One word? When seven would do…

Up with the alarm this morning at 7am after a far too hot to sleep properly night in the Travelinn at Fort William. We all got dressed and were in the restaurant by about 720am – unheard of hour for at least 3/4 of us 😉 Breakfast eaten we got the car loaded and headed off.

The satnav was having some sort of fit and started telling us it would take nearly 2 hours to get there but seemed to right itself and ended up losing all the time and amending itself so we arrived at 930am as planned, parked the car in almost the same spot we’d left Willow 3 months ago and had a quick jaunt around Mallaig grabbing some 10p RTC cakes in CoOp. We bought our tickets and went to stand at the ferry entrance meeting up with Vikki who was travelling back having been to meetings in Inverness and Fort William for the last couple of days.

The ferry crossing was slightly odd – we knew four of the people on the boat were coming across to interview us – there were some day trippers and the cluster headmaster for all the small isles schools and an engineer coming to fix the heating in the castle on Rum. We sat on one table, the interviewers sat on another and kept glancing across at us and the other folk all sat on another table together. Vikki came over and we talked briefly about the oddness of all being on the boat together and she said that when she’d come to Rum for her interview she was on the ferry with both the interviewer and the other candidate – and then back again having been told she’d been successful and the other person hadn’t on the return ferry!

Scarlett fell asleep on me which was sort of nice, can’t remember the last time a child fell asleep cradled in my arms. The crossing was nice and smooth and lasts just over an hour.

At the other end we were offered a lift with our stuff from Allie, wife of Sean who was one of the interviewers, so we had a brief chat with her as she drove us along to the village hall where Sean met us and made us a drink and we waited for the others to arrive.

The panel was Vikki – Community Development Officer, Sean – Estate Manager for SNH and one of the directors of IRCT, Allan – a director of IRCT and councillor from the mainland, and Douglas and Karen from Scottish Crofting Federation. We all sat down and the format for the interview was the four of us facing the five of them while they took it in turns to read through a list of questions. Allan’s were mostly about the house build, planning, logistics etc. Vikki’s were about the community and how we would fit in and what we would add, Sean’s were about the nature reserve, environment and how we would add to and not compromise that aspect of Rum as a nature reserve and wildlife haven, Douglas and Karen asked practical livestock and crop related questions.

It was bloody tough – harder than I had envisaged and I realised we had not really prepared as much as we should in terms of being more confident about the practicalities of the croft plans. This had been semi deliberate in self preservation – I couldn’t stand the idea of spending hours on researching it all only to not be offered the croft and realise it had all been wasted time and energy. After fudging one question I came clean and said that we didn’t have all the answers and information at our fingertips and that on the basis of a 3 hour visit and no real knowledge of how our application would go what we had done was research sufficient to tell us we could do further research if successful. That we did not sit infront of them with all the answers but we did sit infront of them full of energy, enthusiasm and passion with all the correct skills to go and find the answers and make things work. It felt rather do or die tbh and at that point I realised it was not the forgone conclusion I had thought it was but was indeed a real test of whether they wanted US as individuals with potential as opposed to the perfect text book candidate.

We were grilled for about 90 minutes and then sent off while they deliberated so we walked down to the castle to check in and then we headed up to the croft to go and actually walk on the land. We arrived back at the same time as Vikki and Sean who got out of their car having run the others to the ferry to leave and just looked at us and said ‘yes’. We all shook hands and Vikki said ‘actually we did have a proper speech all planned..’ so they did that too, all about how they felt it would be challenging but that they believed we were up to the challenge and could do it and were the right people 🙂

That left us slightly shell shocked really – we have been told we can choose either croft 2 or 3 and to spend some time on the land deciding, so that is our plan for tomorrow. We headed back to the castle to get something to eat, unpacked our stuff and then went off for more walking round the island. We walked along the campsite, past the school, on the beach and rang my dad who was predictably reticent but claimed to be pleased for us ‘if that’s really what you want…’ at which point a beautiful double rainbow appeared over our heads which sort of cemented everything for us.

On the way back to the shop (open from 5-7pm) we were hailed by Sandy as we walked past their house – he is married to Fliss, the woman who’s blog I’d found and decided sounded nice. He invited us in for a cup of tea and we met 2 of their 3 daughters and then Fliss arrived home too. They are really nice, very excited about us coming and were already promising help and support 🙂 🙂

We left there and popped to the shop for some supplies for dinner – for a tiny little space it is incredibly well stocked and we found everything we needed, then back to the castle. The kids watched some TV and chilled out in their bedroom (we have two twin rooms next door to each other), Ady and I both had baths and then we went down and cooked in the self catering kitchen, chatting to one of the builders working on the castle and one of the chefs over here on a 6 week contract while they usual chef is on annual leave. Freakily although she is Scottish and lives in Lochaber she lived in Worthing from 1989 to 1993 and was also in Tarbert during August when we were there so we will have walked past her in various places at various times over the last 22 years without ever meeting before… spooky!

I’m sure I have loads more to process and loads more to say but my head is in a spin… I am so happy to have an answer to our questions and know that this is indeed where we will make our home. It feels right 🙂 We do have challenges ahead and it won’t always be easy but I am certain this is the right next move for us 🙂

More tomorrow…