The Road To Nowhere

Lochinver Church of Scotland with Suilven, shrouded in cloud, providing the background.

- Martin Morrison

When the plans for the North Coast 500 were first announced, I felt my heart sink for a second. There seemed no specific reason for this. I just felt strangely uneasy, a some might on waking briefly during a generally unpleasant dream. Perhaps it was some ingrained cynicism stirring deep down. Or maybe such responses have simply become reflex after decades of hearing of initiatives, partnerships and the mummy of them all, promoting sustainable development from government, enterprise companies and myriad quangos and their derivatives, while we wait still for the New Age of the North promised year in, year out. Grinning politicians and sundry apparatchiks in very sharp suits perform ceremonial pro forma puffs in the multiple pages of one of the largest individually-owned press empires in the Highlands, where a highly efficient centralised editorial policy ensures exactly the same song can be heard at the same time every week from the restored forests of Aberdeenshire to the Wild Lands, Rock Zoo and Living Landscape of North West Sutherland. Advertising a road didn’t seem like much of an innovation.