Arnish (Raasay)

The road Calum MacLeod built

The public road ends at Arnish, and the last stretch of it was built by one man with a pick, a shovel and a homemade wheelbarrow. Calum MacLeod was born in 1911 and raised here, and worked as a crofter, a postman and an assistant keeper at the Rona lighthouse. After years of failed requests for a proper road, he turned the footpath from Brochel into a single-track road himself, the hand-built section running 1.75 miles. He worked at it through the decade from 1964, with limited blasting help from the Department of Agriculture, and the council adopted and surfaced the result in 1982. When they came to tar it, he said it would be like an autobahn when they had finished.

Arnish sits at Raasay's north end, a scatter of crofts around the horseshoe of Loch Arnish. This is the rugged end of the island, where Torridonian sandstone gives way to Lewisian gneiss and birch and rowan shelter the crofts among the rock. An archaeological survey counted forty-five structures across the dispersed township, thirteen of them houses; by the late 1960s only Calum and his wife Lexie were left in the whole of northern Raasay.

The path to Torran, Fladda and Brochel Castle

The walk from the road end is the main thing to do here. The circuit to Torran and Fladda is 5.5 kilometres and takes two to two and a half hours, climbing 280 metres on clear but steep paths that run to heather and boggy patches. It winds through native birchwood, passes the restored houses at Torran and crosses a stone-built terrace, with the Storr and Skye across the water to the west. The final reach to Eilean Fladday is a tidal causeway, slippery with seaweed and passable only at low tide, so check the water before you commit to it. Calum and his brother built that earlier path under council contract across three winters between 1949 and 1952, for thirty-five pounds each a season. He brought the experience to his own road afterwards.

Two miles back down towards Brochel, where his stretch begins, Brochel Castle stands on a plug of conglomerate rock. It was the seat of the MacLeods of Raasay until the seventeenth century, and enough survives — walls up to two metres thick, a rock-cut sentry box, a kitchen tower and a stair.

Supplies and dining on southern Raasay

For food and supplies you go south. Raasay has one shop, the community stores at Inverarish, which keeps groceries, bread from island bakers and local produce including Raasay venison, Dexter beef and honey; it doubles as the post office. Near the ferry, the distillery that opened in 2017 has a bar and a seasonal three-course kitchen, and makes both whisky and a gin flavoured with Raasay juniper. Raasay House, a little further round, cooks wild Raasay venison, langoustines from the Sound of Raasay, Skye scallops and vegetables from its walled garden. None of this is in Arnish. The north end has no shop and no petrol station.

The journey north

Getting here takes some commitment. From the mainland it is the A87 and the Skye Bridge to Sconser, then the CalMac ferry across to Raasay, about twenty-five minutes. From the terminal it is about seven miles of single-track road to Brochel and then Calum's almost two miles beyond it, narrow, winding and potholed in places. There is no bus and no public transport to the north end, so plan on a bike or a car.

The journey north and the road's legacy

Calum's story outlived him — Roger Hutchinson wrote a book about the road, and Capercaillie set it to a song. The road is still single-track and still there, carrying cars past the crofts to the township where he was born.