Preparing a salad in front of the barn in the sun… Life could be so much worse.
Author: Irene Hofstetter
Social Entrepreneur, Literaturophile, Psycholinguist
“Go with the flow” as the Plumber would say
As we are now increasingly looking into water treatment and the water supply in our shed, we decided that it wouldn’t hurt to know a little more about what we are actually doing here.
That’s why we enrolled on a 6 week Level 2 Diploma in Plumbing Studies (6035-02) course at City & Guilds. Contrary to expectations, the course was extremely helpful, instructive and, above all, great fun. We owe a lot of the fun to our instructor Iain, who was always able to pass on the tips with a lot of humour but also a lot of experience.
We learnt how to bend and solder copper and even threaded the dreaded LCS pipes, how to lay plastic pipes neatly, and how to make sure that everything is tight and does not leak.
So, now we are even more ready and “beyond being prepared” than ever and neither radiators, showers, bathtubs, toilets nor washhand basins or kitchen sinks will put us off any longer… (not that they ever had)
The Colours of the Highlands…
Scotland at its best
Scotland has done everything to make up for our last trip. The weather has been really nice, warm and sunny and Caithness has turned out to be a much more welcoming place than one could think. The countryside is breathtaking and the heavily peated river reminds me of why Scottish Whisky is the best.
Our neighbours have kindly taken us under their wings and are making sure we don’t miss out on the sites, one has to visit up here. Having travelled a lot, they are giving back some of the kindness they experienced themselves while abroad. We could not have had better luck.
To round up a beautyful day, I was able to attend a choir rehearsal in St. John’s Church in Wick. It was balm for the soul to be singing in this wonderful old church with sweet and kind people who made me feel, like I belonged.
But the most heartwarming moment was not even the music but really the teatime with some members of the choir afterwards. It was so refreshing to be part of that group of smart and witty women. Thank you for letting me be part of that!
First night on the loch
So we made it up to Caithness. The road was good. We were once more surprised at how serious the Britts are about those traffic cones. They not only mark the way with them, they litteraly build walls with those things…
Before arriving in the UK, we have been worried about the fuel shortage, we read about in the news. This is why we decided to first leave the bigger cities behind us, before trying to find diesel. Turns out, there was no problem really. The very first gas station we tried, had fuel and not even a line of waiting cars. So we took that for a favorable sign and continued our journey north.
Loch Watenan welcomed us with some rain but also with the most heartwarming hello from our neightbours.
Having learned from our last trip, we did NOT try to drive on our plot by night without knowing the state of the ground. This is why we stayed over the night on the parking space south of the lake.
The night was calm and clear, allowing us to see an amazing starry sky.
(OK, you might need some imagination for that one…)
And right now, the day is breaking in a breathtaking manner on Loch Watenan…
Lost in translation
We are on the road again…
The next adventure
After our very adventurous trip at the end of the year 2020 we have been waiting for the covid situation to get better and allow us a next trip to our future homeland.
Now we are ready and will be leaving on the 1st of October for the north.
We learned from our past trips and have been updating our gear. For instance, we bought a great 4-seasons tent from Hilleberg, that can be pitched completely without external gear. And we built a little terrasse for the roof top tent, where we can for instance store the diesel heater. Also, Ronald offered me the best Quilt possible. It is made for temperatures down to 20 degrees below zero. So, it is for the first time really a realistic possibility, that I won’t feel cold during the night.
This time we plan to really meet all our neighbours and invite them to over for a Raclette. To do so, Ronald constructed a wilderness Raclette oven.
With this nice construction we will be able to feed 20 people with molten Swiss Cheese.
But of course, that is not the only plan we have. We bought fantastic Brompton bikes and are planning to test them on the route from Loch Watenan to Wick and back.
Apart from that, I have been preparing myself mentally for a new encounter with the wild horses on our land. Last time I was really afraid, and the stallion might have noticed that, which lead to him behaving even more crazily. This time, I will try to not show any fear and I also bought a bear whistle, that might help with wild horses also. I will write an update on how that worked out…
But for the moment, we are getting together our gear because in the tomorrow we will leave around 5 in the morning to reach the ferry in Amsterdam in time.
One minor problem we might encounter before arriving in Scotland on Sunday: UK has seen some shortage in gas. Therefore we can’t be sure to find a place where we can fuel up while in England. But hey… it wouldn’t be our trip if it was not an adventurous one, would it? So, we will walk that bridge, when we arrive there….
First baby steps
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 