From The Times, November 2, 1921
The Gaelic-speaking people of the hamlets of Sauna and Plocaig, in Ardnamurchan, Argyllshire, having tried for 80 years to secure a road to their homes, recently addressed the Queen in a petition signed by104 women, telling her what hardships the lack of a road brought upon them. The Queen has expressed sympathy, indicating that she is drawing the attention of the proper authority to the matter. Even among the people of Scotland, there are few who have ever penetrated to the peninsula of Ardnamurchan, the most westerly point of the mainland of Great Britain. The transport needs of the district are poorly met by a tri-weekly steamer from Oban to Kilchoan, on the south coast of the peninsula. Here a landing is made, when possible, by ferry boat, since there is no pier. There is a good pier at Mingary, a mile to the east, but the steamer company does not land either mails or passengers there. Thus a crofter wishing to sell a horse in Oban has actually to take him all round the head of Loch Sunart — a two-day journey of 54 miles — to Lochaline. The district also lacks roads. What is called the “Sanna road” breaks off two miles short of Sanna at the hamlet of Achnaha. Yet Sanna is, after Kilchoan, the most considerable township in Ardnamurchan, having 20 scattered crofts, each of which graze two cows, while Plocaig has but four crofts, grazing three cows, a pony, and a few sheep. All the people — aristocrats, like most Highlanders, as regards their manners — are extremely poor, living chiefly on potatoes, only supplemented by fish when these can be got off the rocks, or from small boats when the sea is calm. Most houses are simply thatched huts, built by the crofters, some still with floors of beaten earth, ill-lit, and few, if any, weatherproof. Even the few new houses, all hideous blots on a landscape of rare beauty, have no sanitary conveniences, nor even is water laid on. It is the distressing spectacle of a funeral procession that most forcibly brings home what it means to be without even the roughest road. The burial ground is six miles from Sanna, and for the first two miles the coffin bearers must scramble over rocks, sometimes sinking knee-deep into bogs. And yet crofters are actually called upon to pay road rates.