Wandering around Grummore.

So, there we were, pitched up on the banks of Loch Naver in the heart of the Northern Highlands. It was a bit windy - but the weather was dry and bright, and however happy we might have been just taking in the spectacular view of Ben Klibreck we all know that you can't just sit around outside the 'van.

Besides, as noted in the last posting, there's a lot of history to be found in Strathnaver and its environs, so we set out to explore. We were feeling a little bit lazy though, so we didn't initially go all that far. A short walk up the hill behind the site brings you to the remains of the cleared village of Grummore - or "Big Grum" in English. The cleared remains of its counterpart Grumbeg, or "Little Grum"* can be found a little further up the road. Grummore is rather peaceful now. Unlike much of the surrounding country this relatively gentle slope is covered with lush green grass rather than heather and so is also covered in quietly grazing sheep and their associated droppings. Don't walk up there in sandals, is what I'm saying...

The low stone walls that are all that remain of this once thriving community protrude through the grass and bracken, rough grey scars amongst the vivid green. It looks in many ways like many other ruined villages you might see elsewhere from all sorts of different times. The difference with these ruins is that we know exactly when they became ruins. The precise moment when they stopped being homes and became the forlorn mounds of rubble they are today. We know who was here, we know why the people were removed and the buildings removed.

We know this because there are records, and because in the grand scheme of things it didn't happen all that long ago - just about two hundred years ago in the years between 1814 and 1819 in fact. Grummore was the first village in Strathnaver to be cleared on the orders of the Duke of Sutherland. By this time the clearances were nothing new, with many landowners in Scotland having already moved people off the land to make way for more profitable sheep. In many ways, in spite of the fact that he has become the symbolic hate figure for the clearances the Duke was in fact somewhat late to the party - he was neither the first nor the worst of the landowners who cleared their tenants from the land, he is simply the best remembered.

Not that this excuses what happened, of course. Prior to 1814 there were thirty settlements in Strathnaver. Now there are three. Altnaharra sits at the southern end, Syre is roughly half way up, and Bettyhill - where many of those cleared  ended up, sits right at the northern end on the coast. That's it. The clearances, overseen by the Duke of Sutherland's Factor, one Patrick Sellar, was zealous in his approach. In other parts of Scotland tenants were allowed to remove the timbers from their houses so that they could be re-used wherever they re-located. Sellar seems to have preferred to set fire to them. You can't argue that this wasn't an efficient method of making sure that people left and didn't come back, but it's hardly surprising that the clearances on Sutherland have come to represent the worst excesses of this depressing episode in Scottish history.

Sellar was, in fact, tried for these actions and for the murder of an old lady who died as she was being removed from her house. His defence seems to have been that he was acting lawfully because he was carrying out his employers orders - a defence that has become the default position for people involved in atrocities - and he was acquitted.  A cynic might well take the view that this acquittal owed more to the composition of the jury - they were all landowners who had something to gain from the clearances - and certainly the crofters who were removed did not feel that justice was done.

Still. The horrors of the clearances here at Grummore and elsewhere are history now. What you experience on the hillside now is peace. It's an easy walk - sheep droppings notwithstanding - not least because there is a planned trail around the site with wooden walkways carrying you over the roughest ground. This is because Grummore is the first (or last, I suppose, if you're starting at the other end...) stop on the brilliant "Strathnaver Trail". All the way along the valley sites of interest are marked by lilac coloured posts and provided with informative information boards so that you know what you're looking at. At most there is even space for you to pull off the road and park - a very important touch on a road that is only wide enough for one vehicle at a time.

As you wander through the abandoned and fallen houses - there are at least twenty that I have been able to make out; in some you can even still make out the floor plan - it is worth looking back down towards the loch, which looks spectacular from this vantage point. You also get a good view of the Broch that occupies one corner of the Caravan Club site - tangible evidence that occupation in this beautiful valley has a history that goes back a long, long way.

Brochs, as mentioned in the previous post, were circular stone towers and are very nearly unique to the Highlands**. Most date from around two thousand years ago, and nobody is entirely sure what they were used for.  In fact, there is a lively debate in archaeological circles regarding how many there actually are. The problem is that unlike a Roman Villa or ancient church, Brochs don't leave a particularly distinctive footprint once their walls have gone. You can see there used to be a round building there, you might even find evidence of occupation, but was it a Broch, or a roundhouse, or something else?

Anyway. The traditional view is that the structures which have been identified as Brochs were purely defensive, but modern thinking is that they were more akin to fortified farmhouses. The Brock at Grummore is pretty much collapsed now, but if you look down on it from the road you can still clearly see it's "doughnut" shape. The ones that survive in a more intact condition always remind me of power station cooling towers, and to me they suggest something about the ancient Scots which is quite surprising.

They didn't care about the view.

How do I know this? Because there are several Brochs which remain pretty much intact, and they all have one thing in common. There are no windows. Once inside, you couldn't see out - even the entrance ways are tiny - openings a couple of feet high by a couple of feet wide. I appreciate that our Iron Age ancestors had more to worry about than we do now, and that in the absence of glass windows meant no protection from the wind - which I can attest is pretty icy and pretty fierce at times - but even so, the idea of being in such a place and not being able to see it boggles my mind slightly.

Because there is just so much to see - as I hope to demonstrate in the next post...

*"Mor" means "Big" in Gaelic, "Baeg" means "Little" or "Small". I'm guessing that "Grum" means something too, but I'm still a novice in the Gaelic language and I have no idea what...

**There are a couple in southern Scotland, but the vast, vast majority are north of the Great Glen.