I know it looked rather as though we were leaping from one everything our heart desired idea to the next for a while back there and in some ways we were. We started this year not really sure where we’d end up but hopeful that the answer to that would somehow come to us as we went along. We assumed we’d end up in Wales, probably buying land, most likely woodland and try and get something land based off the ground, potentially doing some sort of self grid, likely without planning and certainly off grid. We stayed in three projects along those lines and got our heads around the pros and cons. The only real benefit to that lifestyle was cost really – we could afford a fair few acres of land, with water supply, hidden from prying eyes to put a dwelling up of our own design. The downsides were legion – not least the living in fear of being discovered, the lack of home comforts from lack of a home and so on.
When we arrived in Scotland, Wales was quickly forgotten. If we thought Wales had gorgeous rugged coastlines, stunning skies and lovely landscapes it has nothing on Scotland. We began our year with a list of things we thought we wanted. As the year went on we kept adding new things to the bottom of the list and scribbling out some of the earlier things which we decided along the way were not important after all.
I began with radical ideas about water and energy – here on the south coast where there are annual hose pipe bans water is a precious, limited resource. I have come to realise during our travels that it is not actually water which is in short supply – it is treated, drinking quality water. So why on earth are we still flushing our toilets with it? Running our washing machines with it? Using it to bath and shower with? We’ve lived in places where water is brought in daily for drinking and rainwater is harvested for all other purposes and in other places where it is so abundant all the energy needs are met by harnessing water power and flooding is an issue. We have lived ‘off grid’ for over half this year, relying on solar, wind, water and battery power for light, heat, appliance use and charging and while I am now utterly convinced that there are so many better ways of using power than being plugged into expensive power companies I have made my peace with the fact we will want to use a washing machine, charge up our phones and laptops and DSs. We know we can use less, certainly but we also know we want to use some.
So we’re left with a short list of wants:
A view – and I know you’re laughing at me for this but it means a huge amount to us. We have seen such beautiful places this year and stayed with people who live in gorgeous places. I don’t want to look out of my windows and see traffic, other people’s houses. We want to be somewhere that is lovely.
Water we want to be near a river, a lake, a loch or the sea. Near as in can see it from our land and walk to it quickly.
Land we want land. Land to be as self sufficient as possible in fruit, veg and livestock. To have space for camping, for the kids to explore, to have woodland, to have space.
Community we want to be somewhere there is a true sense of community. Having stayed in several different examples of types of community this year our most favoured is our own property / front door with autonomy on our choices and finances and family but close links with others. We have seen some amazing examples of community spirit and co operation this year and would love our home to be somewhere we feel part of a wider group.
Green Stuff – All the eco type stuff we have learnt and seen this year strengthens our committment to live as low impact a lifestyle as possible. We want to be able to use alternative energies, sustainable building materials, efficient methods of growing and rearing livestock. We want to adopt permaculture principles, live close to organic guidelines and tread as lightly as we can.
Our searching led us to conclude in order to afford any land at all we’d need to restore something derelict or self build. In order to live somewhere beautiful the highlands were top choice. Our time on the islands showed us community was within our reach in the more remote areas where everyone shares common aims and life is simpler, with an emphasis on pulling together and creating something good for everyone. On Skye we found properties within our budget but with limited land which had us re-evaluating our wishlist and deciding we could compromise on that and go for smaller scale self sufficiency and part time work in order to have the beautiful location and views and the belonging to a community.
Then we went to Eigg. From the outset we were all really taken with the feeling of belonging, of being an extended family (albeit one with naughty little sisters, annoying big brothers and drunken uncles at times!), the scenery was gorgeous and suddenly with learning about crofting a decent sized chunk of land all became without our reach again.
