Product Description

Eric Macleod looks across the loch at the forlorn wreck of his family s croft. How would you like to live there? he asks his wife Ruth, half joking. After all, they have to think of something to do with the place. But he doesn t expect her instant reply I would love to. A few short months later, fired by the challenge of an adventure like no other they ve known, Eric has given up a promising career in London as an accountant with an international company, and moved to the remote shores of Loch Cairnbawn in the West Highlands. With Ruth and their two little girls, he plans to renovate the croft and make a living from the land, but it s a long leap from management accountant to house builder and crofter as they soon find out. In their seventeen years at Kerracher, they experience the beauty and terror of living in the last wilderness in Scotland. They can reach the croft only by boat, across the loch, or by walking a mile and a half over the hill from the road.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33800 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 282 pages

Review
This gentle narrative exists in another time, another place, another world. To most readers it may as well be another planet. Few of us can imagine living without a lavatory, without a secure roof over our heads, without vehicular access to our home indeed most people would now think such privation to be incompatible with civilization. Far less can we imagine raising a young family in such conditions while somehow managing to scrape a living from the sea and a desolate landscape. Yet this is what Eric and Ruth MacLeod chose to do in 1976; to abandon their comfortable home and jobs for Eric s remote grandparental croft on the wild seaboard of the North West Highlands. There was no clear plan, no exit strategy, no safety net of any kind, just a ruined cottage and the irresistible draw of wildness and solitude gift-wrapped in the almost palpable sense of belonging crofting folk possess for their ancestral land. And there was adventure aplenty. In clear, uncluttered writing this is a tale of honest, back-breaking toil in one of the most challenging mountain seascapes of the Highlands; of naivety and disappointment, of storm, disaster and of triumph, yet throughout all of this shines an uplifting and vividly refreshing portrait of personal resourcefulness, unfailing optimism and generosity of spirit. --John Lister-Kaye, author of Song of the Rolling Earth

About the Author
Eric MacLeod was born in Dingwall in the Highlands. His early post graduate career was in Accountancy in London, but he made a life change at the age of thirty to become a crofter and self-employed in a variety of ways. Since leaving the croft he has worked as a Business Adviser across the Highlands. He is also currently running his own business in horse feed supplements. He has returned to the area of his birth with his wife Ruth of 37 years and has two daughters and three grandchildren.

Customer Reviews

Very readable
Loved this book. Once I started I kept reading until I finished. Great story of an 'ordinary' family which chose to face enormous challenges by moving back to their family home in a remote part of Scotland. Even the cover picture conjures up all sort of images - a caravan on a home-made barge! What risks the family took! Read about them for yourself.

A good read for those cosy winter nights in!!
Everything to make a good read - Adventure, humour, mystery, tragedy, history, geography, nature; it's all there. Once started you want to find out more, laugh with them, celebrate with them, dispair with them, be amazed at the visual imagery created. Once finished you'll want to dip back into different chapters to reread your favourites. Well worth the price. Look forward to the next book.

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