is it really so mad to move to a remote island?

“But what’s your door-to-door?” Of all the questions I’ve fielded in the past year since my move to the small island of Rousay — in Orkney, off the north coast of mainland Scotland — with my husband Charlie McCormick, this has been by far the most prevalent. Maybe it says more about people at cocktail parties in London than it does about my journey, although I suppose it’s just about fair game if you live 700 miles away. If you meet a nice banker who’s been living for 20 years in a village that is a 28-minute drive to Winchester station, and who works in the City, you wouldn’t dream of asking them “what is your door-to-door?” 

Anyway, the answer is — with a fair combination of flight and ferry times, and with waits — between six and seven hours. I’m able to work on the way. As it happens, the travel to and from London has been nothing but easy — surprisingly enjoyable.

Every other weekend from spring until autumn, you’ll find me on the Friday morning direct flight from Heathrow to Kirkwall with the Loganair crew — the ever-cheerful Finlay, the ever-tanned and smiling Danielle, and Other Danielle (as she is known). It’s a tiny propeller plane, 14 rows, and it needs to stop off in Dundee for a refuel. Some passengers get off there, others get on. It’s a bit like flying in the 1920s. We all chat to our neighbours. Sometimes it’s a young Orkney farmer who’s been on a holiday in the Med, sometimes a film director, other times an artist, or a granny who has been visiting her grandchildren down south. I’ve never once been stranded or delayed (although I once did have to move my flight ahead by one day to avoid a storm).

I normally stay up in Orkney for 10 days, followed by 10 days down. There’s a carbon balance to be struck, but being on a tiny, always full plane every two weeks may not compare quite so badly to my twice a week train trips to Dorset — often, because I tended to avoid peak hours, on a largely deserted train. An interesting question for the carbon calculators?

A few weeks ago, I was sitting next to a City financier whose family have lived not too far from Dundee for the past 20 years. It has been his weekly commute — getting out of London to the space and fresh air where his family has grown up (as he ruefully said, my wife is very happy to see me every week, and equally happy when I leave). I think we are not alone here. My journey — or our life — wouldn’t suit everyone, but I’ll be entirely honest: the daily commute from the home counties or red-brick Fulham wouldn’t suit me, either. 

We’ve had magnificent, awe-inspiring moments, where the house has shaken, and water poured in through the windows. But then calm; the seas of Eynhallow sound mirror-flat

“Oh, OK, so that’s your flight, but then what about getting to the island?” My infallible prediction for question number two. The first ferry is at 7.45am and it goes back and forth all day long until 6pm. The crossing takes 25 minutes. It’s been cancelled twice by bad weather in the past year. All the crew live on Rousay, so we know each other quite well, and a real breakthrough was getting a vital phone number so that if you happen to be running late for the last ferry of the day you can call the bridge, and they will wait for a little while.

Island life is very forgiving, but it’s also good having the rhythm of the ferry to modulate our hours, a bit like living in a medieval monastery; the sailings our canonical hours. You know exactly what time you need to leave the house, to the minute, to catch the boat, and you know exactly what time, to the minute, that a visitor from the mainland will arrive. The ferry crew work a long day so, every day, they cook up a delicious-smelling lunch in the ship’s galley (I wish they’d open a café) and take a well-deserved two-hour lunch break. City people, or home counties people, will probably worry that its just too remote, too rustic, too complicated — but the reality feels different.

We arrived at Westness House a year ago this October to beautiful weather. It lasted for three or four weeks, until the Atlantic winter rolled in. But it’s the windless days that have been the revelation. We expected howling gales and winter storms, and we’ve had them — magnificent, awe-inspiring moments, where the house has shaken, and water has been pouring in through several windows, and we’ve needed to get out the buckets and towels. But then the next day, and the days after that, calm; the seas of Eynhallow sound completely mirror-flat, not a breath in the air.

The stillness has been as much the norm as winds. Snows have come and gone but, as we are so close to the sea, hardly settled for more than a day. There was a brief deep freeze in the middle of winter. We don’t have heating in the house yet, but we lit plenty of fires and plugged in some old-fashioned, oil-filled radiators that we’d inherited from the previous owners and stayed toasty.

A bad moment was when we completely ran out of water. One evening I turned on the bathroom tap and no water came out. The reasons were complicated and meant us poring, with the builders, over ancient drawings showing the water supply from various springs to different old taps at Westness House.

The ensuing saga lasted a month and involved a lot of digging. Our main supply during this time was a massive outdoor Victorian rainwater cistern in our kitchen yard. It provided endless cold water and for hot baths we boiled it up in a tea urn (Charlie was more patiently living with this than me, because I will admit I was away some of the time). I’m glad to report the system is now up and running again. It was the only time in the entire year that I did agree with most people’s commentary on our move to the tiny island — “you are so brave”. Other than that, well, not really. 

