Interesting article about the revival of Tanera Mor.
This isn’t a place where you go for a private luxury holiday.
Lots of volunteering in different roles and communal eating.
“When I arrive at lunchtime, the door opens to the astonishing sight and sound, on this tiny island, of 50 people eating and talking together on long communal tables; it’s a hive of sociable nourishment and the daily epicentre of Tanera life. There is no division between front and back of house: utilitarian spaces coexist with living spaces, all solid and beautifully built. It brings to mind William Morris’s adage, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Here are construction workers, housekeeping staff, gardeners, ecologists, accountants, volunteers, mechanics and guests filling their plates – some in the next room playing pool, others sitting by the woodburner before they go back out to work. It’s impossible to tell who is who. It is alive.
Susanne Schlie is head chef. With a culinary philosophy shaped by the influential food scene in Copenhagen, where she lived and worked for many years, she is steering the menus towards nutritionally rich, simple dishes, using as many island-grown ingredients as possible.
She explains that meals used to be ferried around the island in a Land Rover. “Now everyone comes here to eat together – and it just works.”
I wonder if this is A&L’s introduction to charitable “turn up and do good” work for the future. Wonder what work Meghan rolled her sleeves up to do. 🤔
No doubt the Impact Officer could have given Harry tips for his role as CHIMPO at Better Up.
Interested to see Robert Irvine, son of Lucy Irvine is working there.
“Robin Irvine lived on Tanera as a teenager with his brother and mother, the Castaway writer Lucy Irvine. His grandfather, then his aunt and uncle, ran the Summer Isles Hotel on the mainland, now also part of the growing Tanera project. Irvine, who studied at Cambridge and has a PhD in social anthropology, is the project’s land and community manager and has a deep understanding of the island’s history and culture. He is erudite, passionate, but also pragmatic, and has no truck with trying simply to recreate the past. Instead he wants to build a viable future. “This place can’t be stuck in aspic,” he explains, stressing that this is not one fixed community but many, and that visitors have long been part of the picture.”
You have to be of a certain generation to remember the impact of Lucy Irvine and Castaway. We all read the book and Lucy achieved certain celebrity at the time, but not celebrity as we know it now obviously.
I also remember when she settled in Scotland and had her babies she complained the midwives had doubts about her suitability as a mother and her mental health. Good to know she simply trusted her instincts of living an alternative lifestyle and her son has done really well.
I like your thinking the pp who wonders whether Harry is looking for Invictus funds. I also wonder if Wace has a private jet handy for a flight from Glasgow.
For some reason I am seeing him as a Jonathan Wace type character curtesy of the JKR Strike book Running Grave.
Wonder if that’s where JKR got the surname and maybe some other thoughts about communal living 🤔😂
I do jest. From the article it all sounds wonderful and productive and healing. A great way to spend your billions.
https://portfolio.savills.com/lifestyle/tanera-mor-a-scottish-island-reborn/