Auchindrain

I was at Auchindrain today as the Argyll & Bute Constituency MSP for a meeting with a variety of organisations who want to support this exceptional place. I am confident it has a good future despite some difficult times over the past 40 years.

For those who don't know anything about the site (which has just received National Museum Accreditation) , one line from today's presentation from the Curator, Bob Clark, and the Chair, Cllr Allison Hay, sticks in the mind. "This" they said" is what was cleared in the Highland Clearances"

What that means is that the pre-clearance Highland townships - the townships that were destroyed and the inhabitants driven away - were like Auchindrain. We think of pre-Clearance Scotland as being empty, as the straths in Caithness or the hills of Sutherland are now (or indeed many Argyll glens). But in reality that is what it looked like after Clearance - Auchnidrain is what it looked like before.

Yet it is the only such landscape left in Scotland. For that reason alone it should be cherished and it should be visited by everyone (world wide) who claims descent from those terrible times.