![Robin McKelvie in Small Isles, Scotland](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/09/22/TELEMMGLPICT000350323899_16953957428900_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqMSMuxhE33F3LbSB5YTtqB7EmTlqLuckS2yIr8PmtcCQ.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Why adventurous Britons are swapping the rat race for life on a remote Scottish island
All but abandoned a few decades ago, the population of the beautiful and compelling Small Isles archipelago is slowly rising
![Robin McKelvie in Small Isles, Scotland](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/09/22/TELEMMGLPICT000350323899_16953957428900_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqMSMuxhE33F3LbSB5YTtqB7EmTlqLuckS2yIr8PmtcCQ.jpeg?imwidth=680)
“It’s easy to see why people want to live in the Small Isles,” smiles architect Will Tunnell, as behind him the 393m hulk of An Sgurr soars improbably above a Caribbean-esque beach. Tunnell should know: he has spent much of his working life in the Hebrides. “People willing to muck in are always welcome, as it’s a constant struggle to keep the communities alive and thriving.”
Just a few nautical miles separates ultra-touristy Skye from another Scotland. The Small Isles may be blessed with scarcely believable scenery, but the baleful Highland Clearances decimated the population by the 20th century and the isles have faced an existential threat ever since. Under the old clan system, allegiance to the chief was rewarded with a “wee bit hill and glen”. Post Clearances, the islanders have been at the mercy of – often – absentee landlords. Or worse: landowners who ran islands as their own fiefdom.
I’m arriving back at a bad time. I’ve heard the precarious population on the largest, Rum, has dipped. Its shop is for sale, as is quirky Kinloch Castle. Amidst genuine concern the wilder local talk screams of new Clearances.
![Kinloch Castle](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/09/22/TELEMMGLPICT000350323895_16953961870310_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqNQcqRr3XjTdUf9C40NpvDNkM9MM8VM3G1BxlGUO4L8Q.jpeg?imwidth=350)
But there’s never really a bad time to visit an archipelago that is utterly compelling. It is easy to see why Mendelssohn wrote an overture about this wonderland as, approaching Eigg, a minke whale breaches and An Sgurr looms into view.
Eigg is the isle that has proved the naysayers wrong. Like neighbouring Rum, Canna and Muck, it was savaged by the Clearances, but in 1997 the Eigg community – with the help of the Scottish Government – took control. The population had dipped to less than 50; today it has soared towards 130 as people come from Scotland’s cities. And beyond.
In the gleaming new An Laimhrig community hub – designed by Will Tunnell – I share the view with Stuart Paul McCarthy. He quit teaching in the Wirral to create Scotland’s first co-operative brewery on Eigg. He is enthusiastic about the buy-out: “Who wouldn’t want to run their own community? Everything good that has happened since the buy-out has been because of it.”
Welshman Owain Wyn-Jones used to work in IT and marketing. It was love at first sight when he arrived in 2013 and he has worked hard to become a community stalwart, setting up Eigg Adventures. “What Eigg has achieved is remarkable,” he says. “We were the world’s first island to generate all our own electricity through green sources in 2008.”
We’re chatting by his new e-bikes, the first on any island in the world to be 100 per cent powered by green electricity. Eigg may only be five miles by three, but like all the Small Isles it is a Hebridean Tardis with plenty to explore on two wheels or two feet.
![Stuart Paul McCarthy, Eigg Brewery; tour guide Charlie](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/09/22/TELEMMGLPICT000350367602_16953963926820_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqgCXocDQF5kP7s3jSjli3eCH0-jRUT4rHK8EgtaGoQwQ.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Spend an afternoon in An Laimhrig and Eigg tends to come to you. Lucy Conway – one of the figures behind community-connecting body SCOTO – breezes in, enthusing about how Eigg is “a template other isles can follow” and I bump into the island’s only bus driver (and “tour guide”) Charlie, who chirps, “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else”.
I just miss Johnny Lynch, a local musician who set up Lost Map Records and the riotous annual music festival Howlin’ Fling.
It’s a short sail to Canna, but enough time to encounter a humpback whale. I sail into the finest natural harbour in the Small Isles, a rugged tuft of hills framing white-sand beaches. Seabirds swoop all around.
