Donald and Catherine's place

There is a tiny white cottage at the bottom of this mountain in Glen Etive.

 Here it is a bit closer up.

And even closer. This is where my 4 times great grandparents, Donald and Catherine, brought up their 6 children before emmigrating to Tasmania in 1855 with their then adult children and two sons-in-law. It was built for the family in about 1840 by Donald's employer, the Earl of Breadalbane. The current owners are renovating it to become a holiday rental.

Donald's job was to patrol a section of the Earl's deer hunting forest. Even though it was called a forest, there are very few trees. He had to guard against poachers, make sure the deer were doing well and keep other people's sheep and cattle out so they would not compete with the deer for grass, after all, the Earl wanted the deer he shot to be as big and impressive as possible. Donald and his family probably helped when the Earl and his mates stayed in Breadalbane's Bothy which is the ruined house next to the cottage. It was set on fire only about 3 or 4 years ago when some campers decided to light a fire inside the empty building. The current owners are planning to move it a bit further away from the cottage and rebuild it for their own use!

I know this because their House Manager, Alison, came to show us the cottage because I told her about my connection to it. It seems her employers own a large part of Glen Etive and sometimes live in the large Dalness House, down the road. Inside, the cottage looks nothing like it would have when Donald and Catherine lived there.

But the mountains are still the same, if you ignore the ocassional line of power poles and the odd car on the sealed but single lane road. It is still very remote. The road to the loch at the end goes no further.

When Donald began his job he was allowed to carry a gun, but was not to have more than one mare and was not permitted to marry. The remoteness was considered unsuitable for women and children. But he did marry, and they lived here for over twenty years. Tanya and Sheryl walking back down the driveway in front of the cottage.

The entrance to Glen Etive is next to one end of Glen Coe and the edge of Rannoch Moor.

Remote. Wild. Beautiful. But only two and a half hours by car from Glasgow.