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Apologies for the late arrival of Friday’s Front Page.

NORTHERN IRELAND AUTHOR NEWLY ANNOUNCED FOR UBF
One of Ullapool Book Festival’s guest authors, Lynn Coady from Canada, has had to cancel (luckily shortly before all the tickets went on sale!) but the organisers now have a replacement author.
The book festival’s honorary president, author and poet Chris Dolan said this week
“Such a shame that, for personal reasons, Lynn Coady can’t be with us in Ullapool this year. But we are over the moon to announce that Jan Carson will be joining us. A vital voice from Northern Ireland, Jan’s new book, The Raptures, is receiving rave reviews across the UK. Novelist, short story writer, Jan is a wonderful addition to UBF 2022.”

Jan Carson is a writer based in Belfast. Her first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, was published in 2014 to critical acclaim, followed by a short-story collection, Children’s Children (2016), and two flash fiction anthologies, Postcard Stories (2017) and Postcard Stories 2 (2020). Her second novel, The Fire Starters (2019), won the EU Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Dalkey Novel of the Year Award. She has won the Harper’s Bazaar short-story competition and has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award and the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize. Her latest novel The Raptures, published in January, will cement Jan Carson’s reputation as one of the most exciting and inventive writers of her generation. “An original work that’s equal parts terrifying, hilarious and memorable” – The Times.
All tickets are on sale at www.ticketsource.co.uk/ullapool-book-festival

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Bridge upgrade opens up parts of historic Assynt estate

Access to parts of the beautiful Glencanisp Estate in Assynt has become much easier thanks to the repair and upgrade of a key bridge by the community-owned Assynt Foundation.

The Cnoc nan Each bridge project was delivered through the Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape Partnership, thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The aim was to repair and upgrade the bridge to help maintain good access to parts of the Assynt Foundation estate, and its historic built heritage, and allow more native woodland planting to go ahead in the area.

The bridge is one of only four designated access points directly onto Assynt Foundation land, which covers 44,000 acres. So the bridge plays a key role for estate staff, deer stalkers and members of the public, including walkers, off-road vehicles, bikes, ponies and horses.

The bridge crosses the Culag River between Loch Druim Suardalain and Loch Culag and connects the northern half of the estate to Cnocnaneach, where there is an historic round house, the shieling of a cleared settlement, and the 18th century farm of Knockneach (Cnoc nan Each). The bridge also allows walkers to visit the eastern portion of the estate, and Assynt Foundation staff, volunteers and contractors to get to areas of the estate identified for possible future native woodland planting.

Along with the track leading to it, the bridge was originally built to create all-year access to the estate shepherd’s house and croft, known as Cnocaneach, which was lived in and worked on right up until the late 1970s by the Fleming family, the last family to live there.

Work on the bridge was carried out by Assynt Foundation staff, volunteers and contractors, who did a fantastic job in a difficult-to-access location. This included hauling two huge tree trunks into place to form the horizonal struts for the bridge, and then balancing on them to install the planking on top!  Pic on left.

Information about the project is available on the CALLP website at www.coigach-assynt.org.uk.