The Finest Road in the World

CHAPTER 1

Foot and saddle

'we sett upon our way and journay, and cam forward . . .'

In 1804, Donald Sage, the 15-year-old son of the parish minister in Kildonan in Sutherland, left home to begin his studies at Aberdeen University. In his autobiography, he recalled the journey:

. . .on Monday morning early, my father, Muckle Donald, and I set out for Aberdeen. My father accompanied me as far as Tain, where we arrived on Tuesday morning. The night previous we spent at Dornoch. At Tain we breakfasted at Turnbull's Inn . . . After breakfast [Mrs Turnbull] stuffed my pockets with fine large apples; and my father parted with me to return home. Muckle Donald and I then tramped it on foot from thence all the way to Aberdeen. The day we left Tain, crossing the Invergordon ferry, we slept and supped at the Inn of Balblair . . . the length of the journey proved too much for me. Within two miles of Inverurie I fairly broke down and fell prostrate upon the roadside . . .

After a much-needed rest, the youth and his companion reached Aberdeen the following day. Sage does not tell us for how many days they walked after leaving Balblair on the Black Isle or where they stayed at night, but it must have taken them at least three days to get as far as Inverurie. This is assuming they kept up a pace of 25 miles daily.1

Sage's story is a vivid reminder that up until the relatively recent past most people, even on substantial journeys, walked. It is a curious though understandable feature of Scots dialects, although one that survives in the speech of only a few localities, that 'traivel' specifically means making a journey on foot, while its equivalent 'travel' co-existed with the conventional English meaning. This could give rise to such exchanges as:

'I went til the toun.'

'Did ye traivel?'

'No, I took the bus.'

In his account of his boyhood in the early 1800s, Hugh Miller recalls walking with his mother the 30 miles from Cromarty to Lairg to visit a relative and arriving 'early on the evening of the second day'; later, as a young apprentice stonemason, he walked from the banks of the Conon via Contin and Loch Maree to a job in Wester Ross, staying in two inns en route.2 A family tradition in my boyhood was that the women of Dunnet in Caithness, including my great-grandmother, wove herring nets during the winter and in the summer walked with them to Wick on the other side of the county to sell. Only the better-off could afford to own or hire a horse or a carriage and, in any case, the state of the roads before 1800 was such that venturing any distance in a vehicle was a highly risky business. The north of Scotland was covered by a well-trodden network of routes, but these were often little better than tracks - dry enough in the summer but in the winter often impassable with mud, snow or ice - and it was wise and often quicker to rely on Shanks's pony.

Roads were poor throughout the country, including the Lowlands. William Cunningham of Craigend in Renfrewshire recorded in his diary in the 1670s how he always went by horse to Edinburgh - trips he called 'voyages' - as that was the only feasible means of transport outside the immediate environs of any urban centre. It was normal for a lady to ride on a pillion or pad behind her husband in the saddle, and luggage was carried strapped on pack horses. Cunningham kept in his account book details of his expenditure on 'voyaging': perhaps 5s for a night's accommodation for his horse with an extra shilling or two for the stable lad; £3 12s for the freight of his wife's coffer (chest) from Glasgow to Edinburgh; a cost of between £500 and £700 to keep a horse for a year.3

James Brodie described a difficult journey in December 1680, from Edinburgh north to his home at Brodie near Forres, a trip that normally could be accomplished in five days. The problems began when the riders approached the ferry to cross the Firth of Tay to Dundee - 'The frost hinderd our passage many hours.' The party continued north. 'We cam nixt forenoon to Brichen, and on this Saturday at evening we cam to Fettercairn, wher we purposd to stay the nixt day, being the Sabbath.' The threat of approaching bad weather forced a change of mind on the Sabbath:

. . .fearing a storm in the Kairn [Cairn o'Mount] and the waters, we considered on it as fitt to croce the water of Die [Dye]. After we had worshipd God . . . we sett upon our way and journay, and cam forward . . . We cam to Lumfannan finding no good lodging elswher . . . The nixt morning [it was now 20 December] we cam to Putachie [near Alford]; had verie ill way, and ill crossing of the water of Dolie . . . I staid there al night.

