This month I travelled to the Isle of Skye for the first time in many years. Everyone I talked to when they found out that I lived at a lighthouse wanted to give me their opinion on the current owner, Roy Stolen, of Neist Point Lighthouse recent decision to charge £2.00 for using his path to hike out to the lighthouse. Neist point is not accessible by road. You must leave your car behind and walk forty-five minutes on the landowner's path to get to the light. If you click on the picture shown you can read the Sunday Mirror's recent article about what Mr. Stolen is doing.

Click to Enlarge

Neist Point and Eshaness lighthouse are both remote island lighthouses but we both accommodations suffer from one common problem - hundreds of tourist daily. We probably top the Neist Point figures because people can drive right up to Eshaness Lighthouse. Also our back yard is the spectacular Eshaness cliffs and that bring people who would not come to see the lighthouse.

When we bought Eshaness our access road had been taken over by the Shetland Island Council so we did not have the responsibility of maintaining it. But, if we did it would be an expensive undertaking because of the heavy traffic. Yes, I said heavy traffic. I just looked out at the car park (originally our helipad but now the helicopter has to land in the field because there is no room for him) and there were 35 cars crammed into it. The council has redone the road three times in the six years we have lived here.

I have great empathy for Roy Stolen's problem. Dealing with tourists is difficult. They completely ignore signs and think that the lighthouse is put there for their enjoyment only. I would love to put up a stone dyke so it would be harder for the tourists to access our house. The accommodations are our home and are posted as such. The tower is locked with heavy barred gates to keep people out.

The new Land Reform (Scotland) act will give the local authority the power to give access to everyone to certain areas. Does that mean that people will be able to walk into our gate and we will have to take down our private sign? I hope not as that is our only protection from invasion from tourists. If that happens the Shetland Island Council will need to buy this property, as no one will want to live here with people peering in the window and trampling the things in the yard.

Is it right what Mr. Stoten is doing? I guess it depends on whether you own land with a lighthouse on it. It certainly does change your perspective when you have to deal with hundreds of tourist daily.

Sincerely,

I love to hear from you so contact me by Email at sharma@sharmakrauskopf.com

You can find more articles in the archive under Island Miniatures/Lighthouse Letters.

I have three books which are directly related to this column. The Last Lighthouse tells how we bought our lighthouse, the day by day journal of a year at Eshaness entitled A Year in the Lighthouse and in Scottish Lighthouses our lighthouse is featured in the 31 lighthouses presented. You can find out more about these books and others I have written at my official author web site.