Tom Allan journeys to the remote Scottish peninsula of Scoraig to the find out how the community have pulled together to thrive and work with the elements.

Scoraig, in the Scottish Highlands, is a place of elemental forces ‘ a thin spit of land jutting out into the North Atlantic. It is scoured by winds and drenched by rains sweeping off the sea. One always feels on the edge of something here ‘ looking out past the shoulder of the Western Isles, there is nothing but dark ocean until one lights upon the shores of Iceland. The thought makes you feel naked and exposed.

When we eventually arrived on the neighbouring headland, it was twilight. Mercifully, the waves and wind gave us a gentle passage across Little Loch Broom. We were being ferried over by Aaron Forsyth, Chair of Scoraig Community Council. ‘It’s a fairly remote place,’ he explained. ‘Although Scoraig’s a peninsula, and attached to the mainland, it is only accessible by a narrow footpath of about four miles long.’

Indeed, in many ways it is more isolated than many of the Scottish Islands, which enjoy subsidised ferry services. This noisy little boat, on which Aaron collected us, is usually reserved for Scoraig’s locals and the twice weekly post.

The elements, unforgiving though they may be, also provide a valuable resource for the residents. Some 70 people live there in small crofts and cottages, most of which they rebuilt by hand over the last 40 years. They lie, peppered, in a thin line over the peninsula’s south slope and shore ‘ a healthy walk between each of them. Each croft has its own small wind turbine providing light and energy, and the abundant rain that pours off the hillside provides all the water that they will ever need.

The reason for my visit to Scoraig was for the opening of the smallest exhibition centre in Scotland ‘ a tiny lighthouse that the community saved from being scrapped. Relocated to a spot by the coast path, it is intended as a truly welcoming sight to weary walkers, providing information about the local community ‘ how it makes use of local resources in everything it does, from shipbuilding to knitting to turbine technology.

Scoraig appears prosperous and attractive today, but it was not always so. ‘I don’t think it was ever an easy place to live,’ Cathy Dagg, curator of the exhibition centre, told me. ‘It was barren. People had to break a lot of the land from scratch. This area was known as the Black Moor. In around 1840 people were moved here from further up the Strath. They had to clear the ground, create all the fields and build their own houses.’

She showed me a grainy black and white picture of the place from the early 20th Century: a bare hillside, divided by stone walls into thin plots of land extending down towards the sea edge, without a single bush or a tree for shelter. It gives the land the look of a skeleton.

In order to share the good and bad soil, plots had to be rotated between families. This, however, discouraged the crofters from improving their own land. ‘They didn’t realise that if they planted a few trees, like we have now, they would have been able to increase the fertility of the ground,’ observed Cathy. ‘As the story goes, the minister had said: if God had intended there to be trees growing here, they would have been here already, and it wasn’t for us to change God’s plan.’

The harshness of life in the region led to it becoming almost completely deserted by mid-century and the last native Gaelic left back in 1964. New settlers, looking for a better life much closer to the land, rebuilt the ruined crofts in the 60s ‘ and so began a different community.

Cathy’s croft, like all the buildings on the island, is now protected by a circle of pine trees, making it feel warm and cosy. The islanders are all self-sufficient for wood and have even planted a wildlife corridor ‘ a green lifeline of pines extending into the hinterland, designed to encourage birds and other wildlife down to the peninsula. Although it was a wintery day, the sun was shining on the Loch, adding to the feeling of vitality.

Few now farm the land or depend on it for their livelihood. Cathy works as an archaeologist all over the Highlands; Aaron, as an environmental activist and his wife, Alison, as an artist, although everyone here seems to have half a dozen jobs and roles in the local community.

Still, they are neither so isolated or so self-sufficient as people once were. Like the rest of us, they buy most of their food and goods at the shops in the city, and they must boat or drive to Ullapool, or further, to do it. What rubbish cannot be composted or recycled must be boated over to the next peninsula. Even those whirring windmills ‘ such symbols of independence ‘ rely on lead batteries that all have to be imported. Rows of ‘dead’ ones wait by the boathouse to be shipped away and recycled on the mainland. All the other trappings of modern life, such as mobile telephones, fridges, laptops and the internet, are also making their imprint on life there.

Being in Scoraig, however, has a good balance. There are the creature comforts but there is also the hard work of maintaining house and home. There is technology but not too much. It is a place full of quiet and time and space. Everywhere, there is the bleak beauty of the sea, the mountains and the pearl light of the loch.

Looking out across the
Scoraig peninsula at twilight
Photo: ‘ Tom Allan/Scoraig