleaned stone, much of which had to be broken by hand, surfaced with gravel and small stones to a finished width of three metres.”

By 1974, Calum was within touching distance of his Arnish croft.

Roger was working as a journalist for the West Highland Free Press in 1979 when he first heard of plans by the local council to tarmac the road. Curious as to why they would resurface a private road, he set off for Raasay to find out more.

He arrived to find a road without passing places or cattle grids, twisting and turning over the landscape and emerging seamlessly from the hillside, but still a challenge for his modern Volvo.

“Now it’s signposted, but back then there was nothing and you weren’t sure where the council road stopped and where the other road began.

“I thought it might be Calum’s Road but it was very rough and I didn’t want to rip the under carriage of my car.

“There were so many twists and turns, ups and downs, you couldn’t see very far.”

He parked, got out of his car and heard something rustling in hazel and birch undergrowth leading down a steep slope to the shore.

As he peered towards the shrubbery, Calum emerged.

“He was about 5ft 9ins, very wiry and fit. He was in his 60s by this time and I was in my late 20s, and I couldn’t have moved the way he did.

“He was holding a telegraph pole on his shoulder which he had carried up the hillside from the shore.

“He stood facing me with a big grin on his face, wearing his tam o’shanter and with this telegraph pole balanced on his right shoulder.

“All the time we chatted, he kept hold of the telegraph pole,” he adds. “I had a little camera and said ‘can I take a photograph’.  I had to ask if he wanted to put the pole down – it was like he had completely forgotten he was holding it.”

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Roger’s book about Calum’s Road would go on to inspire a play and the band Capercaillie wrote a strathspey to mark MacLeod's achievement.

But even though the determined crofter had achieved his goal in 1974, according to Roger it was only when the road was properly surfaced by the local authority that he considered it anywhere near complete.

And he continued to work on it, and travelling the length of it in his hardy Land Rover – venturing no further than its junction with the established road because, incredibly, he didn’t have a driving licence.

“By his estimation, it was only when it was tarmacked that it was really finished,” says Roger.

“He didn’t want to create landscape art, he wanted a functional road.

“And he never stopped working on it until he died, he kept improving it even after the council.

“He called it the ‘autobahn’.”

Calum’s contribution to Raasay was honoured when he received the British Empire Medal. The citation referred to his efforts in maintaining supplies to the Rona lighthouse, but most suspected it was for his astonishing effort against all odds, in constructing the road.

Calum died in 1988 having left his croft to do some work.

He was found – perhaps appropriately – alongside his trusty wheelbarrow.