Talking again to Will Tunnell, I find further cause for optimism. He has come over to work on an ambitious new scheme to provide facilities for both the community and tourists. We walk out to a large stone building. “We will bring it back to life, which is practical and symbolic as it was at the heart of the old cleared communities,” he says, with determination in his eyes.
![Isle of Canna, Scottish Highlands](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/09/22/TELEMMGLPICT000350332970_16953958776320_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
I drop down to Café Canna, the island’s unofficial hub. On the menu are Canna lobster and both local lamb and beef; Canna beer too. All delicious, with zero food miles and half the price you’d pay in London.
Café Canna owner Gareth Cole ditched Scottish mainland life to lease Café Canna. “Just look at this place, you can see why I wanted to come,” he beams as a seal splashes by. “Until recently younger people headed for the mainland, or even to Eigg for opportunities. Things are looking up with primary school-age kids and a trio of new houses being built. We’ve hopefully learned from mistakes on other islands and we’ll get young families with skills that benefit the community.”
It’s brilliantly sunny sailing to Rum. The distant Outer Hebrides flirt in the distance, even further out into the Atlantic emptiness. A pod of common dolphins follow in our wake.
Rum was once known as the ‘Forbidden Isle’, enduring not only the Clearances, but also John Bullough, a Lancashire industrialist. He renamed his luxury playground Rhum to avoid boozy connotations – which was ironic as the insane Kinloch Castle he built here (think marble galore and ponds filled with alligators and turtles) was notorious for debauchery.
![The Isle of Rum, Scotland, UK](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/09/22/TELEMMGLPICT000350332973_16953960541490_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqyILZCJqFaBEpuz3ivC4GSmtT0gK_6EfZT336f62EI5U.jpeg?imwidth=350)
NatureScot now owns Rum, and has safeguarded its wildlife impressively. The red deer population is booming, sea eagles have been successfully reintroduced and Manx shearwaters thrive.
But one NatureScot volunteer, who declined to be named, told me “we have no idea what to do with Kinloch Castle. The community senses that.” After the Bulloughs it served as a luxurious hotel and as surely Europe’s grandest youth hostel. It is on the market for £1; renovation will cost at least £20m.
Earlier this year millionaire businessman Jeremy Hosking made a bid, which failed. “Most of us are relieved. The last thing Rum needs is a return to the privileged, excesses of old,” one local told me.
During the pandemic, a quartet of new houses on the island drew 3,000 expressions of interest. But I hear that one new family has already given up. And the lifeblood Isle of Rum General Store, the hub of island life? A sign at the pier says it is closed.
![‘Eigg is the isle that has proved the naysayers wrong’](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/09/22/TELEMMGLPICT000214698704_16953961048090_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqRo0U4xU-30oDveS4pXV-Vv4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82k.jpeg?imwidth=350)
I trudge around the otter-strewn coast, approaching with tight shoulders. But the beaming smile of the store’s new owner, Stuart McKie, welcomes me. “Oh, sorry about the sign. We’ve not had time to take it down. I have always loved the island of Rum so when the chance came to take over the store I snatched it,” he beams.
McKie has also occupied the vacant house with his girlfriend. “We’re delighted to come and run the shop, bringing the population back up to 34. Community is at the heart of everything here, as it should be on every Scottish island.”
McKie’s last words echo through the trees as I make my final stop where the troubles of the Small Isles began, when over 400 islanders were cleared. The walls of the cosy stone homes in this old township still stand proud, just back from the shore where they left Rum. Most never returned.
I trudge around the otter-strewn coast, approaching with tight shoulders. But the beaming smile of the store’s new owner, Stuart McKie, welcomes me. “Oh, sorry about the sign. We’ve not had time to take it down. I have always loved the island of Rum so when the chance came to take over the store I snatched it,” he beams.
Essentials
Robin McKelvie travelled to the Small Isles aboard Hebrides Cruises’ Lucy Mary (hebridescruises.co.uk), which offers live-aboard cruises. Alternatively, CalMac (calmac.co.uk) and Arisaig Marine (arisaig.co.uk) run passenger ferries. For more information see isleofeigg.org, theisleofcanna.com and isleofrum.com.