Back in the 70s when the world lived in smock tops and flares, Eric and Ruth MacLeod took themselves and their two small daughters off to an abandoned crofthouse in the remotest quarter of the West Highlands. Rocky and windswept it was an unlikely Eden, even after they cleared the dead sheep from the living room floor. Here they remained for sixteen years, reconstructing the building and making a home, learning to shear and attending creels, introducing electricity and running small businesses.
While the ethos of the world around them descended from idealism into ‘getting and spending’ they learned real independence. They also made a life that included the wild creatures of moor and shore, accommodation with the unpredictable sea, and the friendship of many great characters, some of them fellow crofters, some escapees from the House of Lords. ‘Who has adventures like us?’ Eric asked. Their story was played out in a landscape of hills and coast, a place of incomparable beauty that remains unspoiled to this day.