Island Life

I’m currently coming towards the end of a week kitesurfing on Tiree in the Inner Hebrides and our ferry home tomorrow has been cancelled. And it looks like unless we get lucky in the standby queue on Saturday we might be here until Monday or Tuesday.

I’ve been coming here for about 12 years now and this is the first time I’ve not been able to get off the island but got me thinking of the newfound respect for genuine islanders as opposed to us “blow ins” and living with the day to day disruption of island life, especially through autumn and winter. I believe there’s even a communal freezer for people to access in the winter when the boat is cancelled for days or weeks at a time and the two shops on the island run out of food.

I know there are a few islanders on here so I’d love to hear your experience of living through this instead of the sanitised version I get to see one or two weeks a year.

Lived in shetland for 12 years  so different to western isles etc, but lots similar too I’m sure.  We left for a range of reasons, largely to be close to my mam in her final years as we couldn’t afford to visit much and she couldn’t travel.

Islands are great when you’re there, not so great when you want or need to be somewhere else.  The time and cost and extra days to allow for issues makes going away very costly and time sapping.

Every single thing is more expensive, much more. Housing, fuel, travel, food etc.   But there are often weighted wages and islander discounts on travel. Hospital appointments on the mainland had paid for flights or ferrys and work was very understanding about the time off needed.

Small community can be a blessing and a curse.  Our son had a fantastic time growing up (was 2 when  we moved up) and really enjoyed school and lots of freedom. There can be lots of opportunities you’d not get else where and people often get good jobs that they’d not even be considered for elsewhere due to limited applicants for lots of posts.

We loved living in shetland. Don’t regret it at all. But we also are glad we moved back south when we did for family reasons and now my son’s older he has easier access to more opportunities with further education.

Islands are not for everyone though. We have pretty basic needs and wants. Not into foreign holidays, shopping and entertainment.  Just like exploring the outdoors and getting the odd cuppa and cake when we’re out and about.

Used to spend a lot of time at my grandparents’ home on an island in the far east as a kid. The population on the island was around 50k in those days. It is a large island but still an island.

The only description as a kid for me at time was ‘boredom’.  The place was also isolated surrounded by jungle (not anymore), albeit a small jungle and every evening just before sunset the only thing of interest to me was the thousands of red dragonflies hovering in the air.  A spectacular sight but I think we never successfully netted one in the air.  The moment we sat down in the open air watching the dragonflies, the mosquitoes came for their meal.  The whole island only had one bakery and miles away.  After two weeks I was bored stiff.

Island life is simply adjusting to the way that the weather and particularly ferries impact on day to day life – whether there’s a fresh food delivery to the Co-Op, postal deliveries or going to the mainland for dental and medical appointments – it’s just the ebb and flow of life here. Tiree and Coll do suffer more due to their location- particularly strong southerlies and a big swell make docking more difficult. There is a romanticism about island life, particularly those who see it through their prism of 2-weeks every year – a high proportion of incomers don’t make it through their third winter. That said, it is through that the winter that the community really comes together, breathing a collective sigh of relief at the end of ‘the season’. Despite only having lived here for 3.5 years, I probably know more people than I did previously, living in Hampshire for 32 years and you can always guarantee a few good socials. But if you asked many here if they’d like a bridge like Skye they’d refuse, having seen what tourism and traffic has done to their way of life. The downsides are the extortionate prices and poor selection of food – a ferry ticket to Oban is fifty quid but you can save that in one big shop. Traffic is summer can be a problem as many are unfamiliar with singletrack roads, passing places and reverse gear. The huge plus is proximity to nature – I regularly still have to stop and just take in the beauty of the landscape.

Hi Dovebiker, which beach is that?

A personal thank you for your recommendations, we had a great week and some great weather.

One of the reasons for going, aside from visiting a great place, was to get married and we were very lucky for a great day on Fidden Beach with just two friends and lots of sheep! Toasting it with a quaich filled with some lovely Ledaig whisky having had the tour the day before was great too. A walk up Ben More was a highlight too. Mull is quieter than the other islands I’ve been to as Portree and Stornaway are much bigger towns than Tobermory, although we were on the other side of the islands to all the towns.

I’d love to see if I could live in Scotland, personally I think I would find the summers harder with those midges!

I am often tempted by the idea of living on an island… aside from the practicalities of moving away from family I recon the reality of moving would be different from the ‘whim’.

I have visited nearly every inhabited island in the Hebrides and loads of uninhabited ones.  When I speak to a local it occurs to me that I have visited more places in the islands and West Coast than most of the people I talk to.  To me they are a linked network of places, visitable by bike and kayak… especially kayak. I recon if I lived there my horizons would shrink and I would see less of the area than I do now.  That’s fine and I recognise that my reasons for visiting are frivolous; but I am not sure my current feelings about the place are the right grounds to move there.   I am a bit squeamish about making myself an incomer…

I lived on Mull for about 2 and a half years. It was great mostly,  but , not right for me. I lived in Glencoe for a long spell before I went to Mull, and Kinlochleven  for a long spell after I lived on Mull . I love remoteness but not dependency on ferries. Still a frequent visitor to Islay and other islands though.