We left this year hoping that if we kept our eyes open opportunities would show themselves to us. We had a policy of saying yes to anything and everything and seeing where that took us. Our plans were fluid and the only conditions were that all four of us had to be happy with the direction we were heading in, even if that deviated wildly from where we had planned to be. That attitude has taken us off course several times and yet it is those last minute ‘what the heck’ decisions we made that have given us our most memorable times this year. A chance meeting with Jill in Glastonbury, a fluke encounter with a folk singer who also happened to be one of my favourite authors leading to a tour of his home, an email to our hosts on Eigg who happened to be on a contacts list about some crofts in Rum leading to an early departure to go and see the place.
This opportunity on Rum ticks all of our boxes. We get land – cheap, cheap land at just £100 rent a year, secure land that is ours for as long as we work it and can be passed down to our children with the right to buy in 20 years time (for just 15 x the annual rent), plenty enough land for all our plans. We get a living off it too – subsidy cheques and grants and funding for ‘improvements’ meaning help with access roads and fencing, assistance with building a home, regular money paid for keeping livestock, grazing the land, pay outs for areas left as homes for wildlife and protected species habitat meaning we don’t have to make every inch of land pay for itself. If the bottom corner of the croft is a bog then it can be left a bog and we’ll get money each year for leaving it as a bog. There are grants for planting woodland, for providing education and much more.
We get to build our own home. We get to design a house, perfectly created to our specific needs and wants, to include all the green eco features we want. The island is already powered by renewable hydro power and is totally self sufficient from the mainland in energy. Water will be sourced from the river so we won’t be flushing our toilet with drinking water. We won’t have inefficient corners of a house we don’t use or space that is dead and wasted, we won’t be heating or lighting or paying for things we don’t need.
We get to live somewhere beautiful. Not just beautiful, amazingly beautiful. Somewhere you can see the northern lights, the place that sea eagles were reintroduced to the UK, somewhere that whales and dolphins and sharks are regularly spotted bobbing about off shore, where otters play on the beach, where there are no foxes to eat our chickens. We get to live on a nature reserve where Autumnwatch and Countryfile come and film deer. And there is pretty much nowhere on the island you can’t see the sea!
We’ll be part of a community. And not just having to slot into a ready made community where we’ll be the Newbies, the incommers. This is a community in it’s infancy, crying out for people to come and join them. We’ll be pioneers, adventurers, in at the beginning helping to shape the future for generations to come.
And the downsides? First of all I remind you of what we have already done this year. We’ve lived in a very old, very small campervan, staying with people, some of whom were nutters, eating food we didn’t always like or enjoy, doing jobs that were often tedious, boring, hard, sometimes dangerous and regularly pointless. We have spent loads of time without washing machines, showers, toilets, running water, meat, alcohol. We were stranded on a Welsh mountainside with a broken van and a load of feral scary kids, we had a mouse in the van with us, we spend weeks surviving on packet mash potatoes and cheap tinned tuna and through it all we found the joy, we saw the bright side, we laughed and enjoyed the ride. I think when downsides come along we are pretty darn good at scaring them off again anyway.
But I don’t want to lead us into this blindly. And I am aware it is me doing the leading. Realistically whatever direction our lives take it is generally me pushing us there. I like to think I steer us in the direction that favours us all and that it is in making my family happy that I am happy but I have to concede there is a healthy dose of my own hopes and dreams pushing us forward toward some of these adventures. So we need to explore the potential pitfalls, the bits that could go wrong, the things we might find hard or ultimately regret.
It’s remote. Clearly, it’s an island in the Inner Hebrides. In the winter the ferry only comes four times a week and that gets called off when the weather is bad. Getting supplies of food, drink and other essentials will sometimes be a challenge. We will need to be organised, to forward plan and to store and stash and stockpile.
