A remote Scottish island is offering up four homes to outsiders in an effort to help populate the island.

The ‘eco homes’ are up for grabs on the Isle of Rum in the Inner Hebrides, which has a population of around 30-40 people.

Newcomers will have to fill in an application form for one of the £450-a-month houses located just outside Kinloch - the only village on the island.

Rum is 30 miles from the Scottish mainland and accessed via ferry from Mallaig near Skye.

The islands website reads: “These state of the art, two-bedroom homes sit on the edge of the village of Kinloch with clear sweeping views up to the majestic Rum Cuillin.

 

“These houses remove a major barrier to accessing the many working opportunities on the island. 

“The homes have been made possible with major support from the Scottish Government's Rural and Islands Housing Fund.”

The island is a National Nature Reserve and is roamed by wild red deer, goats and cattle.

The off-grid homes are powered via a hydro system and there is a compost system for disposing of waste.

They boast incredible views away from the hustle and bustle of the city plus clean living.

Construction of the houses has been delayed due to coronavirus, but the trust plan to have them ready for September.

Local resident Lesley Watt said: "We have a population of around 32 people, including six children.

"With only one child in nursery and two in our primary school we need more families to fill our school as well as to be the next generation of islanders."

The main industries on the island include fish farming, food production, childcare and marine and mountain tourism.

The homes are being offered by the Isle of Rum Community Trust and interested tenants can find out more here.

Young couple retreats back to their Scottish island roots amidst global pandemic

When Lewis MacMillan and Lois Mackenzie met as teenagers, they had lived their whole lives in the small isolated community on the Isle of Lewis.

Lewis and Lois

After moving to the mainland for university and completing their postgraduate degrees in Glasgow, they said they still value the community and natural wonder that island life provides.

The couple met on the island at church and have been together for eight years. The two got engaged on Bosta Beach in the north of Lewis last summer.

Lois said: “Some of my earliest memories of growing up on Lewis are the long summer days I would spend on the beach in front of our home.

“When explaining island life to my friends on the mainland, I tell them about the island’s beauty, but also about how traditional and different life is on Lewis.”

The couple retreated back to their summer jobs on the island just in time to dodge having to spend the entirety of the coronavirus lockdown in the city. 

Lois said: “I’ve had a set summer job here since before I moved to uni which I love. It’s in the middle of nowhere and near so many beautiful beaches and walks so I had always planned to come back for this summer.

“It just happened to work out this year that the virus hit and back home on Lewis was the right place to be.”

“There just aren’t a lot of jobs available in the public sector as there really isn’t a whole lot of industry on the island. It’s hard for people to find work after they come back from school.”

— Lois Mackenzie

Their story serves as a tell-tale for what many young adults from the islands are experiencing when they graduate from uni.

Lois said: “There just aren’t a lot of jobs available in the public sector as there really isn’t a whole lot of industry on the island. It’s hard for people to find work after they come back from school.”

 

According to Jonathan Hopkins of the Hutton institute, many studies show that the population of working-class aged individuals is on the downturn in all of Scotland and this statistic is likely to affect island communities greatly.

Jonathan said: “These islands are already struggling to keep this demographic in their communities.

“With the open availability of education, many of the young adults leave the islands to go to university and don’t come back as they don’t see much opportunity for job growth.”

Lois said that she and Lewis are not planning to live on the island in the long term.

She said: “Lois is a business major and I have a background in English and Journalism.

“There just really aren’t a whole lot of jobs besides what you find in the public sector that would really suit what we want to do with our careers.”

English entrepreneur leaves city behind for tranquil island life

When Englishman Matt Armstrong-Ford left Eastbourne for the Isle of Bute with his partner Emily before lockdown, they did so with the intention of saying goodbye to a grandmother, but ended up realizing they had no intention of going back.

Matt Armstong-Ford

Matt, who owns an African safari travel business, moved with his partner to Kilchattan Bay, a tiny community on the Isle of Bute after Emily’s grandmother passed.

He said: “We came up to visit her before she died. She died the day before lockdown so we effectively ended up being ‘stuck’ in Scotland.

“We decided that this place has everything we are looking for to build a life and a home. We’re now in the process of buying the house she lived in. Given that we both travel a lot for work. It is a perfect place to come back to and enjoy the quietness and calm of island life.”

