Not motoring
Messing about in boats
Gavin Stamp
The projections for increase in traffic are more than alarming: in parts of England it will more than double over the next decade. And in Scotland, where the pro- portion of the population owning a car has always been lower, the roads are filling up fast: car ownership has increased by a third over the last decade. So what do we do? Build yet more roads? Surely not; even the Automobile Association in Scotland has the sense to see that 'there is a need for one or two roads to relieve congestion but there is also a requirement for investment in public transport' and that if nothing is done there will be 'gridlock' in five or ten years.
Perhaps negative action is required. For if, as is clear, new roads generate more traffic, then, if roads are removed, the traf- fic might well go away. I would start by blowing up the Skye Bridge, for its princi- pal sin — not its only one — is that it is there at all. The very quality of islands should be that you have to get to them by boat, and a sea crossing can deter unneces- sary cars. Even better if the boat does not carry cars at all. After all, roll-on-roll-off ferries are always ugly and often top-heavy and inherently unsafe vessels: not really proper ships.
Perhaps such restrictions can only be imposed if the island is small, like Iona, where only residents are allowed to drive on to the ferry and the hordes of tourists are forced to leave their cars behind on the other side of the sound that divides that holy and beautiful island from Mull. In consequence, the few roads are traffic free and it is possible to enjoy the Abbey build- ings without the usual garish clutter creat- ed by parked motor vehicles. If only more of Britain was like that: how I long to see, say, Somerset House or Chester Castle in their integrity, without their courtyards used as giant carparks.
I am thinking of Iona after a few glorious days on a boat this summer. It was a not- motoring dream; although not, I fear, on Cal Mac's ferries but on a private motor launch. First up the thrilling West High- land Railway from Glasgow, meandering round Lochs Long and Lomond and then down the glen to Oban to join the boat: an elegant, comfortable vessel built in 1930. This was the way to see islands — all of them inaccessible by car. First Iona; then magical Staffs with Fingal's Cave: one of the natural wonders of the world, still as impressive as it seemed to Mendelssohn, Schinkel, Keats, Queen Victoria and all the others who came to wonder in the early 19th century. No cars here — or people. Then north to those islands south of Skye with funny names. Muck, which has but one road, running from a few houses on one side of the island to a few houses on the other. Hamish Haswell-Smith's excel- lent new guide to the islands said that there was one tractor there; we saw two, but never mind. Then the populous: Eigg. Sev- eral dilapidated cars lying around, which the German so-called 'artist' who is selling the place promised to clear away, but didn't. On reflection, I decided not to buy Eigg.
Then the biggest and highest: Rum now a huge nature reserve. The redundant 'h' was inserted in the cause of gentility by George Bullough, the Lancastrian industri- alist who owned the island at the turn of the century and who built Kinloch Castle, an engagingly ridiculous castellated house which survives untouched — right down to the original electric light fittings. Here we saw at least one Land-Rover, and a vehicle was required when the house was a hotel for taking guests to and from the landing stage when it was raining — which it often is. Finally, Canna, by far the most interest- ing as it has some Architecture: two fine churches facing each other across the water, one Presbyterian and one — alas disused — Roman Catholic, a beacon of faith built by that great patron, the 3rd Marquess of Bute. And only a handful of cars to spoil the place.
Of course, there are few cars on these islands as there are few people. Of each, without exception, the history is one of unremitting tragedy: Viking raids, clan war- fare, murder, savage reprisals after the '45 and ruthless depopulation in the 19th cen- tury. In the 18th, the inhabitants could be numbered in hundreds; today in tens, or on one's fingers, or not at all. Even so, are there lessons here? These islands remain beautiful and exhilarating as mass car cul- ture has not swamped them; no garages, no picnic areas, no McDonald's. The few cars are necessities; visitors are obliged to corns without them. Could this be applied to larger islands like, say, the whole of Britain? I fantasise, but why not? It was a great mistake to allow cars to be carried through the Chan- nel Tunnel — and how typical that Mrs Thatcher wanted it to be exclusively a road tunnel. Are motorists mad enough to want to drive in a tube for 30 odd miles? Per- haps they are. But if foreign visitors left their cars behind and had to travel by train, and if those frighteningly long and damag- ing continental lorries were not allowed into Britain and the containers had to go by rail, how better our railways would become and how happier we all might be. For something surely must be done to curb road traffic in this increasingly not very green and not very pleasant island.
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