Cruachan Dam: Weaving the Past and the Present

STITCHING THE TAPESTRY OF THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS

This audio forms part of a series of audio interviews conducted in 2023 by Smartify as part of the Spirit of the Highlands and Islands project. Listen and discover the Spirit of the Highlands and Islands through the eyes of the stitchers of the Tapestry of the Highlands and Islands.

Join Jenny and Melanie of the Dam Stitchers as they discuss the story of their group's panel, telling the story of the Cruachan Dam, the Tunnel Tigers and weaving together stories of the past and the present.

[Melanie] It turns out that when I did my stitching I did the sleeve of one of the engineers and I was inspired and I looked up the history of Donegal knitting...The whole connection for me was good. I mentioned this to my youngest son who is an engineer and he said 'yeah, I've been talking to my boss about this, his mother is one of the family actually from Donegal and his father actually was one of the engineers that worked on the Channel Tunnel...it's possible that he worked on Cruachan'. So I thought that was another nice little connection in the storytelling and it's only because May said she wanted to do a tiger because of the Tunnel Tigers that I started looking into that side of it. Very much an oral tradition going on I think.