Bute’s population sits below 6,500 residents currently and the tiny village of Kilchattan Bay is home to just a handful of households.

Matt said that living in this remote island village poses a number of positive differences to the normal city life on the mainland that he has been used to.

“The pace of life is a lot slower on the Island. There’s no traffic, except the odd cow or sheep on the road.”

— Matt Armstrong-Ford

He said: “The pace of life is a lot slower on the Island. There’s no traffic, except the odd cow or sheep on the road. No noise pollution. Overall, just a general sense of calm and community that doesn't seem to exist in most towns and cities on the mainland.

After living in Tanzania & Zambia for three years running safari lodges and guiding guests on safari expeditions, Matt moved back home to England to start his own African safari travel business.

He runs his company, Armstrong Safaris, solely and takes clients on breath-taking tours of Africa’s more remote areas.

Boathouse on Kilchattan Bay

Nick Haseloff

He said: “We plan to split our time between Africa and the island. Six months here and six months there.”

He said that Emily is an artist and ‘the pace of life and quietness on the island gives her the opportunity to paint without distraction.”

Matt and his partner are lucky in that their careers allow them to work from a remote location. 

Researchers from the James Hutton institute attribute lack of job opportunities on the Scottish Islands as one of the main factors of population decline in these communities.

Researcher Jonathan Hopkins said: “There’s a real problem with affordable housing too. There isn’t a lot of job availability in these communities, but even if there were, those new workers would have a lot of difficulty finding a place to live.”

 

The research conducted by the James Hutton institute projects that Bute may be one of the communities worst impacted by the problem of population decline.

They expect the island to lose up to 30% of its population represented in the 2011 census numbers.

Hopkins stressed that anecdotal evidence of resurgence such as Matt’s story paint a contrasting picture however.

Hopkins said: “It’s easy to discount these stories as simply being ‘anecdotal,’ but the truth is that they relay information in a different manner to the negative quantitative outlook that the population modelling shows.

“These people’s stories are just as important and give us information that we can’t get from just looking at the numbers.”

Business closings due to pandemic impact much needed tourism industry on Stornoway

Located on the Isle of Lewis and Harris, Stornoway, like many other island settlements, has seen a decline in population over the past decades. A dip that residents hoped would be surmounted by a flourishing tourism industry.

Because of a lack of incoming visitors caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, that industry has taken a tough hit from the impacts of the nationwide lockdown.

The Harris and Lewis Smokehouse is one of two restaurants on the island which closed due to difficulties resulting from COVID-19,

Nick Haseloff

“There’s a great reticence on the island at the moment to have any tourists at all.”

— Malcolm Macdonald, Chair of the Stornoway Historical Society

“Well, I would say there's a great reticence on the island at the moment to have any tourists at all,” Malcolm MacDonald, Chair of the Stornoway Historical Society said. “We were lucky to only have seven or eight cases on the island. And they all retreated at home. There were no deaths. And I think there's a fear that once you open the floodgates, that COVID-19 will enter the islands.”

According to Ian McKinnon, Chief Executive of Outer Hebrides Tourism, many bed and breakfasts and restaurants on the island have decided to stay closed for the rest of the season and two restaurants on the islands have had to close their doors permanently.

“The tourism industry here isn’t like what you’re used to on the mainland,” said McKinnon. “Most of these restaurants and hotels are run by one or two people.”

According to McKinnon, the tourism industry makes up 10-15% of Lewis and Harris’ income, and the impacts of the lack of revenue could take the island years to recover from.

That percentage of income accounts for many jobs on the island that have taken the place of industries lost over recent years.

“It’s quite important for people on the islands to be able to supplement their income,” McKinnon said. “You’ll have people that work most of the time as teachers or in the shops and they’ll pick up a second job to make more money. It’s quite common for people on the island to have two or three jobs.”

Studies by the James Hutton Institute and the Scottish Government show that Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (the Western Isles Council), for which Stornoway is the home of, is expected to lose up to 20 percent of its working age population by 2041.

Many of these younger island residents leave for the mainland to attend university, and often many of them do not return.

“Well, one of the main reasons people leave the island is employment opportunities.” MacDonald said. “There are a high percentage of pupils, you know, who go on to further