Election trail's shifting sands

Iain MacDonald
BBC Scotland

Back in 2003, Good Morning Scotland sent reporter Iain MacDonald off round the highways and byways of the country to document the Scottish parliamentary election campaign.

Now, four years on, he is doing it again. Older - but not wiser - this is his weblog of the 2007 Tour of Scotland.

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It begins with a boat.

Driving down the A82 with Mallaig on my mind. At the head of a loch, just next to the road, what was presumably once a working fishing boat is heeled over and half sunk.

It must have belonged to someone once, it probably earned its keep, and fishermen are often emotionally attached to their vessels in a way that seems illogical when you consider it's just wood and wires and a bank loan.

The Silver sands of Morar with Eigg on the horizon

But, like two other boats I've spotted in an even worse condition in West Loch Tarbert, in Kintyre, it is no longer a means of making a living - and once again it's just wood and wire. Waterlogged wood and wire.

Sad, really, and probably symbolic when you consider the state of west coast fishing.

Which is what I'm on my way to do.

At the end of what used to be the only single track trunk road on the UK mainland - and in parts still is - there's the village of Mallaig.

Literally the last stop on this half-patched up road, some of which is now great sweeps of immaculate tarmac giving fantastic views across some stunning West Highland scenery - and some of this is a series of holes held together with ribbons of tired old tar.

Here's an unfashionable statement.

The reason I can't contact the man himself, he tells me when we finally catch up, is because he dropped his mobile phone over the side of a fishing boat in Loch nan Uabh Rain, tiny planes and automobiles Finding the darker side of drink Toothy issues on election trail Meeting voters on election trail Politicians try to woo young ones

I like Mallaig. It's hard by the beautiful silver-sanded beaches of Morar in stunning countryside.

And though it has no end of B&Bs and restaurants and chip shops, it doesn't pretend to be anything else but a working fishing village.

I like that. Mind you, I quite like bits of Dundee as well.

I eventually find myself sitting on a bijou terrace in a bijou hotel which is scrunched up to the shoulder of a much bigger establishment looking out over the blue water.

I have to search for one of my contributors for tomorrow's live broadcast from here by pitching up at the doors of people he knows and leaving messages with them.

The reason I can't contact the man himself, he tells me when we finally catch up, is because he dropped his mobile phone over the side of a fishing boat in Loch nan Uabh.

All's fixed in the end and we're doing the broadcast from Mallaig Harbour in the morning.

I sit on my bijou terrace watching a spectacular sunset. Sipping something. This is the life.

The morning argument's about having a marine national park somewhere on this coastline.

There's lots to be said for marine national parks - yet nobody has said much of it to the people who actually live here and make their living from the sea.

Long serving local councillor Charlie King, who's stepping down this time, is worried about regulations running ashore.

Tougher planning conditions could put thousands of pounds on the cost of building a house in an area where the view's fantastic, but it's very hard to get a house.

As someone once said, you can't eat scenery.

Fisherman Iain Mackinnon from down the road at Arisaig led a deputation from several west coast communities to Holyrood to protest to the parliament's petitions committee early this year.

Yet even after all that, he says still nobody is telling them what it would mean - far less where it would go.

There are real concerns in places like Mallaig and they won't just swim away.

I set off on my way in the blue, shining morning. It's so clear you feel you could almost step onto the islands of Eigg and Rhum while the Cuilins of Skye crack against the sky just behind them.

It's a day fit for heroes, and there are memories of some of those just along the road.

There's a little museum in Arisaig which is just amazing. It tells the many faceted story of this part of the world.

This is where Bonnie Prince Charlie came ashore and was first welcomed by clansmen and where the Clearances bit first and biggest.

It's where commandoes and people who did dirty deeds for the Special Operations Executive during the war did their training.

It ends, this trip to the west Highland, with another boat. The yacht Glaven is moored in the shallows on the Silver Sands of Morar where Burt Lancaster once walked

There's lots about that. It's where Local Hero was filmed: bits of Highlander AND Rob Roy AND Breaking The Waves. And yes, they've got that too.

Saint Mary's School in 1908 had no fewer than 14 Macdonalds in the school photo. Fine place.

And the caretaker at the Astley Hall, which was built in 1893, apparently got £2 a year, raised to £4 two years later and a whole £6 by 1897.

Here's a quote from a bunch of guys, who probably never thought of themselves as heroes:

"What land has a greater right to sustain us than the land for which our forefathers suffered and bled? Why should we emigrate?"

That was said to the Napier Commission in 1883 by crofters from nearby Back of Keppoch. And people like them helped to change the world up here.

It ends, this trip to the west Highland, with another boat.

The yacht Glaven is moored in the shallows on the Silver Sands of Morar where Burt Lancaster once walked.

A waterfall tumbles behind the bridge and the white sand shimmers.

Mountains rear their jagged heads behind. I take some photos which don't do justice to it, and trek back to the car.

I notice I've deposited lots of white sand in the footwell. I head off wondering. Who needs a national park anyway?

Ahead lies the slow twisty drive down the side of Loch Lomond where the word "slow" painted on the road is not an instruction, it's a description.

Apparently this weekend I'm off to the opera in Glasgow. Joy.