This small school served the households on the ‘Cape side’ – across the Kyle of Durness from Keoldale. Several shepherding families lived there. If you have made the journey to Cape Wrath you will have passed Achiemore on your way there.

 

Some memories of that school..

 

The teacher there, he was called Smiley. Because the Portskerra Bard, Hugh MacIntosh, used to go in to him because he was great for Gaelic…learning Gaelic. He would be teaching shepherd’s children. Oh yes, there was a lot of people on it. It was Craggie and Dal and Inshore and there’s one away down in the Cape, what-it’s-called house. There was seven or eight shepherds on the Cape side and their families. Because we were staying at their houses – beside their houses in 1951.

 

It’d be quite a distance from the next school then. They’d have to go across the Kyle to go to Durness. Yes, to Durness and perhaps sometimes you wouldn’t get across, the way the tide was, sometimes you’d get from the jetty and other times you’d walk away down half a mile and come back up with the river and then sometimes you’d get across but you couldn’t get landed on the other side, you had to walk over the top of the rocks and the ferryman’s house, Morrison.

 

The school: a wee tin shack it was on Dal brae, you looked down into the Dal – there’s a river, the Dal river. And the house was on the top of the hill. And there was a teacher there, and that man was called Smiley, what his right name was, I don’t know. He was a clever man. He cleaned out the school, the old shack, tin shack. Cleaned it out and gave him a new bed.