Lack of people. While the long term plan for the island is to repopulate it quite widely this may take time or not even happen at all. We are sociable people who will need the company of others outside the four of us. We will want friends, people to hang out with and get to know, to socialise with. I think that the fact we have coordinated our social life from the south coast up for the last 5 or so years means we are capable of reaching out when necessary and putting in extra effort required to find the friends we need. I hope our wide circle of family and friends will all be regular visitors to us and continue to extend their hospitality to us too. We will aim to be WWOOF hosts long term so we have a regular stream of new and interesting people coming to spend time with us and we would be active in the community to make things happen like social gatherings, reading groups, film clubs, heck, we might even take up playing board games and invite other islanders over to participate! 😉
Limited Opportunities for Davies and Scarlett. This is the biggest one really. Everything else I think is ‘suck it and see’ really but there is no question that the island is not currently set up for kids. There is a primary school but it currently has just 2 pupils, any older kids go to the mainland for schooling and board there two weeks at a time. This means there are very limited social opportunities, activities for children and chances to meet friends. I have spent a lot of time agonising over this, talking it over with Davies and Scarlett and Ady and thinking it through. I have concluded for now that this is not a terribly different situation from the one they have always been in. Whilst we do have local friends in Sussex we have never had other children over unaccompanied by parents really, equally the kids have never really been anywhere without me. They have never had mates they just hang out with at the park or at their house or that come to call for them. Despite years at Rainbows, Badgers, Beavers and the like neither of the kids have ever made a friend they have seen outside of the weekly meetings, we’ve never had friends close enough to walk to. If I’m honest neither did I as a kid really. My brother did but my friendships were all exclusive to school hours really. I guess where I’m going with this is that up to this point the kids have not had what they can’t have on Rum. And this is only if the population remains static there which the long term aim for the trust is that it won’t anyway. They are looking to attract families so it may change. If it doesn’t then the kids will remain with primarily each other for company, which to this point has been their first choice anyway and seems to have served them well so far. Their best friends now are all people who I would happily have to stay for a week or so and happily send them off to stay with the families of in return so as they get older and crave more social time with people this could be arranged. It will mean we have to put more effort in and work harder to ensure it happens but as Home Educators that has always been a characteristic of our lifestyle to date anyway.
Education Up to now I have always been content with our approach of benign educational neglect on the basis that the kids live in a rich environment with plenty of external stimulus, opportunities and different places to visit and experience things. We’ve chucked in the odd visit to the theatre or cinema, to museums or lectures, to educational events and workshops, to courses or sessions as and when the mood has taken us. If we live on a mostly uninhabited island with limited people and no musuems or art galleries or theatres this becomes more challenging. However the mainland is just a boat trip away and there is an active Home Ed circle in the highlands which we could travel to monthly or every two months, participating in events and arranging visits to places of interest. We’ll do more travelling but once again, as HEors we always have anyway, this will just be a bit more travelling than before. As they get older I anticipate their learning becoming ever more self directed so access to internet, TV, books and a community, no matter how small should suffice, with top ups from external sources when necessary. At the moment their interests remain things very much catered for on the island anyway and the lifestyle will be pretty close to what they tell us is their perfect dream existance.
In many ways I view this potential move as very similar to Home Ed. When we first made the choice it was against what pretty much everyone advised. We were met with horror, raised eyebrows, gentle concern and all out hostility from some quarters. People asked how they would learn anything, would socialise, would be normal. It was a leap of faith, a buck of the trend and a break from the norm. It challenged people and made them fear for our sanity. It turned out to be totally the right decision – for us. Not for everyone granted, but right for us. It’s always up for debate, for re-evaluating and for tweaking when it doesn’t quite fit right anymore. This would be the same I think, not necessarily a forever decision, something we could amend if needed, take a break from or reverse if it stops working.
So, we’re working on the business plan. We’ll submit that and keep fingers crossed for an interview. If that goes well we get offered a croft. Then we need to sell our house and work out where to live while we build a new one. At best we probably still wouldn’t be on our croft by this time next year. Then it needs turning from a bare piece of land to an actual croft. So many variables and things that could prevent it from happening anyway. If we’ve learnt anything this year it is that if it’s all meant to be it will fall in to place, if it is not then it won’t. So I’ll trust the process, keep talking to the others and keep our fingers crossed that what we think is the right path is infact the one we’ll be heading down next.
So… questions?
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