We are sick and tired of being told that. We’re not, and if that’s the definition of bravery, I worry. One way of deflating the “accolade” is when people ask (normally the next question, once travel routes are safely out of the way), “but where do you get food?” (Yes, I have actually been asked that more than you’d imagine.) Tesco isn’t a very exciting answer, but it’s the reality.

And indeed for most Orcadians — living in nice suburban houses, driving to work and to the shops or the leisure centre, and having their bins collected once a week — life’s actually pretty much just like anywhere else, except houses are far less expensive than in the overcrowded south, there are no traffic jams, and mercifully few chain stores. 

Charlie, being Charlie, has discovered the network of small local food suppliers and excellent shops, the delicatessens in Stromness and Kirkwall, and Flett the butcher, supplying good Orcadian meat. Then of course there’s Johnny Peace, who’s lived on Rousay his whole life and has been fishing for at least the past 60 years. If you send Johnny a text, he’ll deliver a bag of freshly caught lobsters to you the next day for £7 each. Shearers is the general store in Kirkwall, where you can get anything you need in the world. Most people are rather surprised to hear that Amazon delivers to our door. Maybe you’d actually have to live in the Amazon for them not to do so?

And regular readers of the FT will be glad to know that Berry Bros will make a delivery to Rousay, whenever needed, for an extra £10. Eric, who drops parcels at everyone’s houses, was extremely familiar with the Berry Bros boxes when we made our first order: “Oh yes,” he said, “I’ve delivered plenty of cases of Berry’s wine to Westness over the years.” (Another rule of island life: a bit less privacy, but you are also completely left in peace as well.)

Charlie’s work in the garden has been little short of magical. From an early moment he wanted to start growing all our own veg, and the old disused greenhouse was cleared out and replanted. This became his seed bed, while he began, with astonishing speed and stamina, to clear the beds in part of the old walled vegetable garden and getting them ready and composted. It was an immense task which somehow seemed to take only a matter of weeks. I’d leave for a few days and when I was back another four huge garden beds had appeared.

You’d be amazed at how many people ask me, hopefully, if it’s really going rather badly. I have to disappoint them every time

There were a lot of questions in the early days: “but will Charlie be able to grow anything?” was asked with a concern and an underlying rising intonation. In fact, the garden grew unbelievably fast. The tall stone walls provided shelter, even on the windiest days; the spring was warm and the summer balmy. Once we’d passed the spring equinox, when the days start getting longer and longer (by the summer solstice the sky really doesn’t get dark at night) the garden exploded. Those extra two hours of daylight (18 hours and 30 minutes between sunrise and sunset) make the difference. It was a wonderful first year. There are no deer (and no foxes or badgers) in Orkney. Of course, we’re planning further ideas, but slowly and gently — there’s no need to rush. Pigs and chickens next year. Maybe sheep and cows the next?

“Does Charlie manage on his own?” ask people who don’t know us very well. “Do you have any . . . [pause] . . . friends?” It’s not a question that reflects very well if you stop to think about it for too long, but the short answer is that we do. And quickly. Island life attracts a certain type of person; yes, you need to enjoy your peace and solitude, but you really, really need to be able to get along too.

We’ve had some magical nights — the Harvest Home, or Burns night suppers, when almost the whole island heads to the school hall for supper and ceilidhs that last into the small hours, or the night of the Rousay Regatta, with brilliant music all night long in the old restaurant down by the pier. The rhythm of island social life picks up in winter months, when we’re all grateful for distractions to see us through the long dark nights. Then, the social calendar has something going on most days. In summer, a highlight is the Rousay Horticultural Society Annual Show. 

We haven’t started renovations in the house. We’ve been happy just taking it slowly, living with things just as we found them, and listening to the house. There is a lot to do. Our neighbour Sue gave us the phone number of her builders and already, with some early bits and pieces, they have been magnificent. Which is lucky because they will be with us for a long time when we get going properly next spring.

We need to rewire and re-plumb, and we’ve decided we probably do need to install central heating after all. Many of the windows were put in during the 1980s and need replacing. We need to re-roof. All those fun projects that will take up time and money and if we do them well, you’ll never even know that anything’s been done at the end. Finally, we’re going to paint the house. I put some colour samples on the wall and asked my Instagram followers if they had a preference. That was a mistake. Thousands of answers later, I’d rather wished I hadn’t asked! (white is the answer we settled for in the end — simple, and completely Orcadian). 

The first year has flown by. “Hasn’t there been a single bad day?” someone asked me the other day. Another close friend confesses: “You’d be amazed at how many people ask me, hopefully, if it’s really going rather badly. I have to disappoint them every time.” Why is this, I wonder? Well, it doesn’t matter to us. The answer is, no, it’s been more amazing than either of us could ever have hoped for. Like Charlie’s garden, we’re putting down our roots — it feels, for a very long time.

Ben Pentreath is the author of ‘An English Vision: Traditional Architecture and Decoration for Today’ (Rizzoli International Publications; (pentreath-hall.com)

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