On the 21st, Brodie struggled north from Putachie to Mulbenn, and on the 22nd, as he wrote, 'I was in a most immanent and apparent danger beyond what ever I was al my lyff tym.' The Spey had swollen with the winter rain.

The [ferry] boat and al in it was caried doun by the force of the speat . . . more than half a myl . . . We wer, in the opinion and estimation of onlookers, past al hop and expectation of coming to land, and ther was nothing but a present looking for death. It pleasd God at last that we wer brought to land to the sam syd of the water which we entred in . . . I cam back to Mulbenn . . . We crocd the Spey in the evening and cam lait to Elgin.

Brodie eventually won home on the 23rd after another challenging river crossing at the Findhorn, eight long days after leaving the capital.4

Map 2. James Brodie's route in 1680.

For all the problems, people did travel - and often quite widely. That long journeys required time, preparation and endurance had to be accepted as an unfortunate but inescapable fact of life, perhaps much as we expect today to be held up in city traffic. As long as people relied on their own feet or their horses, and the elements remained reasonable, a journey was usually more time-consuming than dangerous. Eight days was regarded as normal for an overland journey from Caithness to Edinburgh. John Sinclair of Barrock made this trip in February 1734 and wrote to a friend afterwards:

I had good traveling wether and good ludging untill I came to Reven [Ruthven in Strathspey] which was on a Saturday night. Sunday's morning was frosty, windy and cold. I took my horse in the morning and road [rode] five or six miles without seeing any snow but after that to Delquhiny [Dalwhinnie] I had nothing but snow drift and bad wether in my face and when I came to the house I was refused ludging for myself or my hors, however I went in and with much difficulty was admitted there and was there only one bed free from snow and there was six officers possessed of it . . .

Sinclair put up that night with snow drifting in through the walls and roof, melting to form a great puddle on the floor, the company of a crowd of soldiers and no food 'but drink enugh'. He managed to share a bed with a customs officer from Dornoch. The two men kept their clothes on and spent the night under a big coat and plaid 'with abundance of snow above all'. On the next day, warm enough in Sinclair's view, his horse laboured through deep snow and came to 'Dalnachurdich' (Dalnacardoch) in the afternoon 'where we were exceeding well accommodate and from that place I had very good wether and ludging'. By the time Sinclair reached Dysart the snow had been left behind but horse and rider fell twice on the ice - 'However I got no harm.'5

The rough accommodation was not unusual. In 1769, Thomas Pennant had to lodge in a whisky house that passed for an inn at the east end of Loch Maree: 'Mr Mackenzie complimented Mr Lightfoot and me with the bedstead, well covered with a warm litter of heath: we lay in our clothes, wrapped ourselves in plaids; and enjoyed a good repose.' Pennant was surprised some locals chose even less comfortable arrangements, forming a bed from wet hay and flinging a plaid over it.6

A particular example of a route with a special purpose was the 'coffin road', the path along which men bore the remains of the dead to their last resting place. In Wester Ross, the coastal route between Ullapool and Achiltibuie has won a measure of fame as the Postie's Path, after a postal service opened in the 1860s and the postmen began to use it on a regular basis. The postman Kenneth Maclennan of Blairbuie followed it to Ullapool twice a week for the mail, 15 miles each way at 2s 3d a time. The route, however, had probably already enjoyed centuries of use by the local people; it appears on Aaron Arrowsmith's map of Scotland in 1807.7 In the Middle Ages, some routes became associated with pilgrimage, the most notable example in the north being the route to Tain, to the shrine of Saint Duthac, a pilgrimage made every year after his first visit in 1493 by James IV (1488-1513).

In general, only a few of the old routes are recorded on early maps or mentioned in charters.8 Timothy Pont includes hardly any roads on his maps drawn around the turn of the 1600s, but his scattering of settlements, more or less foreshadowing the present distribution of population, implies an infrastructure of connections. The Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, published in Amsterdam in 1654 and based on information supplied...