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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Mark Macaskill

Vandalism or the community’s future? Crofters feel ‘helpless’ in face of spaceport radar station

Rachel and Ian Broughton at their home in Tongue.
Rachel and Ian Broughton at their home in Tongue. Photograph: Ewen Weatherspoon/The Observer

On a small croft in the shadow of Ben Tongue, a 302-metre high mountain in the Scottish Highlands, Ian and Rachel Broughton lead a quiet life, growing produce and relishing the calm of their rural haven. But changes are afoot.

The retired couple are horrified by plans for a radar station for the Sutherland Spaceport, one of the UK’s first spaceports, on the summit of the mountain, with a new service road that will skirt within metres of their 170-year-old stone cottage.

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