LEFT HIGH AND DRY
Villagers cut off as council shuts only road to homes
IT was built under towering steep cliffs on a ledge so narrow cars have to be parked at one end of the village and the journey completed on foot.
But the residents of Crovie do not even have that luxury any more due to the risk of a landslide.
A single row of around 60 homes, the community has been cut off for almost a year after the only road into it was closed over fears it would collapse.
Residents must now use the 84 steep steps cut into a 100ft rockface or the steep walk up and down the road.
The beauty spot was built in the 1700s, when people and supplies all arrived by sea. More recently, villagers with cars used to drive down the cliff road then park and walk to their homes.
However, Aberdeenshire Council blocked the road and has twice failed to begin work to stabilise the slope and reopen the route.
It has arranged for emergency vehicles to access the village by a privately owned track and, in recent weeks, supplied a quad bike and small trailer to ferry some supplies.
But residents say it is too little, too late as they have to carry groceries down the road and haul their bins to its top for collection. They claim the elderly and sick have been effectively ‘locked out’ of holiday homes and the village is haemorrhaging tourism business.
Now the community is fighting back by demanding a swift resolution to the problem.
Air race pilot Hamish Mitchell rents out a home in Crovie. He said: ‘The road closure is a disaster. Rentals are down 50 per cent and people have been cancelling.’
On Friday, he landed his seaplane in the bay, insisting he had to fly in ‘emergency teabags’.
Former bank manager Catherine Clanahan, 62, retired to the village from Edinburgh with her 65-yearold husband Ricky. She said: ‘I have been coming here since I was 14 but I now have a heart problem. Climbing the hill is a nightmare. My daughter worries that if I have a heart attack the ambulance will struggle to get to me.’
Community stalwart Shona Stu- art said: ‘We feel we have been cut off from safe access. Tourists are driving away. It is scandalous. We need an inquiry as to why it’s taken so long to repair the road.’
Retired physics teacher Sandy Kilpatrick, 76, who has had a home in the village for 48 years, said: ‘It has been torture. Some people in their later years have been unable to visit the homes they have had for tens of years, they are effectively locked out.’
Oxfordshire-based Roger Nathan is renovating a cottage in the village. He said: ‘Our builder found bringing materials down untenable. I had to spend £1,200 on a vehicle to facilitate it.’
Philip McKay, Aberdeenshire Council’s head of roads, claimed the delay, though ‘unfortunate’, had been ‘unavoidable’.
He said: ‘The design of the stabilisation and drainage works for the road and the slope below proved more complex than anticipated. Work is expected to start in early August, with the road re-opening to traffic in mid-November.’
‘We need an inquiry’