A widowed grandmother is the latest victim of the nationwide increase in countryside crime.
Cheryl Farnaby, 67, lost a day’s work when thieves took cut peat from outside her home near Dunvegan on Skye.
After her husband Stanton died, she began cutting her own peat because of the high price of coal and heating oil.
She said: “It’s not so much losing the monetary value of the ten bags – about £80 – but the thought someone would stoop so low as steal a pensioner’s winter fuel supply, or certainly part of it.
“It is heartbreaking.”
She added: “The first year I just played at it but for the past two years I have been seriously digging and taking my peats home in the back of my car in used plastic animal feed bags to be dried in my shed for the winter. My usual quota was about 80 bags in total.
“So you can imagine my shock, hurt and disappointment to go to my peat bank the other day and discover someone had stolen about 10 bags of my peats.
“I am sure the culprit is nobody local for I am a familiar figure digging my peats in all weathers and conditions, rain, wind and midges.
“Tourists are constantly stopping to video me and probably wonder what I am at.
“It is very hard work, particularly for a woman pensioner. Locals are outraged and have sympathised with me. I also contacted the police.”
Farmer Robert MacDonald said: “Never in my life have I heard of someone stealing another’s peats.
“It is absolutely appalling behaviour and strikes at the very heart of an honest, hard-working Highland way of life. The theft is utterly despicable and the person responsible should be ashamed of themselves.”
Acting inspector Paul Moxon, at Portree police station, said: “Somebody has spent a lot of time cutting, stacking and putting the peat in bags and that hard work has been taken advantage of.
“We would urge anyone cutting peat to be aware as it is not something that they would expect to happen.”