and a bottle of Rum.
This will be a bit of a spewing of words and thoughts really, not particularly expecting it to be very coherant. I’m exhausted – have a mouthful of ulcers, a faceful of spots and could sleep for a week. A combination of a week of agonising and uncertainty, the actual end of the WWOOFing and of course the potential beginning of The Next Bit.
This morning we got the ferry across to Rum – another £45 which we hope will be an investment in the future. The crossing over was rougher than yesterday and by the end Davies was looking very green and had to spend some time outside taking big gulps of fresh air. We were expecting to meet Georgie for a chat on the boat but despite there being several likely looking people on the boat and Ady and I frantically making eye contact with everyone and smiling like childrens TV presenters at anyone foolish enough to make eye contact back no one made themself known to us as Georgie. Short of demanding to know people’s names we couldn’t do much so were feeling like we were off to a bad start really 🙁
We got off the boat and a youngish woman was hanging around so we approached her hoping she was Vikki, the person meeting us from the boat. She was not. But she was Vikki’s friend, also hoping to meet her there and knowing that she was due there to meet with us and expecting she had been held up as she had been meeting someone else prior to us. Vikki appeared, as did Georgie, who had indeed been on the boat but had totally forgotten we’d also be on the boat and said we’d looked familiar so she assumed we were islanders from one of the other small isles and she’d seen us before. I guess it’s good that we looked like we fitted in…? She was full of apologies anyway.
We all (Vikki, Georgie and the friend who asked if anyone minded if she tagged along – none of us did) headed the mile to the village, which has the castle, the shop, the school, the village hall etc. It is a smaller village than Eigg although Rum is actually the biggest of the small isles it has a small population of about 30 – Eigg is closer to 100 and spread over the whole island. Rum’s life is all around the pier and the one village.
I walked with Georgie, Ady walked with Vikki, Davies walked between parties and Scarlett very quickly learnt that the friend – Maree was a wildlife ranger who’s jobs have included counting penguins at the south pole, measuring pollution in lochs and other cool wildlife stuff. Scarlett really hit it off with her and the two of them spent the whole time together talking animatedly and sharing animal facts :).
I was getting a potted history of the island while Ady was telling all about us and our year. Rum has been wholly owned by SNH (Scottish Natural Heritage) until very recently but a part of the island is now owned by Rum Community Trust with plans for futher independance and growth of community for the future. This is the reason for crofts being created – to have people on the island who are not just SNH employees who are invested i.n the future and long term community of the island rather than just there for work and to create self sufficiency and a local economy etc.
We walked up the hill to the croft land which is on the very periphery of the village up a track. There is a wildlife walk trail following around the edges of the crofts which means passing ‘traffic’ in tourist season. The access track is 4wd doable, which frankly if you lived there is what you’d have anyway but would need improving. A 50% grant for that would be available from the crofting federation, as would funding and grants for various other improvement works. The two crofts are literally side by side although one is larger by about half again than the other and has a byrne running through it. They are both bordered by trees on one side and along the bottom runs the nature walk path and a river. Both are in sunshine all day (hugely important, both from a crops flourishing POV and simply getting daylight at all in the winter) and look out over the sea and the cuillins opposite.
At the top we all paused to watch an enormous bird circling overhead which we didn’t get a close enough view of to definitely say but all decided was so huge it simply *must* be a sea eagle. Cue Scarlett flinging herself at me with delight :). I love her joy at such things :).
We walked down alongside the crofts, then back along the river to the village, stopping to look at the craft shop on the way. We all asked loads of questions and just got to know Georgie and Vikki really. Georgie is not on the panel of decision makers but Vikki is (there are either 5 or 6 on the panel, she did say, I forgot!). We stood at the pier chatting and met a couple of other islanders who all seemed very nice and friendly and then the ferry arrived so we headed off.
We all felt it had gone well and that providing we can put together a decent business plan and croft application we are in with a pretty good chance. The last croft went with only a short list of 2 applications and although they have had no applications in at all yet for this round and only sent out about 5 application packs there could of course be a last minute rush of applicants. The advice was to come up with a solid and feasible plan which I think we are more than capable of.
Next stage is a shortlist of applicants and then interviews which they hope to conduct in Jan or Feb, back on Rum again, so more travel expense if we did get through.
Both Davies and Scarlett liked it there and are very keen for us to proceed to the next stage. Ady and I both liked the feel of the place and are excited at the prospect of one day calling it home.
The plan now is to get back to Sussex – thanks to pushing through tiredness tonight once we got back to Willow we managed to get over 100 miles along the road to a campsite only about 40 miles north of Glasgow. We’ll take a few days to recover and get our heads round everything along with sorting through our belongings at my parents, setting up a bed, finding clothes that fit, letting the kids get more toys back out and so on and then knuckle down with the business plan and application. We’ll need to do some further reading and research and we also need to fit in getting the house on the market or working out what needs to doing before we can, seeing all the family and friends in Sussex we want to catch up with, finding storage for Willow and getting my car back on the road, sorting out Scarlett’s birthday and getting ready for camp.
Yeah, it’s not over yet!