Walking on Rum and the Small Isles. Peter Edwards
the primary diversions for the Bulloughs and their guests and a day’s stalking on the hill would be followed by a sumptuous evening meal served at the dining suite, which had originally graced the state rooms of Sir George’s yacht Rhouma. After dinner the company would repair to the magnificent ballroom, with its highly polished sprung floors and cut glass chandelier, to dance the night away.
Harris Bay and the Bullough mausoleum (Walk 3, Day 2 and Walk 7)
This exalted era drew to a close with the coming of the Great War. Most of the estate’s male staff went to Flanders and many never came back. The estate fell into disrepair during the war and as Britain’s fortunes declined in the post-war years, the Bullough finances also gradually dwindled, along with their interest in Rum. Sir George died in France in July 1939 and was interred in the family Mausoleum at Harris Bay. His widow continued to visit Rum as late as 1954. She died in 1967, aged 98, and was buried next to her husband in the Mausoleum at Harris, having sold the whole island, save for the Mausoleum, but including the castle and its contents, to the NCC in 1957 for the ‘knock-down price of £23,000’ on the understanding that it would be used as a National Nature Reserve.
The NNR
In 2010, SNH handed over Kinloch Village to the Isle of Rum Community Trust to provide land for housing and local enterprises. The island still is owned and managed as a single estate by the NCC’s successors, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). In addition to its status as a NNR, Rum was designated a Biosphere Reserve in 1976, a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1987, and has 17 sites scheduled as nationally important ancient monuments.
The Rum NNR was originally envisaged as an ‘open-air laboratory’ with scientific research conducted into specific areas of the island’s ecology, most notably the long term study of the red deer population. Rum was also the primary site for the ultimately successful reintroduction of the white-tailed eagle to Scotland during the 1970s and 1980s. However, SNH has shifted the emphasis to re-creating a habitat resembling what existed before the island’s native tree cover was removed. This has involved the reintroduction of over a million trees and shrubs of 20 native species in the vicinity of Kinloch and Loch Scresort.
Magnus Magnusson’s well-regarded book on Rum is entitled Nature’s Island – an apposite description of this mountainous island wilderness, where it is easy to imagine a past without much human presence. However you can also revisit the isle’s more decadent human past at Kinloch Castle.
Wildlife
During the autumn rut the night air on Rum resounds with the ‘belling’ roar of stags (photo: Konrad Borkowski)
Rum’s red deer population has been the subject of a long term study by researchers from Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, based at Kilmory Bay in the north of the island. The research has focussed on the sociobiology and behavioural ecology of red deer. The island’s deer population was hunted to extinction in the 18th century, but since reintroduction in 1845 the number has grown to the currently maintained level of around 1500.
Red deer near Guirdil bothy
The island has a small herd of about 14 ponies. The Rum Ponies are an old breed, and their presence was first recorded in 1772. Shortly thereafter, Dr Johnson described them as ‘very small, but of a breed eminent for beauty'. They are of stocky stature, averaging 13 hands height, with a dark stripe along the back and zebra stripes on the forelegs. These features suggest that they are related to primitive northern European breeds, perhaps introduced by the Norsemen. It is sometimes claimed – erroneously – that they are descended from animals off-loaded from ships of the Spanish Armada. The ponies are used to bring deer carcasses off the hill during the stalking season, but are otherwise left to roam wild.
Rum’s wild goats are subject to the same Armada myth as the ponies, but are in fact descended from domestic animals. The goat stocks were improved for stalking during the Bullough’s tenure and were renowned for their impressive horns and thick, shaggy fleeces. The tribe, numbering around 200, usually inhabits the sea cliffs and mountains, particularly in the west. A small herd of around 30 Highland cattle was introduced to the island in 1970.
Atlantic grey and common seals frequent Rum’s coastline, and Eurasian otters patrol territories around the island’s shores. Other mammals found on Rum include the pygmy shrew, pipistrelle bat, brown rat and the island’s own strain of long-tailed field mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus hamiltoni. The only reptile found on Rum is the common lizard, and the only amphibian is the palmate newt. There are brown trout, European eels and three-spined sticklebacks in the streams, and occasionally salmon in the Kinloch River.
Rum is renowned for its 61,000 pairs of Manx shearwaters – one of the world’s largest breeding colonies. These migratory birds return to Rum every summer to breed in underground burrows high in the Cuillin. Trollaval has high densities of nest burrows, which may have been occupied for many centuries. When the birds swap incubation shifts at night they make a fearsome racket, hence the Norse name for the mountain. There are sizeable colonies of fulmars, shags, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and other gulls, mainly found along the south-eastern cliffs.
White-tailed eagles were persecuted to extinction on Rum by 1912 and became extinct in Scotland thereafter. A programme of reintroduction began on the island in 1975, and within ten years 82 young birds from Norway had been released. Today a successful breeding population is gradually colonising the west coast of Scotland. Several pairs of golden eagles nest on the island; merlin, buzzards, sparrowhawks, peregrines, kestrels and short-eared owls are the other resident birds of prey. Other bird species include the red-throated diver, red-breasted merganser, eider, shelduck, red grouse, corncrake, oystercatcher, lapwing, golden plover, curlew, cuckoo, raven and hooded crow as well as various finches, tits, chats, thrushes, warblers, pipits and wagtails.
Invertebrates include numerous species of damselfly, dragonfly, beetles, butterflies and moths. Several rare species are found on the slopes of Barkeval, Hallival and Askival including the ground beetles Leistus montanus and Amara quenseli. The hugely irritating midge (Culicoides impunctatus), a small biting gnat, occurs in unbelievable numbers between mid-spring and mid-autumn. Deer ticks and clegs – an aggressive horse fly – are the island’s other bloodthirsty beasties. Ticks can carry Lyme disease, which can become seriously debilitating if undiagnosed and untreated.
Woodland, Plants and Flowers
By the end of the 18th century much of Rum’s woodland had been cleared for grazing. John Bullough planted 8000 trees at Kilmory, Harris and Kinloch in the 1890s, but only some of those at Kinloch still survive. In 1960 a nursery was established at Kinloch to support re-introduction of 20 native tree species, including Scots pine, oak, silver birch, aspen, alder, hawthorn, rowan and holly. Over a million native trees and shrubs have since been planted. The forested area is limited to the environs of Kinloch, the slopes surrounding Loch Scresort and on nearby Meall á Ghoirtein.
As a consequence of high rainfall and acid soils 90 per cent of Rum’s vegetation comprises bog and heath. Much of the island is dominated by tussocky purple moor grass and deer sedge. In boggy areas sedges and bog asphodel abound alongside sundew and butterwort. Heather or ling (calluna) occurs in drier areas. The well-fertilised soil beneath the Manx shearwater burrows in the Cuillin keeps the turf green at an unusually high altitude.
Among the island’s other flora are the rare arctic sandwort and alpine pennycress, endemic varieties of the heath spotted orchid and eyebright as well as more common species such as blue heath milkwort and roseroot. A total of 590 species of higher plants and ferns have been recorded on Rum.
Getting Around
Visitors are not permitted to bring vehicles to Rum and there is no public transport on the island. Getting around on foot is the norm for most visitors, although mountain bikes can be of use on several of the island’s Land Rover tracks.
Amenities