The hills are alive

Remote working has a whole other meaning for those passionate individuals still farming crofts in the Highlands, discovers Joe Gibbs

- Joe Gibbs

THE tiny west Highland township of Elphin, north of Ullapool, stands out from the moorland landscape as a patchwork of bright green. Its rare fertility derives from a seam of limestone beneath the soil. Rank heath surrounds it as far as the eye can see and beyond that lie slabs of Lewisian gneiss, the oldest rocks in Europe, three billion years old. Home to about 60 souls, many of them crofting families, Elphin straddles the A835, until recently a road unremarkable for much other than the lonely beauty of the hills either side and the fish lorries from Lochinver that thunder southwards late at night.

In 2014, the road’s fortunes changed. A group of Highland businessmen conceived the North Coast 500, a looped tourist route that travels most of the coastal Highlands, passing Elphin and other crofting communities. Essentially a marketing exercise, NC500 has been an extraordinary success, repackaging a 516-mile circuit of existing tarmac into a version of Route 66 in the US.

Traffic and visitors have increased yearly. Some locals complain of bumper-to-bumper Porsches blocking the 200 miles of potholed single-track roads and the antics of campervan drivers who can’t reverse without sliding into a ditch. For contributors to the Facebook page ‘NC500 The Land Weeps’, the route has become a curse. For many others, however, it’s a commercial lifesaver.

At the end of the gathering day, fellow crofters share a dram and a blether.