The Finest Road in the World: The Story of Travel and Transport in the Scottish Highlands
£2.90
Trains and stagecoaches stuck in the snow, wild storms driving sailing ships off course, traffic pile-ups on so-called ‘killer’ highways – stories abound about the horrors of travel in the Highlands and Islands, and have done for as far as the records go back.
James Miller tells the dramatic and sometimes surprisingly humorous story of travel and transport in the Highlands. Some of the figures in the story are familiar – General George Wade, Thomas Telford and Joseph Mitchell among them – but there are a host of others too, including the intrepid Lady Sarah Murray, who offered sound advice for travellers (‘Provide yourself with a strong roomy carriage, and have the springs well corded’).
This thought-provoking book will appeal to all who like stories of travel and transport, and are interested in how changing modes of transport have affected the ways of life in the Highlands and remain crucial to the modern life and the future of the region.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Birlinn Ltd (13 Jun. 2019) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Mass Market Paperback | 336 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1780275730 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1780275734 |
| Dimensions | 12.7 x 1.91 x 19.05 cm |
by W O.
Loved this book – and it was short-listed for the inaugural Highland Book Prize.
by evelyn richard
Good read
by Kenneth I Sinclair
Well written book on a subject not before extensively covered.
by GraemeBute
This is a fine book, well researched, well written, both informative and entertaining, and produced to Birlinn’s usual immaculate standards. There are impressive illustrations, copious notes and even (thank the lord!) an index. It is also as near as you’re going to get to a single volume history of transport in the North of Scotland … and that’s where – for me – the weaknesses begin to out.
Walking and travelling in the Highlands it is difficult to avoid contemplating past travails – who was the ferryman who bequeathed the Ferry Boat Inn to this lonely spot? How did this community function in a world almost without roads and bridges? How did the very essentials of life – salt, say – find there way around the lochs, the islands, the near impassable massifs of the high reaches of the mainland?
The answer, of course, at least in the North and West, is that they did it primarily by boat, and continued to do so for a very long time … and at least to some extent right through to the present day. This is not the focus of The Finest Road, which as its name suggests, concentrates on the development of land travel and emphasises, perhaps, the more easterly – and populous – areas around Inverness and Aberdeen. And very interesting it is, with good summaries of the ancient drovers network, the work of General Wade (and colleagues) and the gradual adoption of the developing system by the nascent local authorities. Near seamlessly integrated with all of this are compact but informative sections on the coming of canals, the railways and the development of steam powered marine transport.
An additional drawback is that the above is presented without much in the way of social or historical context, so it is not always clear quite why the Highlands attracted the attention of authorities in the South at any particular time, nor what might have been going on – the Clearances, for instance – within the area and the communities under discussion.
However, this remains a very good book, but it is limited as, of course, any single volume history must inevitably be.