Thanks all for some really insightful experiences. I do love being on Tiree as it enforces a pace of life which is otherwise not possible on the mainland. But I’m not sure if I could live with it year in and out. But the place does have a quality which is near on impossible to find elsewhere. This was from a kiting session on Gott Bay earlier this week.

I wonder if it’s just a question of scale?

Pain in the bottom getting to other places being my main concern, but then do the French say the same about us? And in the grand scheme of things Earth itself is an island with, as yet, no ferry to anywhere else

does the internet make it any easier?

Regarding the Outer Hebrides…we stayed on one campsite and the owner claimed that the islanders had to pay higher ferry prices than the visitors?!

I asked if he meant because an island hopping ticket was cheaper overall but he was insistent that they pay more per trip!  I was inclined to think he was just attention seeking or trying to imply hardship (however he was using his luxury 4×4 just to cross cross the campsite, you could’ve shouted from one end to the other!)

The photo is at Knockvologan which is 3 miles from Fionnphort.

We do have three ferry services that serve the island, so rarely are completely cut-off, however the situation with older, less-reliable ferries is that the Isle of Mull is often diverted to serve Coll, Tiree and South Uist when they have problems. Interestingly, those ferries that are ‘home ported’ on the islands have a better reliability than those ported on the mainland.

Contrary to what some people think, we do have the internet, in fact I’ve got gigabyte fibre broadband, although there are quite a few places with no mobile or broadband and rely on Starlink. The biggest issue with moving to the islands is housing – long-term rentals are almost non-existent and the demand for second homes means that many locals are priced out the market as many jobs are seasonal/not that well paid.

I was friends  with a number of  Muileachs (people from Mull) who owned their home on Mull. They had had to move out of the house into a caravan in their own garden, which allowed them just to get by. This would be in the late 90s and early 2000s

Pain in the bottom getting to other places being my main concern, but then do the French say the same about us?

I don’t think the French rely on cross channel ferries for bread deliveries or to go to the dentist!

we stayed on one campsite and the owner claimed that the islanders had to pay higher ferry prices than the visitors?!

I asked if he meant because an island hopping ticket was cheaper overall but he was insistent that they pay more per trip!  I was inclined to think he was just attention seeking

I’m pretty certain he’s talking bollox.  He may actually believe it, but its still wrong!

does the internet make it any easier?

It will be a mixed bag.  It is now possible to get a tele-health appointment with a number of clinics for example, which will make a big difference, but so much stuff is now ordered on-line that delivery services become critical – and as soon as they spot an island postcode, that will be a load extra… I can order something at £5 today on the mainland with free delivery or perhaps £3 delivery and it will almost certainly be here on monday…  dovebiker probably has to pay £8+ for the delivery with only a notional expectation that it might get there on Tuesday.    And of course the internet brought “Insta”, “AirBnB” etc which has brought more tourists – a double edged sword.

Sigh

“I was friends  with a number of  Muileachs (people from Mull) who owned their home on Mull. They had had to move out of the house into a caravan in their own garden, which allowed them just to get by. This would be in the late 90s and early 2000s”

What I meant to put in was that they moved out of their house from June till the end of October each year so that they could let the house out to holiday makers while they lived in a caravan in their back garden, which allowed them , just to get by

I live on an island. It’s crap. I’d rather be across the water, tbh.

Bloody Britain…

The biggest issue with moving to the islands is housing – long-term rentals are almost non-existent and the demand for second homes means that many locals are priced out the market as many jobs are seasonal/not that well paid

That is a big issue but it is not unique to the islands.  It is the same in many tourist spots.  It’s certainly an issue in Gower.

 the demand for second homes means that many locals are priced out the market have made a fortune selling their houses to these second-home owners

It’s not necessarily a problem of their own making but they can almost certainly blame their parents or grandparents

Yeh housing is a big  issue on Shetland.

We were lucky when we moved up we got one of the last council worker relocation houses as part of a relocation package, though not in a great location. They literally stopped them after we moved there. Then we managed to find a long term rent in a great location by word of mouth. Pretty much everything worth while goes via word of mouth. Finding long term rented accommodation before you’re there is very hard and very expensive.

I also knew some people who moved into caravan/statics to make money from short term contractor and summer lets.

At one point the money to be made was massive from short term contractors building the gas plant and wind farm. Plus any hotel/guest house was fully booked up and raking it in.

Accommodation availability and cost a long with travel time/costs is the main reason the council struggles to fill posts with experienced candidates. On the flip side it creates lots of career opportunities in some sectors for those with little experience.