
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


The Plock of Kyle is a promontory on the North West coast of Scotland, beside the Skye Bridge and close to the villages of Plockton and Kyle of Lochalsh. This old community parkland is a striking landscape with native woodland, meadows and rocky coastline, but it is an area tourists tend to just drive through to get to Skye. Helen Mark discovers how a local community trust is working on projects designed to put Plock on the map. There are plans to reconstruct a village, based on archaeological evidence of the Vikings presence in the area. Park ranger, Heather Beaton, gives Helen a tour of the Plock's newly restored meadows, ponds and nature trails. She extols the benefits of scything and gives Helen a lesson on how to improve her skills. Heather aims to hold an annual scything festival.
Helen also ventures under the Skye Bridge, to the small island of Eilean Ban, which was the final home of naturalist and writer Gavin Maxwell, author of The Ring of Bright Water. Otters are regularly spotted around the island and a small museum maintained by a local trust commemorates his life story.
Many local people still recall the heady days of protests over the cost of tolls on the impressive Skye Bridge when it opened in 1995. Helen talks to leading rebel and Highland councillor, Drew Millar, who remembers driving sheep across the new bridge in protest and spending a night in jail for non-payment. Thirty people were convicted of non-payment. After nearly a decade of dissent, the protestors finally won and the tolls were dropped. Drew says the protest shows that peaceful civil disobedience can be successful.
Produced by Kathleen Carragher
By BBC Radio 44.8
8383 ratings
The Plock of Kyle is a promontory on the North West coast of Scotland, beside the Skye Bridge and close to the villages of Plockton and Kyle of Lochalsh. This old community parkland is a striking landscape with native woodland, meadows and rocky coastline, but it is an area tourists tend to just drive through to get to Skye. Helen Mark discovers how a local community trust is working on projects designed to put Plock on the map. There are plans to reconstruct a village, based on archaeological evidence of the Vikings presence in the area. Park ranger, Heather Beaton, gives Helen a tour of the Plock's newly restored meadows, ponds and nature trails. She extols the benefits of scything and gives Helen a lesson on how to improve her skills. Heather aims to hold an annual scything festival.
Helen also ventures under the Skye Bridge, to the small island of Eilean Ban, which was the final home of naturalist and writer Gavin Maxwell, author of The Ring of Bright Water. Otters are regularly spotted around the island and a small museum maintained by a local trust commemorates his life story.
Many local people still recall the heady days of protests over the cost of tolls on the impressive Skye Bridge when it opened in 1995. Helen talks to leading rebel and Highland councillor, Drew Millar, who remembers driving sheep across the new bridge in protest and spending a night in jail for non-payment. Thirty people were convicted of non-payment. After nearly a decade of dissent, the protestors finally won and the tolls were dropped. Drew says the protest shows that peaceful civil disobedience can be successful.
Produced by Kathleen Carragher

7,913 Listeners

1,067 Listeners

5,576 Listeners

1,808 Listeners

1,729 Listeners

1,018 Listeners

1,952 Listeners

1,996 Listeners

488 Listeners

36 Listeners

64 Listeners

284 Listeners

259 Listeners

255 Listeners

154 Listeners

110 Listeners

274 Listeners

101 Listeners

4,186 Listeners

3,245 Listeners

779 Listeners

242 Listeners

68 Listeners

24 Listeners

529 Listeners