A little island, little known
Easdale Island, reached by turning off the road from Lochgilphead to Oban and following the single-track B844, is so small that you can walk round it in half an hour. It is a worked-out slate quarry, and everything, from houses paths to the walls of the harbour, is built of slate, in massive blocks or odd-shaped pieces or sometimes, carefully shaped decorative discs. There are no roads – the single-storey, whitewashed houses sit among grass, and at the jetty where the ferry boat (maximum 12 passengers) ties up after its five-minute journey, wheelbarrows and two-wheeled wooden carts stand on a grassy bank, ready for use.
There’s no shop, but an excellent pub called The Puffer after the Clyde work-boat that used to call there does very good meals and is, like the whole island, full of friendly people. Though there are only about 63 of them, the island boasts a spectacular community hall, built of slate like everything else and heated by a solar energy generator. Beyond that lie the deep excavations of the quarrying that used to employ over 400 people. A catastrophic storm in 1818 flooded the pits and the houses and brought the mining to an end – a story well told in the little museum lovingly tended by the knowledgeable Annabel. If you want a glimpse of an island that lives on in its own terms but has little to do with the conventional world, Easdale is well worth a visit.
Alison Prince
