Calum's Road [Paperback]

Calum MacLeods decades-long, solitary quest to carve an impossible road transforms a remote island into a testament of resolve and enduring community hope.An incredible testament to one mans determination'  The Sunday HeraldCalum 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.Calum MacLeod had lived on the northern point of Raasay since his birth in 1911. 'So what he decided to do was to build a road out of Arnish in his months off. With a road he hoped generations of people would return to Arnish and all the north end of Raasay'. This book recounts the story of this man's devotion to his visionary project.An incredible testament to one mans determination'MacLeod defied powers outwith his control in the only way he could . . . paints a compelling picture of the man'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'wonderful, elegant and serious'GB