So many people have asked for advice about moving to Skye that it is time that I addressed this matter.
It has been suggested to me that this page is offensive to the people of Skye. It is not meant to be so.
I am not suggesting that Skye is an unfit place to live. I am simply suggesting that it is a serious change of lifestyle for some people, not a poorer lifestyle, but a different one, and some regret making the move because they fail to fit in and cannot adapt.
I have been coming to Skye for nearly
40 years and I have no problem with the island or its people.
That having been said, I am wise enough to realise that the Skye
way of life may be so different that it is not for me in the long
term, and others who think of moving to Skye should ask the same
question.
The point I am making is that time and again I have seen incomers
move to Skye thinking that they will live "the good life"
as in the old British TV series, and then find that living in
a remote location is not as cosy as they thought, and it all ends
in tears and they are away down south.
I am not patronising the Skye people, by suggesting that they
have a backward lifestyle which we sophisticates in the south
have long ago made obsolete, but I stand by my comments about
the inconvenience of living on Skye. It is a remote area at the
end of a long supply line and many of the consumer goodies that
we take for granted are not readily available. Where on Skye can
you choose from a range of computers, or consumer goods in general
or find a branch of all major car dealers and the like? Maybe
you are the sort of person who can cheerfully live without all
that. Skye people can and do, and that is my point; some immigrants
find that they can't.
I remember my exhaust pipe going on Skye and it took 4 days to
get the wrong part from Inverness, another 4 to get the right
part with the wrong clamp and about the same again to get all
the right pieces in the right place at the right time; and none
of this was the fault of Portree Coachworks or Skye people, it
was the supply situation.
Some mail order companies surcharge for delivering to Skye, classifying
it as an offshore Scottish island, even though there is a bridge.
The cost of living is far more expensive on Skye and that is something
an incomer should realise, especially when old age looms.
Yes, Skye people have a better quality of life in some ways than
we do down here, and we have a better quality of life than Skye
people do in some other ways. There is no right or wrong to it.
It is a question of what is right for you.
I am simply making the point that some English people move to
Skye and then wish that they had not because they can't handle
a different way of life.
No offence is intended to Skye or its people. I am certainly not
suggesting that Skye is an unfit or backward place to live. What
I am saying is that if you move from your own culture in your
own country into a radically different culture in a different
country, will it be right for you or will you eventually feel
you made a wrong move? If you have considered all the implications
and you still feel that it is right, then go for it.
Skye is like tomato soup. You may love it. Someone else may hate
it, but that does not mean that there is anything wrong with you,
or the other person, or tomato soup. What is right for some people
may not right for others, and that is the beginning, middle and
end of my argument.
As I get older, I ask the question "would such a different
way of life be right for me," and the answer is "probably
not." That does not indicate a problem with Skye. It indicates
a problem for me and a problem which others should ask themselves
if they have before they move up there.
Now to the bit about which one Skye resident has taken issue. I challenge anyone to find one wrong fact:
Skye is wild, rugged, beautiful and remote.
However, there are places where you live and places where you go on holiday and the two are not necessarily the same.
Skye is a young person's island. It is fine when you are young and fit, but will it have the same appeal when you are 80 years old, you can't walk very far or climb mountains, your spouse has died, you can't drive any more and the supermarket, doctor, dentist and shops are 20 miles away from where you live?
Remember also Skye's remoteness makes living there more expensive than it is in mainland UK.
The main town on Skye is Portree and a wit once said that "Portree is centrally located, which means that it is miles from anywhere." There is more than a grain of truth in that.
Also (see my Portree page) Portree is not the idyllic place it once was. Don't misunderstand me, I am not saying you will hear the sound of gunfire, or see bodies on the streets, but Portree Council's policy of expanding the council estate and, according to my Skye friends, giving council houses to less than desirable outsiders means that it is possible for your car to be vandalised if you leave it parked overnight. Locals now lock their cars when they go shopping in town.
Portree to Inverness is approximately 114 miles and Inverness is where you have to go if you want many of the conveniences of modern life. It is also where the main hospital, Raigmore, is. Raigmore is a fine hospital (I know, Janet has been in it) but do you, or your partner want to be in a hospital 114 miles away from where you live?
