The Rum life
On the Inner Hebridean outpost of Rum, its Cuillin mountains soar up improbably from the Atlantic, leviathans matching the grandeur of their namesakes just across the water on Skye.
Rum is not a mini Skye, though. The isle forges its own path untrammelled by motorhomes and tour buses; unique and beguiling to visit, and inhabit. Just ask the four families who, in 2020, beat off the competition attracted by a global call-out to become Rum’s newest residents.
I’m back on Rum, the largest of the Small Isles, and an isle that oozes romance, from its deer-dappled, mist-shrouded slopes to the grandiose old castle that bristles with odious ghosts. This is an elemental landscape, built on the solidity of some of the planet’s oldest rocks – Torridonian sandstone and Lewisian gneiss. It’s one of the oldest inhabited parts of Scotland, too: man wandered here in Mesolithic times, crafting tools using
