House and mouse

This morning we woke to more evidence of mouse infestation. It’s now left dropping and gnawed things in cupboards and the cab. The cab worries me most as of course that is really the main body of the van and it is therefore inside with us too. Ady thinks it is different mice, I am of the opinion that we have (at least) one resident mouse. There is no food left out, the van is spotlessly clean of crumbs etc. but of course there are clothes aplenty, books and other lovely soft bedding materials to attract it / them.

We decided action over and above cleaning needed taking so with fumigation or poision not really options we’ve gone for the low tech choice of mouse traps. So a visit into Portree this morning for mouse traps. We’ve baited four of them in various places with chocolate but it’s midnight and we’ve already heard it in the cab munching a jiffy bag rather than the baited trap so I don’t know how effective that is. I hate it 🙁 I don’t really want to kill them anyway but the idea of them in the van is horrid, we can’t have them munching on our sleeping bags, pooing in places and in a few weeks we’ll be leaving the van for a fortnight while we go to our final host so I dread to think what a heyday they might have then in an empty van. Argh 🙁

A bit of googling shows this to be a fairly common issue and suggests dryer sheets as a good deterant, will get some of those tomorrow and see how that works.

So, while we’re thinking about persuading our current guests to move out we are of course also thinking ahead to moving out ourselves. Once we’d got the mousetraps we drove along to the house we’d booked to view today. We got there a good hour before the agent so we could have a proper nosey around first and looked in all the windows / had a roam around the immediate garden etc. We then had lunch in Willow before walking back to meet the agent and see inside.

This was a purely academic viewing really as of course we are not in a position to buy yet, or even, under Scottish law to put in an offer really. You need to have the money available and while it is not totally unheard of for vendors to accept a conditional offer on a house being sold it is always with the property left on the market anyway. The plus side of this is speedy completion dates and no chain for anyone. But we wanted to both get a proper idea of what we might get for our money and to build some sort of initial relationship with the agents, of which there are three on the island.

So, the house. Well it is in our price range, does have 5 acres and includes woodland, a burn with a cute bridge across it, has three potential bedrooms, stunning views of the loch and is well located both geographically between Broadford and Portree, the two biggest settlements on the island and specifically being on the main A road which is great for both passing trade if we went down the local produce roadside selling or camping route for revenue aswell as meaning we’d be able to get in out easily in bad weather or to transport kids about.

Far too many downsides for us to seriously consider it at that price though – the five acres are on a pretty steep slope so would need a fair bit of work before being suitable for growing. It is in the shelter of the mountains behind so would lack sun anyway. The house has tiny windows and is also in the shelter of the bank behind it so has a really dark feel to it despite the views. It would need a lot of work and would still be poky and dark despite that I think. We swiftly concluded that 1 acre of workable land tops 5 acres of tricky land unsuitable for growing or camping.

” alt=”” />

We talked to Ian, the estate agent though and explained our situation and got various bits of advice and guidance from him. This was all backed up later from a visit to the third estate agent on the island who we registered with and had a lengthy talk to about buying and that has helped to shape our future plans lots. We’re still going to view another property tomorrow but mostly because it is one we get to view by ourselves with a key and is £10k more but looks massively different to todays so we can do a proper compare and contrast job.

We left there and went to Broadford, we needed petrol and food. Sadly the CoOp there was not knocking food our at bargain prices like the one on Sunday but we got something for under £4. We had a walk along the beach there and on to the pier and Ady and I sat and talked over what happens next while the kids played.

” alt=”” />
” alt=”” />

We talked over with the kids and have all concluded our current plan is as follows: Two and a bit more weeks of wild camping – we’ll stay on Skye for at least another week to ten days and maybe do one night at a campsite, although I have googled tonight and found a campsite that allows non residents access to the showers for 50p and a leisure centre that alllows you to use the showers for £1.80 so we may not need to do that! We want to go all the way around the island and get a real feel for each part of it having learnt today that it is considered to be very much north or south island depending on where you are. Then we’ll get the ferry across to Mallaig which looks cheaper that the fuel we’d used driving there. Ferry across on foot to Eigg for our last WWOOFing host. There is some debate about doing our last one with a feeling we don’t really need to bother and we don’t really want to leave Willow for two weeks but I feel we should be doing our last WWOOF host knowing it is the last one, I really want to do one of the proper islands and this is the best way of doing that, the hosts are crofters which given we may well be ourselves is something we should learn more about from people actually doing it and Eigg is supposed to be a great example of self sufficiency and community. I know that at every host we have gained something we would have been sorry not to have done looking back so I don’t want to miss a potential opportunity.

Once we finish there we have four weeks until Christmas camp. This turns up a dilemma really – do we head back to Sussex only to come part way back up again for camp or do we slowly work our way down to camp? Still undecided there and trying to think of a cheap way of filling that time as I think wild camping may be less attractive in late November / early December really and we can’t afford campsites.

Christmas camp and then down to Jill’s. We may or may not go to Sussex for Christmas depending on what Jill’s plans for us are. I really need to speak to her to clarify that but suspect she may not have decided yet herself! We’ll at least visit Sussex to collect my Sharan, trade in some clothes and toys and bits and catch up with family and friends. We’ll also get in touch with an estate agent and work out how best to put our house on the market.

We then can hopefully stay at Jill’s until the house sells or find other WWOOFing hosts once spring has sprung if the house has not sold. As soon as it does sell we’ll pay everything off and head back up here, probably in Willow, to find a house. If it appears it may take a while we might look at renting something short term, the agent today said off peak that is quite cheap to do, or even try and find a WWOOF host close enough for us to visit for viewings. Apparently house sales have been known to happen as quickly as 2 weeks but a month is more usual.

We’ve been listing ideas for making money alongside land and will do some more reseach into part time work up here while we’re here this time including visiting the library service, looking at retail, finding out about markets for livestock, produce etc. We also want to find out about local activities for the kids, what the most local home ed scene is and so on.

So, much more conversation still to be had, many more variables still could change but this is as close to a definitive plan as we have had so far :).