What happens when you reach that time of life when you need your family around you, only you don't have any on Skye?
My uncle survived a massive heart attack because he lived in a town with a state-of-the-art coronary care unit and he was ambulanced there within minutes. If he had suffered his heart attack on Skye, he would unquestionably have died of it.
A late friend of mine was driving himself from Skeabost Bridge to Raigmore and back for chemotherapy: not a happy situation.
There is a hospital at Broadford, but it has a limited repertoire and for more serious illnesses it is necessary to go to Raigmore.
Family doctor services on Skye are, in my opinion, not as good as those in my native Lancashire. If I call my doctors' surgery out of business hours I get a recorded message giving me the number of the town's out-of-hours on-call doctor service. On Skye you get referred to NHS Direct, which is an advice centre manned by nurses who presumably then decide whether or not a doctor is needed.
I am not knocking the medical practitioners of Skye. I would simply like to state that within 30 miles of this house I could find any number of MRI and CT scanners, a nationally renowned centre for neurology, specialist medical establishments and hospitals for anything from tropical diseases to nuclear medicine, research facilities and laboratories. How much of this will you find within 30 miles of Portree?
What will you do for work? How many doctors, lawyers, dentists or captains of industry does Skye need? As Derek Cooper said in his book "Skye" having a qualification on Skye is a disqualification from remaining there.
Your children may have a choice of jobs such as waiter, waitress, secretary, shop assistant, running a B & B, but that is about all.
Remember that on Skye you will not find a hi-fi store, a B&Q, (huge DIY chain for non British readers) carpet store, furniture store, PC World and the like.
To give an example: Not long ago our toilet stopped flushing. I pulled the cistern apart, I found what had broken and I went down to the B&Q a few minutes away, got the part, fitted it and it was fixed within an hour. On Skye you would probably have had to go to Inverness for the part, or wait a week for it to be delivered.
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If your car breaks down it may well be that parts have to be ordered from Inverness.
If you want your car to be serviced by a main dealer you may well have to go to Inverness as well. Portree Coachworks is a Vauxhall dealer, and Ewen Macrae sells Volkswagen, but if you have an Audi or a BMW or most other makes, and you want a main dealer approved service, Inverness is the place to go and will be a 228 miles or so round trip.
Skye is in the north. It is closer to the north pole than the Falklands are to the south pole. Summer means long long days. Winter means long long nights and very short days. A bad Skye winter can mean days when it never properly gets light and it blows a gale and rains horizontally for months at a time.
Time and again I have seen holidaymakers move to Skye and at first they find that it is quaint not to be able to get spares for your car /washing machine / hi-fi when you want them. After a year or two of this and a savage Skye winter they are thinking "this is a pain in the backside, time we went somewhere where they have all the shops we had grown used to and the sun shines a bit more."
At the moment, Skye property prices are ridiculously high. Incomers buying holiday homes are pushing prices up.
(Incidentally a lament often voiced by the young people of Skye is "we can't buy a house because the incomers have pushed the prices so high." Actually they could afford their own homes if Skye people were prepared to sell property to their own kind at prices that their own kind could afford, but the Skye people choose to sell to the incomers because they will pay more.)
I could afford to move to Skye, but, at today's property prices, I would have to sell my own house, and spend some of my capital as well to buy something which is not as good as what I have at the moment. That doesn't strike me as money well spent, especially when I am going to live in a place where the cost of living is markedly higher. Also I suspect that Skye property prices are unsustainably high and that the property bubble will burst, leaving those who buy now (2006) out of pocket when they try to sell.
If all this sounds a bit bleak, then I am sorry but the truth often hurts.
Don't move to Skye unless you have had a midwinter break up there and still feel good about it.
If you can accept all these disadvantages, and some do, you may find happiness on Skye, but you need to go into things with your eyes wide open. Otherwise it may all end in tears.
But don't let this put you off holidaying there.
Copyright © Gareth Boote 2006