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- Malcolm MacLeod BEM, or Calum MacLeòid as he was known in his native Gaelic, was a crofter who famously built Calum's Road on the Island of Raasay, Scotland. He was also Local Assistant Keeper of Rona Lighthouse and the part-time postman for the north end of Raasay. Another of his achievements was the construction of the track from Torran to Fladda (Eilean Fladday), which he built with his brother Charles MacLeod over three winters from 1949-1952, for which they were each paid £35 a year by the local council. After purchasing Thomas Aitken's manual Road Making & Maintenance: A Practical Treatise for Engineers, Surveyors and Others (London, 1900), for half a crown, MacLeod began his work. Over a period of about ten years (1964-1974), he would construct one and three quarter miles of road between Brochel Castle and Arnish using little more than a shovel, a pick and a wheelbarrow, replacing the old narrow footpath. Initial blasting work was carried out and funded, to the sum of £1,900, by the Department of Agriculture's Engineering Department who supplied a compressor, explosives, driller, blaster, and men. This followed decades of unsuccessful campaigning by the inhabitants of the north end of Raasay for a road, and several failed grant applications. It was several years after its completion that the road was finally adopted and surfaced by the local council; by then Calum and his wife Alexandrina or Lexie Macdonald were the last inhabitants of Arnish. Calum's Road has been commemorated in song by Capercaillie on their 1988 album The Blood is Strong and in a book by Roger Hutchinson. "Calum's Road" is about to become a major film, the rights to the book having been bought by Handmade Films. The Scottish writer Colin MacDonald is writing the screenplay. A Cairn was built to commemorate Calum's achievements beside his road near Brochel Castle, it is inscribed in Gaelic and then English. This Cairn was built by Donald John Graham of Portree, Skye. As well as being a road-builder, MacLeod was a writer. A zealous and tireless correspondent with local authorities and newspapers, he was also a local historian of some distinction. Some, but by no means all, of his writings were published during his lifetime as articles in the Gaelic periodical Gairm, while others have been posthumously collected, translated, and edited by his daughter Julia MacLeod Allan as Fàsachadh An-Iochdmhor Ratharsair: The Cruel Clearance of Raasay (Clò Àrnais, 2007).
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