Auchtavan is an old farm town, or a 'clachan' as it used to be known, high in the highlands, which we walked through on Saturday. There are lots of ruins of old houses here, or rather a scatter of stones now, but this one house was restored in 2008 by a local community enterprise. It is accessible today by land rover or on foot.
Auchtavan means 'field of the two kids'. Traditionally, the rent paid for the land was two young goats. People who lived here were farmers. They had no gas, electricity, telephone or running water. They would have walked miles to go to school and the nearest shops would have been about a 6 mile walk through the glen. The last occupants, with their 7 children, left this area in the mid 1900s seemingly.
This particular cottage would have been split in two - half for the animals and the other half for the family.
It was interesting to walk through, letting the mind wander about how things would have been then. They certainly had different things to think about than we do today.
A nice illustration of life in the country in Scotland. No wonder my grandparents emigrated. I never really knew their story, I am sorry to say. I never thought to ask my grandmother while she was alive and I was young when my grandfather died.
