Highland Clearances Trail given update

A new edition of the popular guide to sites that pinpoint communities that were subject to the Highland Clearances is being planned for early next year.

Former MSP Rob Gibson, the author of several editions of the Highland Clearances Trail, has agreed with his publisher Luath Press to produce a refreshed edition.

It started as a pamphlet that grew and grew from 1983, selling thousands of copies. When finally published in book form in 2006, it contained routes for visitors to take to the very places where people were dispossessed from Shetland to Arran.

Rob said: ‘Since the 2006 edition, community purchases are reclaiming land that was once cleared. New ideas about resettlement and successful repopulation are happening in places where the worst clearances took place in the 18th and 19th centuries. New studies of specific clearances have been published and issues of wild land versus clearances country have been hotly debated.

‘The Scottish Government’s land fund has made possible new community buyouts such as Ulva off north-west Mull earlier this year. Ulva suffered falls from 600 inhabitants to 50 in 60 years to 1889. Today five people are permanent residents on an island with huge potential for resettlement.

‘Debates about speeding round the North Coast 500 route have provoked calls to slow down and find out why the landscape is so devoid of people and visit the places they were forced to leave.

‘A new book, The Scottish Clearances – A History of the Dispossessed by renowned historian Sir Tom Devine, shows the whole pattern of clearances.

‘Sir Tom notes that my Highland Clearances Trail is very popular from edition to edition. I am revising the 2006 edition and hope to see a new fuller version appear next year to meet the thirst for knowledge of how our land was shaped and is now owned.’