Two former Richmond School teachers – Gavin and Laura Copland – who have moved to the Western Isles of Scotland to be crofters, have sent us a further Letter from Rum

THE weather in the first week was, even by local standards, “a bit rough”. A hard easterly blew relentlessly.

The ferry was unable to drop its ramp close enough to the concrete at the pier and so, in low ratio, we arrived driving through a storm of swell and salt.

The cold wind has sucked the moisture out of the land, for which we are thankful, but the temperature plummeted under clear skies at night and we found ourselves climbing into bed wearing more clothes than we had on during the day.

The antiquated SuperSer gas heater which Sven and Etta donated to us before our departure was on whenever we are in the bedroom tent, and after dark I slid out from under our pile of duvets and blankets to switch it off before dashing back into the warmth. When we woke, when we ate and when we went to bed our breath condensed before our faces. The first night even the dog awoke, crying, his young bones cold to the touch. Since then he has slept on top of us.

And yet the work of the day kept us warm so far as the light allowed. For two days, we shifted everything we had brought from the back of the truck down by the river, up the hill to the croft, by hand. With sharpened spades we cut down and flattened the tussocks of reed and Molina to make enough flat ground to put the tents up and reopened the drainage channels behind our campsite to allow the moisture held by the peat here to drain away – first by digging out the heavy clods of vegetation which had taken hold, and secondly by manhandling the tonnes of fallen stone which had settled there.

Some of these stones now secure the guy ropes and ring the skirts of the tents.

Others have become a walkway between the bedroom and the kitchen tent to allow us to pass between the two without recourse to wellies.

One night saw us invited to our neighbour’s caravan for tea. They arrived here a year ago, with two young children, the first new crofters on the Isle of Rum since the brutal clearances of the 1840s. Our work here would be much harder without them – already we have borrowed tools, eaten fresh eggs and bread and a host of other things beyond providing the simple reassurance that this can be done and a listening ear to share ideas with.

“It is a struggle,” Nic said.

“But you don’t have to struggle alone.”

When they first stepped foot on their croft, west of where we are, there was literally nothing and no-one up here.

As the time has gone on, my admiration for them and what they have already achieved has grown. Their dream, like ours, is still only in its infancy but they have survived this far and with the long cycle of a year under their belt are tougher, leaner and smarter than we.

I look forward to having all four seasons under my belt.

On Sunday, for the first time since the start of the week, the sun fell unimpeded on the croft. Not a cloud in the sky, and the wind dropped a little. The deer, who in the morning dark we heard crunching through the frost and hooming just on the other side of the tent walls, are returning back up into the high hills – a sure sign of improving weather. Gusts of up to 60mph were forecast and duly rolled over us these past days.

Each night I woke amidst the general roar, tense and ready to burst into action, as the tent heaved and flapped and bucked under the strain. The good folk down in the village, on learning that we were first coming up here in tents, offered their houses as refuges when the inevitable happened and we were driven from the hillside.

So far we have remained, and the tents have been standing when dawn broke, though already one guy line has snapped and been replaced and every morning and evening I do the rounds, tightening up ropes and securing pegs.

The forecast is for calmer winds, under which we will sleep a little more soundly.

When the wind turns around though, and the westerlies roll in off the Atlantic, I am all too aware of how vulnerable we are here and that should the wind choose it will pluck our little camp off the ground like a child would pick a daisy and discard it where it will.

The urgency to get some more solid shelter up before this happens is tangible.