Uproar as cliffside community is cut off for a year
Frustration and anger as cliffside community endure long walks home
It is a hidden jewel of scenic Scotland. The picturesque scattering of houses clinging to a ledge between cliffs and the wild North Sea has featured in tourist brochures and on the walls of airports welcoming visitors to the country.
The tiny community ofCro vie in Aberdeen shire may have won the hearts of villagers and visitors alike but, for almost a year, the only road in has been closed.
Only those fit enough to tackle the route on foot or to scale 84 muscle-shredding steps cut into the rock can make it in or out.
Aberdeenshire Council – who shut the road in September because of a risk of landslide – has twice failed to start work to stabilise the slope and reopen the route.
The local authority has arranged for emergency vehicles to access the village by a privately-owned track and, in recent weeks, supplied a quad bike and small trailer to ferry some supplies.
But residents say it is too little, too late. The frustrated residents – who carry their groceries down the cliff road and haul their refuse more than 100 feet to its top for collection – claim the elderly and sick have been effectively “locked out” of their holiday homes and the village is haemorrhaging tourism business.
Now the tiny community of little more than 60 homes is fighting back. It is demanding a swift resolution and an independent inquiry over the delays.
Backing them is trophy- winning seaplane and air race pilot Hamish Mitchell who rents out a home there. He said: “The road closure is a disaster. Rentals are down 50% and people have been cancelling.
On Friday, for the first time, he landed his seaplane in the bay, saying: “I flew in emergency teabags.”
Former bank manager Catherine Clanahan’s need is greater than most. Catherine, 62, who with her husband Ricky, 65, has just retired to the seaboard community from Edinburgh, revealed: “I have been coming here since I was 14. But I now have a heart problem.
“Climbing the hill is a nightmare, I have to stop about six times. My daughter worries that if I have a heart attack the ambulance will struggle to get to me.”
Community stalwart Shona Stuart shares
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It is torture. We pay our taxes and are entitled to access
her fear. “We feel we have been cut off from safe access,” she claimed. “Tradesmen needed for essential repairs are also refusing to come. And with no access to the main car park at the bottom of the cliff, the only place to park is in the overspill area at the top which is full. Tourists are driving away.
“People here work hard to preserve this village. It is scandalous. We need an independent inquiry as to why it’s taken so long to repair the road.”
The village’s spectacular location has been featured on tourism brochures and was on the cover of this year’s Visitscotland guide to the North East and photographs of Covie also featured on the walls of Aberdeen International Airport welcoming international visitors.
Hamilton- based retired physics teacher Sandy Kilpatrick, 76, who with his wife Isabell has had a home in the village for 48 years, said: “Crovie is an international tourist attraction. There is no other like it in Britain. It brings prosperity to Aberdeenshire. Touting it as a