Calum’s Road

Calum MacLeod had lived on the northern point of Raasay since his birth in 1911. He tended the Rona lighthouse at the very tip of his little archipelago, until semi-automation in 1967 reduced his responsibilities. ‘So what he decided to do’, says his last neighbour, Donald MacLeod, ‘was to build a road out of Arnish in his months off. With a road he hoped new generations of people would return to Arnish and all the north end of Raasay’. And so, at the age of 56, Calum MacLeod, the last man left in northern Raasay, set about single-handedly constructing the ‘impossible’ road. It would become a romantic, quixotic venture, a kind of sculpture; an obsessive work of art so perfect in every gradient, culvert and supporting wall that its creation occupied almost twenty years of his life. In “Calum’s Road”, Roger Hutchinson recounts the extraordinary story of this remarkable man’s devotion to his visionary project.

Reviews of Calum’s Road

'This is an extraordinarily fine book, and one of the most important books to have come out of the Highlands and Islands in recent years' * West Highland Free Press * 'An incredible testament to one man's determination' * The Sunday Herald * 'MacLeod defied powers outwith his control in the only way he could . . . paints a compelling picture of the man' * Sunday Times * 'wonderful, elegant and serious' * The Telegraph *