A Shot of Rum

Two weeks ago I had a few hours of shore leave on Rum. Not enough time to do much. But time enough to do something exciting. After passing in front of the sad-looking and fenced-off Kinloch Castle, I made my way to the bridge over the Kinloch River. Once over the bridge, a turn to the left led to the start of the North Nature Trail. A thousand feet later, at an elevation of 100 feet, the trail made a hard left turn to the west. It was time to leave the easy track and dive into the hard wilderness.

Hard wilderness may seem an exaggeration. But it was hard, it was wild, with seemingly endless stretches of three-foot-tall hummocks of grass. Each hummock hid one of three things: a deep hole, a patch of swamp, or a stream. It was slow going, made easier now and then by deer trails. How in the hell deer ran along these paths without plunging into a hole and breaking a leg is a mystery.

It was a swelteringly hot day. Whenever I stopped to cool off the midges and clegs showed up in force, so the respites were short. The despairing challenge of the hummocks was interspersed with sections of blessedly shaded woodland. But it was not much of a blessing, as it required multiple detours around impassable swaths of trees. Here and there dead stumps rose from the ground. Whenever I grabbed one for support it crumbled to dust. Dead and dried. I felt dead and dried. I was also worried about ticks, so avoided sitting on the ground to rest, as I ascended eastward across the shoulder of Meall a’ Ghoirtein.

A half-hour later, I reached the tree line at an elevation of 300 feet. The GPS indicated I had another 200 feet to climb and a quarter mile of terrain to cross to reach my destination. Twenty minutes later I noticed a structure built upon a strange, arch-shaped boulder. The boulder was ten feet by five, and the structure was what I’d been searching for: an intact beehive cell, eight feet high at its centre.

There are nearly 400 shieling huts on Rum, and over a hundred of them were circular cells. Only about three of the beehive type are still intact, and this cell, high on the slopes above Kinloch Castle, is one of them. It was a stunning location, with a wide view over the mouth of Loch Scresort. Most of Eigg could also be seen, with the high prow of An Sgùrr pointing skyward.

There was a low, lintelled entrance on the east side of the cell. Ticks be damned, I crawled inside. The interior was blissfully cool, and mysteriously shielded from the barrage of persistent midges. The dome was not perfectly built, and several gaps allowed shafts of sunlight to illuminate the interior.

The floor was covered with a thick layer of dried thatch, which would make it a comfortable place to nap. Large, flat stones lay under the thatch; stones that strangely clanked when any pressure was applied, hinting that there may be storage chambers below them. I was beat in the heat and had limited time, so was not in the mood to nap or look under the stones.

The cell was once part of a shieling village, and the ruins of several other structures dotted the nearby hillside. It seemed like an odd place for shielings, on the steeply sloping ground below Meall a’ Ghoirtein. But the hill’s name hints at why the settlement was here, as it roughly translates to the Hill of Cultivation (OS Name Book, Argyll Vol. 63, p.67). It was a beautiful spot, with an open view over Loch Scresort. The loch was as calm as a mill pond, and along with several sailing yachts I could see our ship, Hjalmar Bjorge, lying at anchor. 

The reinforcements the midges had called for then showed up in force. It was time to "run away, run away". On the way back to the pier I wandered around the fenced-off Kinloch Castle. On its porch lay several mouldering benches. The sight of one of them took me back to another sunny day, twenty-six years before. It was 1997, and my wife and I had just returned from the fifteen-mile round-trip walk to see the mausoleum at Harris. We were staying in the ‘Sir William Bass’ bedroom on the southwest corner of the castle’s top floor. Before going in to freshen up, with ankles afire from the long, stony walk, we rested on a white bench beside the main entrance. (The following photo is from 1997.)

Over a quarter-century had passed since that day of memory. The bench was now faded and cracked, as was the castle.

I walked around to peer up at the windows of the turreted Bass Bedroom and wondered what it looked like today—probably faded and cracked. Plans are afoot to renovate the castle. I hope they succeed. I’d like to bring Shawna back to Rum someday to stay, once again, in that grand bedroom, before I, too, am faded and cracked.

Note: My thanks to John Love for the information on the location of the cell.