It’s kind of a weird thing. To gaze at a map and think, where will I live for a month of my life? To launch the Airbnb app and select dates and filters and then get a list of 300 or more cottages, abbeys, and apartments to live in (new to Airbnb? check out the links at the bottom of this post for discounts!). It fairly makes the head spin. Home searching takes on the flavor of hunting for your next hot date. Swipe and there’s another option. Better? Worse? Who can say once you scratch the surface? And in classic American form, all the choices begins to suggest that there is a “right” option if you just. keep. swiping.

A few factors complicated our Scottish house romance. Factors that hopefully will be idiosyncratic to Scotland and not resurface with each destination; because I have to be honest with you, that exciting dating app feeling quickly deteriorated to that exciting sensation of beating one’s head along a series of walls. With different wallpaper. But still…hard walls, soft head. You get the picture.

Here’s what made it a challenge. Or in other words, what turned what should have been an exciting, thrilling hunt into an enormous butcher of fun.

High season. We’ll avoid it everywhere we can, but we want daylight to tramp over those compelling Scottish downs. Also, June is our first stop, and we’d appreciate a soft landing. We’ll have enough to contend with, trying to figure out how to live in a small space when one of us is working, one of us is painting, one of us is writing, and one of us is kind of doing all of those (Gabe and his homeschooling). Which means we wanted to go a) somewhere we’ve been, and/or b) somewhere where language isn’t an issue. That leaves Western Europe. But we don’t want to start our Schengen clock so early, since we don’t know if I’ll get my French citizenship in time. Besides Scotland, our only other non-Schengen European contender is Bosnia and that seems a bit daunting as a first stop. And if those words make you mutter, “how in the world are these people going to manage rural China, let alone a DIY safari?” let me rush to assure you that you are not alone. In any case, Scotland it is, and Scotland in summer is, in a word, crowded. We decided to leave two weeks early so we can catch some shoulder season before high season picks up, but even so, it means hunting for a home that’s available for an entire month, not even one day given over to some other vacationer. A tall order.
Related to high season, Scotland is expensive. Especially since owners are reluctant to give a discount for an extended rental when their homes would likely be filled at full price. We don’t want our first stop to break our budget. That’s not an appropriate way to begin. But we knew we could go higher, since so many of our stops will be less than our mortgage (which will, hopefully, be covered by a renter). As you’ll read below, with no fixed constraints, we were, metaphorically speaking, all over the map.
Scotland is bigger than it seems. When you are pretty much okay going anywhere in a country, even if you winnow out part of it to focus on Highlands, that’s a lot of cabins, apartments, cottages, and homes to sift through. Yes, the one month thing limits us to places available for a long stretch, but we’re also flexible, so we could arrive many days forward or back of our proposed launch date. Since I don’t want to rule anything out just because it would have been available one day later, it meant searching literally through every house on VRBO and Airbnb.
We all had different visions about our Scottish leg. Keith wanted to live in a Dickens village. You know, charming pubs and people to meet and things to do right outside our door. The kids wanted to step outside and feel like they were in the middle of the Scottish moors.
Perhaps an example will elucidate. Early in the process, I ran across a bothy on the Isle of Eigg. Many aspects of that sentence need to be broken down, so I’ll do that right away. A bothy is a hut or cabin, historically the kind left unlocked and available for people who need a place to stop as they walk from one place to another. The Isle of Eigg is an island (shocker, that one, I know), in far west Scotland, floating below the famed Isle of Skye.
I first heard of the Isle of Eigg when I met with Craig, a friend of a friend who spends much time in Scotland. His twice-yearly trips center on the Isle of Mull (which sounds fantastic, incidentally, and worth a look, we just couldn’t find anything there for a month). As his pen hovered over the map I’d brought, he circled the Isle of Eigg and told me that the island, like many areas of Scotland, once belonged to a laird and the people who lived on the island resided on the laird’s property. Times change and, as you know if you paid any attention a ‘tall to Downton Abbey, people who once owned substantial land eventually need to sell it because it becomes too cumbersome and expensive. The island-dwellers, not favoring the idea of having yet another person owning the land they lived on, decided to form a trust and buy the island together. They did, and not only do they now own the island as a collective, they made the island sustainable, in that close to 100% of the power used on the island is derived from solar, wind, and hydro. It doesn’t stop there, the islanders are on a consistent quest to decrease their environmental footprint.
It’s a great story, so I looked up Isle of Eigg on Airbnb and the first house that came up was this bothy. Not that I knew what a bothy was. Nonetheless, I showed it to my family with rapt eyes. The kids swooned. There’s a lot to swoon about. The bothy backs up to incredible cliffs and looks out over the waving sea to the Isle of Rum. The landscape is pure Scotland—wild, remote, and impossibly glorious.

