Broadcast - Musical Correspondent... with Tom Morton
Photo by Photo Ralf Schulze CC BY 2.0 Capercaillie
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Story behind the song… Calum’s Road
n 1988 Scottish folk band Capercaillie recorded a track called Calum’s Road for their album The Blood is Strong.
Raasay.
It was a fitting tribute to commemorate the extraordinary triumph of a Highland crofter who single-handedly built a highway almost two miles across an island - because nobody else would.
For most of Calum’s 77 year life the community he grew up in was separated from the rest of the island due to the lack of a proper road. The only highway on the island stopped at Brochel, almost two miles from Arnish so the only way the local community could travel was on foot or by boat.
Calum MacLeod was born in Glasgow on 15 November 1911, the son of merchant seaman Donald Macleod of Arnish, Raasay. When war broke out in 1914 the young Calum and his five siblings were taken by their mother back to the croft next to his grandfather’s in northern
After decades of unsuccessful lobbying the crofter, lighthouse keeper and part-time postman decided to take matters into his own hands. At the age of 56 Calum picked up his shovel, pick and wheelbarrow and, armed with a Victorian guide to Road Making & Maintenance: A Practical
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Treatise for Engineers, Surveyors and Others published in 1900, he got to work. For the next 10 years, between 1964 and 1974, Calum built one and three quarter miles of single track road, with passing places, between Brochel Castle and Arnish. It was an epic piece of engineering as he had to navigate his way up and down incredibly steep inclines, through boggy moorland and around the cliffs above rocky inlets. However, his single-handed struggle and perseverance against the red tape of officialdom paid off as the road was eventually adopted by the
