Island Market

THE BBC reality television series Castaway might have painted island living as a bleak, tough and unforgiving pursuit on the uninhabited Hebridean isle of Taransay but the ‘real reality’ is anything but. Living on any of the Scottish west coast islands can be no different to residing on the mainland – save the stretch of water surrounding you.

Education, local authority services and transport links are better than they have ever been. People work and play like they do all over the UK. They might have a 30-minute journey to work but the car will be actually travelling and not rooted in a traffic jam. And can people ever get tired of passing mountains, rivers and the sea moving through four very different seasons?

They come home from work and can go out to a restaurant for dinner, pop out to the pub for a drink, take in a film at the cinema or a go to their karate/bridge/knitting club. Fuel and food costs can be higher on islands but then crime rates are practically non-existent so does that balance it out? The climate can be wet but a crisp sunny winter’s day or a summer’s evening on Islay,

Tiree or Mull can seem like living through an artist’s landscape painting. Buying a home on the islands can be cheap or as expensive as you want it to be whether you want a run down croft house, a castle, plot of land, sporting estate or local authority house.