Airbnb listing for the bothy on the Isle of Eigg

Keith tuned out when I mentioned the once-lack of indoor plumbing and stayed tuned out, even when I said that it has a bathroom now. If you ask him, I’m sure he’ll claim there’s no indoor plumbing. I can’t convince him there is. I don’t even care if there is or isn’t because there’s a sink with a view that will break your heart.

Keith pointed out the improbability of wifi. I told him one review mentioned the wifi was the best in Scotland. He harrumphed. He pointed out we’d kill each other if we lived in one room (not one bedroom, mind you, one ROOM that serves as bedroom, kitchen, living room, everything. Look up at your living room, that’s about the size of the bothy). We laughed and said it would be fun. He leaped in with the lack of beds, and we showed him that one mattress rests against the wall, and can be put down at night. He grumbled that there wouldn’t be good wifi. Repeat.

The kids started shouting “Bothy or bust!” at any and all provocation. How can two teenagers be enthralled about going this far off-grid? Sharing their entire existence with their parents? No closed doors! I can only assume they are too young to fully imagine what a month in the same room with their family for 24/7 would actually mean. “Bothy or bust!”

So, putting it all together—Keith wanted the connection of town and the kids wanted the isolation of nature. And I, helpfully enough, wanted the improbable of both of these things together. But really, I just wanted to make a decision. Which began to seem vanishingly difficult.

Fort william distillery listing scotland

I found a house with a delightful garden on a loch with the most amazingly friendly owners (literally, the woman and I have plans to get together when we get to Scotland; they are so fantastic, I’m including the link to their house here) and the kids were into it, but Keith hesitated at the long walk to even inconvenient town conveniences. I bristled at first, spotting in the owner the makings of a friend I hated to not meet. And I really loved that garden and view. But realizing that with Keith (our driver) working every day from about 2 PM on, it would be nice if the kids and I had the ability to pop out and connect with the world.

Then Keith found an apartment in a former distillery in Fort William and I’d get swept up in his enthusiasm and really I just wanted to be done now, but the kids would grumble and say, “well, that’s not at all what we want but clearly we have no say here” and the whole thing would feel sour. Gabe will tell you more about that. He probably won’t mention his vigorous eye-rolling at what he perceived as our dismissal of his wishes.

Keith started muttering derisive things about bothies under his breath. And wondered as an aside to me if we could doctor an Airbnb listing so as to describe someplace else as a bothy. I shrugged. Because I understood the kids’ total enchantment with that bothy on the Isle of Eigg.

So you see… the house-hunting process was more fraught than what any of us had imagined. Which launched us into looking at other avenues for finding a home for a month. Googling “self-catering Scotland” led me to a rough million websites. Which led us down more fruitless rabbit holes. Keith got clearer and clearer that he didn’t want this to feel like a beach vacation in a different place—you know a rental house surrounded by other rental houses in a community that exists only to serve those renters. I ignored him. How in the world could we avoid that? Seems like we had bigger fish and chips to fry.

By now it was Christmas, and two of the people I’d enquired to had informed me that Boxing day is a big day to make summer plans in the UK, so the pressure was on. Keith and I spent all of our non-family moments knee deep in the internet. In trying to find “real” communities, Keith found an article about Scottish towns and mentioned one aloud. Plockton. He then moved on.

TripAdvisor listing for Rhu Cottage, Plockton

Keith scurried down a rabbit hole, and I took the Plockton rabbit hole. Not too many Airbnb’s (is this good? Bad? Who can say?), but on TripAdvisor, I found Rhu Cottage, connected to the home of a couple that run the tourist board in Plockton. Reviews claimed that owners to be delightful, and since I’m writing this book while we’re there, that’s handy. Even better, the house’s lawn tumbles right down into a loch, complete with swampy bits and views up to craggy mountains. I can’t even remember what else was on the listing, I was so taken with that one view.

Keith found a house south of Glencoe (along with Skye, the iconic photos you’ll find of Scotland lean massively Glencoe) that looked promising. Yes, it abutted other houses (does this make it like a beach vacation house? literally, I have no idea because I was too annoyed to really figure out what Keith meant), but the garden looked up to the mountains, and it was a short walk to town. I should add here that one of the places we nixed for being too lacking in nature for the kids was in a charming town with a FISH TRUCK THAT CAME ON TUESDAYS. I would have stayed there for that alone. So I looked for a fish truck in the town Keith found. Nothing, but I did find a review of the fish and chips shop, which meant the town had a fish and chips shop! Unfortunately, the reviews were lackluster at best. I decided that was a silly reason to pick a house. I’m still pretty sure that’s true.

Late one night, after we sent inquiries to the place in Plockton and the place close to Glencoe, the kids and I visited both, our trips courtesy of Google Earth. The Glencoe town was…fine. A bit of a highway town vibe. Divided first by a river and then by time, it’s kind of in three parts. And the one part we’d be in was further divided by a big field. There were some shops, interspersed with…I don’t know, office buildings maybe? It was hard to get a sense.

