Around the Adriatic Sea
The challenge: cycling round the Adriatic Sea. Will I manage it before the weather in the Balkans gets too rough? I’m curious to find out myself….
14 August: During my drive from Dunbeath to Brora I passed the ruins of Badbea, a former village right on the edge of cliffs where small tenant farmers (crofters) were forced to settle after the 'land clearances'.
Large landowners established in the late 18th, early 19th century that large-scale sheep farming yielded more than leasing land to poor smallholders, and they chased away those 'paupers' from their cottages to the barren shores. When the distraught and disenfranchised tenants would not leave, their farms just burnt down.
In Badbea lived from 1792 12 families and their cattle, right against the coastal edge on the inhospitable and quite barren cliffs. The large landowners had given them just short of being chased into the sea... It sometimes blew so hard there that adults had to leash their children and hens lest they be blown over the cliff edge....
Many decided to emigrate, including to Canada or Australia. By 1903 Badbea was completely deserted. One of the sons of an emigrant returned to Scotland and built a memorial tower for the former families of Badbea (main photo).
Badbea Land Clearance info board
The challenge: cycling round the Adriatic Sea. Will I manage it before the weather in the Balkans gets too rough? I’m curious to find out myself….
From 2026, Eva will be raising funds for the International Campaign for Tibet Europe, the world’s largest Tibetan advocacy organisation.
