Crofter who built own road inspires African villagers to do the same

Published on Wednesday 2 July 2008 22:27

FOR 20 years, Calum MacLeod toiled alone to build a road to his croft on the island of Raasay, near Skye.

He began the arduous job in the 1960s after failing to win public funds for an upgrade, and his exploits featured in the best-selling 2006 book Calum's Road by the Raasay-based author Roger Hutchison.

Now that story has inspired the building of a four-mile lifeline road for an impoverished part of Africa, cut off by rainwater for six months of the year.

Villagers in Gambia also failed to win state funding for their project, and once they have built their road it will be named after the Raasay crofter, who died in 1988.

Mr Hutchison said it was a wonderful tribute to Mr MacLeod, who built the road in an attempt to revive his local community.

"The fact that his achievement has now inspired people in similar circumstances far away in Africa would, I'm sure, have pleased him immensely," he said.

Max Murray, emeritus professor of veterinary medicine at Glasgow University, who is involved in volunteer work in Gambia, said: "I found the book inspiring. The people (in Gambia] live in a very isolated, rural community, dependent on a few hectares with a few cattle and some food crops. The parallels with crofting are remarkable.

"It is too expensive to build the road commercially, so I thought the local people could build it themselves. There is a great Scottish tradition in the country and it would be fantastic to have a Calum's Road up country in Gambia."

Glasgow University vets have worked in the region for decades and have forged strong links with the Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust, set up by the late animal conservationist Stella Marsden, who died this year, and her sister Heather Armstrong.

Ms Armstrong said the road was part of a 20-mile stretch of dirt track between the towns of Kudang and Kuntaur.

"The final four miles are really rough, but for the villages nearest Kuntaur, the road is the only link to the nearest clinic, the main markets and the rice fields. It's a really important stretch of road but has been largely washed away. People have to strip off their clothes and wade across with the water up to their armpits.

"My sister tried to get funds for the road. When she took bad, we had to fly her home and she told me 'I have not managed to complete the road and want you to make sure it is built'. I said I would do it but wondered how on earth would I manage it.

"Max said I should read Calum's Road, and it gave us inspiration. Sometimes you need a little something to get you going."

Commercial estimates for building the road varied from 1.2 million to 2.8 million, but doing it mainly by themselves will cost villagers some 150,000.

BACKGROUND

CALUM MacLeod started his now famous road in 1965 when he was 56. After his daughter Julia left Raasay he and his wife Lexie were the only two people left in the north of the island where Calum lived and worked as a crofter, postman and tender of the Rona lighthouse.

The path from Brochel Castle to their house was little more than a sheep-track, but it was the only route for the postman, doctor or any visitors to the MacLeod house.

After Raasay lost most of its population just one middle-aged couple lived in Arnish and the county council argued it could not spend nearly 500,000 in today's money to build a two-mile road.

Calum decided therefore to build it himself despite not having a driving licence. Over the next 20 years he painstakingly set about constructing the 12-feet wide, two-mile long road with little more than a pick, a shovel and a wheelbarrow.

The route which starts at Brochel Castle and winds north to Arnish, on the north tip of Raasay, was described as an "obsessive work of art", carved out of the narrow, rutted bridle path, across rough hillsides, along the edge of cliff-faces, through patches of stunted hazel and birch and over peat bogs.

His former neighbour, Donald MacLeod said of the remarkable achievement: "With a road he hoped new generations of people would return to the north end of Raasay."