Living on a Scottish island

[Keeplookingforwards]

Tell me about living Island life!!!!!

How is Island living?
Would you recommend it ?
Up sides and down?

The best and worst ?
COL is it massively higher than say rural highland mainland
Is everyone friendly to “outsiders”

Would like as much chat/info as can muster lol

Not really an AIBU but here I am 😊

Oft I have no interest in gossip
Plenty others who will like it so I would leave that to them .

After reading replies I think the questions I have had are what everyone has told me to think about so iim not going into anything blind.
I didn’t think I was but it’s good to ask .

Yes I really did ask for the realistic way and great full for honest Input .

@RainbowConnection1
There will be lots of positives to island life OP, but you have to be realistic about how what everyday life will be like and consider the issues that have been pointed out. You absolutely have to be up for joining in with the community way of life.

i very much am I just hope they would be too

My main concern is the ferry or lack of it. .

Sadly, some communities do reject newcomers and outsiders

It won’t matter what you think about it - as it’s their prerogative

Safer to visit preferred destination for a few weeks to get a feel for things!

There are a few residents from my neck of the woods on Mull. The post office woman lived 10 mins down the road from me as a dc. Never knew her then but do now! We go a few times a year.. Even in the flood last October!! We are always made welcome on the island.

OP Yes, if you genuinely ask how you can help and mean it, I'm sure people will be only too happy to accept you. Generousity is (wonderfully) a greatly valued virtue here, though not in the 'flash the cash' mode, and few would articulate or particularise it. Just don't - and I'm sure you would not - tell locals what you think they need.

I didn't wish to sound unfriendly, but making a decent living - unless you are some celeb either parachuted in or relying on your ancestors having purchased land from the locals in the past at appallingly cheap prices - is difficult here.

Just be normal and natural and try to help in any way you can. To do so will not only be very useful, but will signal that you would like to belong. Just the tiniest things help.

@nameXnameGrowing up I knew all
about harsh winters and generators and being snowed in for weeks. .
Family member had one of the remotest places you could imagine . I loved it.
All very different as an adult when you work out life’s logistics .
I wouldn’t have changed anything though .
Not sure I want my dc to leave me lol, but that’s what they do and hopefully they venture back to start there own families .
They may wander off wherever we lived. .

Id hope find enough work with what I do but then possibly change that to WFH in
something else in a few years .

I have a very jaundiced view of the ferry position, as my widowed Mum lives on Arran, an island very badly affected by the appalling state of the Calmac fleet. I will never forgive the SNP for their unbelievably incompetent and shambolic handling of the process of commissioning new ferries. At present seven Calmac ferries are in dock for repairs across all the islands of the west coast. The one that serves Arran went off for its annual service in January. This should have taken a couple of weeks. It's not expected back till September at the earliest. A much smaller ferry is covering the route with the help of a catamaran rented from the Orkneys, but this has to go to another port, creating even more confusion.

The impact on island life has been considerable. The hospitality businesses are losing custom at a worrying rate. The ferry service is always badly affected by winter weather, and everybody understands that, but at the moment it's much worse because the ferries are not as well able to cope with the weather as the normal ferry and the ports are also in a poor state because some ninny decided to sell them off from public ownership. The last two times I've gone up there I've been unable to get over to Arran that day and have had to find a hotel.

It's wonderful once I do get there, but it's not easy living there. My Dad had to be helicoptered off the island a couple of times for urgent medical treatment on the mainland, and that makes it very difficult for family to visit. The bank branch and the local post office both closed down this year. The former won't re-open. The latter should re-open but so far the PO has been unable to find anyone to take it on.

It's a huge decision to move to an island. Needs a lot of thought. As others have said, visit in the winter. Very different then.

FWIW, when I visited one of the remoter Orkney islands some years ago, people seemed particularly to appreciate the new arrivals who had renovated and brought into use abandoned houses. That way you aren’t raising house prices and pricing out locals, but genuinely adding to the population and resources on the island.

Which island are you thinking about @Keeplookingforwards? I ask because island life varies greatly from island to island!

I live on an island somewhere else and the born and breds definitely think the island is theirs and pesky mainlanders should go back where they come from, literally.
Might not say it to your face, but Facebook, omg!

There's definitely mixed feelings on 'incomers', though clearly bringing new life to an old building will mostly be welcomed. I say that as someone who has lived on an island for 20 years and has extended family who are originally from here.

We've got some folk like that where I live too (also an island).

It's just a different way of life.
You meal plan around what's available in the local shop, do a big shop on the mainland, buy online and accept supporting local may cost more but also has benefits for the local businesses plus ethically sourced meat, fish etc.

Healthcare is a big one. The nearest clinic may be in e.g. Inverness/Glasgow so a 10 min hospital appointment could involve a 10 hour round trip and overnight stay, for which the NHS will reimburse you £50. Same for optician, dentist etc in some cases. In an emergency I have to say the care is amazing, the air ambulance can have you in the city hospital much quicker than an ambulance on a rural mainland area.

You get out what you put in to a rural community. Many services are voluntary run, like the lifeboat, coastguard, NHS responders. Lunch clubs, kids clubs, sports clubs, teaching skills/hobbies. Pitch in and you'll be made very welcome. What can you offer?

My parents moved to Arran when they retired. They had a foot in both camps - the incomers and the natives - because my Mum was born there and had a lot of family there. They told me that the natives resent the incomers taking over all sorts of activities and running committees, but the incomers would say somebody has to do all those things and they bring the drive and efficiency from their lives on the mainland. (You can imagine how well that goes down with the natives!)

Lewis

I wonder what the answer is ? Should the island just plod along with nothing going on?

Won’t say where as too outing, but we could be very close 😆

A lot of the statements you make don't apply to all islands. We are very diverse in terms of geography, housing, travel connections, culture, employment etc

The island I live on already has plenty of motivated folk, volunteers running clubs and committees and the like - there's a mix of locals, long term incomers and newer folk. It works (mostly) well, though there's no pleasing some folk!

Right, well that definitely rules out some of the comments which apply to the really remote islands - Lewis definitely has an airport, for example!

Can’t beat local fruit and veg . Would always support local .

I can volunteer .Happy to keep things open for kids too and know it doesn’t take one person doing all the work .

Happy to get myself involved . Ive skills there I’m sure could come in handy .

Well it depends . Someone I know just had a heart attack on Skye and he was in the A&E department of a top teaching hospital getting treatments in an hour and a half. In many placed in the UK he would still have been waiting on the ambulance.

Lots of home grown produce to buy on Mull. And eggs. And bread. And meat from the abbatoir..Lots of honesty places. We shop in these places at every opportunity.. And eggs are plentiful if you know where to 'shop'...

God created the Hebrides
And on it fell the rain
And anyone who lives there
Is beholden to MacBrayne.

Loads of honestly boxes where I am at the moment .