Qualla: Isle of Ewe

Isle of Ewe: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger McLachlan, CC BY-SA 2.0. Until the late twentieth century, the children of the Isle of Ewe travelled twenty-six miles to school every day. The journey involved a boat across Loch Ewe to Aultbea, then a bus up the long coast road, then a bus back, then a boat home before the weather turned. They were the children of a single extended family, the Grants, who have lived on this small Scottish island - one square mile of farmland and rough grazing in Loch Ewe, on the west coast of Wester Ross - since the nineteenth century. There used to be more families. There used to be other children. The Second World War took the rest of them away, and they did not come back.

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Image: Roger McLachlan | CC BY-SA 2.0

Isle of Ewe: Name as a Joke

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Maguire, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Isle of Ewe has, by accident of phonetics, become one of the great romantic puns of the English-speaking world. The Glasgow singer-songwriter Aidan Moffat wrote a love song called A Scenic Route To The Isle Of Ewe. The Goon Show used the joke in 1954 when Neddie Seagoon, told...

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Image: Peter Maguire | CC BY-SA 2.0

Isle of Ewe: What the Travellers Wrote

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wojsyl, CC BY-SA 3.0. Two early Scottish writers left useful glimpses of what this island was like before the modern era. In 1549, the priest and traveller Donald Munro wrote in his Description of the Western Isles: "Ellan Ew, haffe myle in length, full of woods, guid for thieves to wait upon uther me...

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Image: Wojsyl | CC BY-SA 3.0

Isle of Ewe: What the War Did

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Brown, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1939 the Royal Navy turned Loch Ewe into one of the great strategic anchorages of the war. From 1942 onwards, the Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union assembled here before steaming north for Murmansk and Archangel - voyages so dangerous that the convoy routes are still remember...

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Image: Nigel Brown | CC BY-SA 2.0

Isle of Ewe: Off-Grid Living

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today the island is privately owned by GBB Estates Ltd and crofted by the Grants. The southern half is low-lying farmland of fertile Permian or Triassic sandstone soils. The northern half is uncultivated, on harder Torridonian sandstone with acidic peaty cover. The shoreline alte...

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Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 3.0

Isle of Ewe: What You See

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Croker, CC BY-SA 2.0. From the air, the Isle of Ewe is a clear, small, oval island in the middle of Loch Ewe, west of the village of Aultbea. The southern half is striking - cultivated fields with hedgerows, a working dairy and croft, the small cluster of dwellings on the leeward north-east side. The ...

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Image: Dave Croker | CC BY-SA 2.0