Well then. We made our first baby steps on the road to Scottish landownership. The obvious ones: We drove along the coast and looked for property for sale.
But whenever we saw a house for sale it was either too far away from the sea or too ugly or too small or simply not what we looked for. That continued for quite a time. We also walked into a real estate shop and asked for a register but the ladies were not really helpful saying that there is no landowner register or anything like it in Scotland. A little dispiriting, but well. There we were. Driving through the beauty of the Highlands enjoying the trip anyways.
Our holiday might have ended on that note, if it wasn’t for that extraordinary sight we run into outside a very small, very remote village on the north coast of the mainland.
There it was: the well-conserved ruin of a beautiful old stone croft house situated on a small strip of land between the beach and a loch. Paradise. We drove nearer and soon saw that not only there was no for sale poster, but there was also a stationary caravan near the ruin and a lot of construction material. So somebody else had had the same idea – and faster. Damn.
The next logical thing to do: Talk to the guy and offer whatever illusionary amount of money it would take to buy him out. That’s what we tried. But: there was nobody home.
We sat around for quite a bit, waiting for somebody to show up, but after almost freezing to death because of the cozy Scottish summer we abandoned the idea and decided to ask at the next house for information about the owner. We knocked on the door of a house in view of the ruin and waited. Again nobody.
We knocked and waited… This is when our story takes another course. A neighbor saw our car and thought that we might need help. He drove by and gave us the opportunity to ask him for all we wanted to know. He had an important piece of information for us: There IS a register!
He gave us the tip to look up the crofts for sale on http://www.hspc.co.uk/
Now we are talking. Instead of driving miles and miles, we would now sit in a nice pub drinking beer and looking for our property. And there it was: A croft in a lovely little bay. Just what we had dreamed of!
Great. Let’s buy it!
Hm. Well. How do we do that? Call the agency? It was a Saturday evening, so we had to wait.
Great time to update ourselves about the legal requirements of such an undertaking.
First of all: What exactly is a croft?
All you need to know about crofting in Scotland you will find on:
http://www.crofting.scotland.gov.uk/
For instance, we learned that to you actually have to live on your croft land. Well, that’s another turn to the story…
Should we do that?
Our Journey to Scotland 