Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Croft boundaries

There was a meeting of crofters on our side of the glen.
The man from the ministry was not happy about the boundaries.

If you look at our properties from the other side of the glen (see photo) the boundaries are quite obvious. They are delineated by burns and therefore bushes.

The hillsides here run with water at most  times of the year. This water  finally channels itself into a few burns. As a general rule there is a burn on each side of each croft's property. There certainly is with ours.

The burns - over time - make deepish gorges for themselves where the ground is soft . In a few places they hit harder ground and are more superficial and  meander a bit to get around the obstacle.

The man from the ministry cannot understand why the lines down each side of the properties are not  nice and straight. This would  makes it easy for him, in his office in London or Brussels to calculate acreage and things.

Hence the meeting

It had to be explained that the crofters have animals grazing in these fields and these animals have to have access to the burn to drink. There are only certain parts of the burns where that can happen  - and the old boundary was made so that animals from each side could both get good access to the burn at suitable places.

He still didn't really  understand






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