A run out this morning onto the wide expanse of the wild Ruhba Mòr. The highest elevation, a mere 90m. The plan was to get to the headland, Rubha na Còigich but the wind and tough going caused second thoughts. It would have been an epic. I was intrigued by a small collection of walls and buildings on the eastern side of the peninsula mapped as Camascoille. I expected ruined crofts but instead found three very well maintained cottages accessed by the faintest of paths across the moor. Whoever lived here permanently would have led a hard life. A few clearance cairns show attempts at cultivation and the way down to the rocky cove where a boat could be beached is steep.
Camascoille
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4 responses to “Camascoille”
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Yours was the only online content I could find about this place. We kayaked in three nights ago and have been semi-marooned camping while the weather settles. Like you, intrigued by the well maintained but empty houses. The path to the beach was clearly once also well constructed and maintained. A hard life, no doubt, but what a place!
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A few years ago for me now. Thanks for the memory.
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I have received the following message from Torquil Macleod on the 3 Jan 2025:
My family were the original crofters at Camascoille which is the settlement on Ruhba Mor. Subsequently they moved to Reiff and then to Achnahaird nearby where we still own a Croft. Camascoille was abandoned then bought I believe by a University who still use the buildings as some sort of outward bound centre. I recall my late Grandfather and his siblings saying what a hard life it was as they had to walk to school every morning over the moors to the school at Altandhu. At the time speaking their native Gaelic tongue was banned and they were belted if they did not speak English.
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And subsequently this one on the 4th:
I don’t live in the Highlands any more and I last visited Achnahaird in 2018 with my mother who still to this day retains ownership of the family croft there having inherited it from my late father and he in turn from my late grandfather.
My mother is now 86 and in failing health, the house at Achnahaird was sold in 2016 and the croft land will soon have to be sold, so that will be the end of an era.
Regarding Camascoille, I first made the trip over the moor with my father around 1977 and was surprised to see this cluster of well maintained properties in the middle of nowhere. The story I was told at the time was that a University (possibly Leicester) had bought the ruined properties and slowly restored them using students who carried building materials by hand over the moor from the carpark near Achnahaird beach. It must have been a very hard task which had been achieved against all the odds.
I am not sure of the ownership of the properties now in 2025 and can find nothing about them on line other than what you have posted. Few people know about them which is probably just as well. I have made the pilgrimage over there many times since 1977 but not at all in the last fifteen years or so.
The Crofting Commission probably have records of ownership but due to GDPR will not release records to myself, I would probably have to enquire with some of the locals that I know.
Its certainly a fascinating place to visit and to think that my grandfather and his siblings had to trek over that moor to Altandhu every school day and also to church on the sabbath shows what hardy people they were. There are no services at the site and heat was provided by burning local peat and lighting was by candles and oil lanterns.
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