Our cursor moved to Plockton. I commanded my pitter-pattering heart to calm down, knowing that the house would be even more over our budget, unless we got a long-stay discount which didn’t seem possible on Trip Advisor. Plus, I wasn’t even convinced the house was available for the month. Trip Advisor is buggier to use than the other travel sites. It lacks the “come play with me” vibe of the Airbnb app. For what that’s worth.

I ordered myself not to fall in love with Rhu Cottage in Plockton, but frankly, that became impossible. First, that loch, framed by staggering mountains. And oddly, a smattering of palm trees. We strolled the handful of streets along the harbor, lined with small whitewashed buildings interspersed with stone houses. We waved virtually at people who looked like they were playing bocce, and tried to peer in the local pub advertising live music. Up the street, Siena yelped when she spotted a sign that red “fish bar” on a tiny building (good girl, that). Probing a bit further revealed the fish bar to be an excellent fish and chips shop. Swoon. Further up the street, a distillery. And then a stone arch over the start of walking trails.

The next day, we heard from the owners of Rhu Cottage, stating that the cottage was indeed available for our time period. But a long-stay discount wasn’t possible (I’m unclear if that’s because Trip Advisor doesn’t have the same “special offer” option that Airbnb has, or it’s a high season thing). I was with Gabe getting his haircut when these emails went back and forth, as I texted Keith with updates.

During my stop in the middle eastern market, we exchanged thoughts. He wanted to know what I wanted. I said Plockton. But it was $400 more than the other place. Not a terrible difference, perhaps, but it’s about 100 books to sell. Plus, I need him to hold me in check, as my optimism can definitely spin out of control. Like, “it’ll be fine, my next book will probably be a runaway best seller and make us a zillion dollars!”

Here’s our text exchange…

Honestly, we’d wrestled so much already, I prepared myself for lots of back and forthing. And I felt okay if I wound up acquiescing and we chose the Glencoe house. One thing I’ve learned over the years doing couples therapy, if somebody feels like they lost in a compromise, it wasn’t actually a compromise. Keith and I have gotten skilled over the years. And adaptable. We could make anything work. I felt okay about the house in kind-of-meh town. After all, the owners seemed awesome and there was a view up the mountains.

I stopped in my tracks when he suggested we choose Rhu Cottage. Yes, more expensive, but our first stop, and worth the blowing past our budget to begin our year with an experience that fit our image.

I came home and we confirmed in person that we both felt good about it. Then we booked it. Denis, the owner of Rhu Cottage congratulated Keith and I for making such a swift decision and if I’d had a stitch, I would have busted it laughing.

It felt amazing to have it decided.

Until my innate need to second guess kicked in. Being a bit on the drab side, would the place outside Glencoe have been more “real”? Authentic? Would we have met people more eager to engage, get to know us? What were we missing out on? Surely something.

It’s a fool’s errand, self-doubt is. So I shut it down as much as possible. Which was helped by Denis, the owner of Rhu Cottage, asking for my address so he could send pamphlets and maps and materials to aid in my book research.

So we’re set. And in slow moments, I’ve been entertaining myself with virtually exploring the area around Plockton. The castle 15 minutes south, the bridge to Isle of Skye, the live music options the village, the fish truck (yes) AND the butcher truck that stop by the village once a week. The butcher truck sells haggis.

I think I may like haggis. You don’t know.

Even if I don’t, I’ll eat a mountain of offal packed in stomach to avoid turning any other leg of our journey into the slog this was.

Yes, it’s fine now that it’s behind us. And I can’t help but acknowledge our extraordinary good fortune to be in a position where we can pay extra to have the experience that meets all of our needs. When, that is, I’m not feeling panicked about blowing our budget on the first stop. I’m not one to stick my head in the sand, so I deal with that panic by flipping through my Airbnb app for future destinations, assuring myself that almost all the other stops will be fully half of our budget. And in those, we won’t need a car, either.

Mostly, I’m eager and sparkling with enthusiasm (the more so since I got this amazing package from our new landlords in Plockton. But I hope we can learn from this experience to be clearer on our needs we turn variables into constants, up our flexibility so that we can weave together our disparate dreams into one or understand that not everyone will get their way in future stops, and hone in our range to keep from getting overwhelmed.

By the way…that bothy? We have rented it for a few days after Plockton. Keith isn’t thrilled about it, but he said that we all accommodated his need, the least he can do is accommodate ours. Implied here is his befuddlement on why in the world we’d need to live in a one-room bothy with questionable plumbing. Even if it does have that view.

After the bothy, we’ll head to Edinburgh for a night or two, before moving on to Lithuania.

Please, Lithuania.

Be gentle.

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