OUR SIMPLE LIFE ON A TINY SCOTTISH ISLAND | long sandy beaches, an abandoned village & lots of cows

[Music] [Music] at the end of september last year we drove all the way from our home in sussex to vatase a tiny scottish island five hours ferry ride from scottish mainland we spent an entire month living and working there on this remote island of around 90 people i only just retrieved this footage from my broken hard drive so you can expect plenty more videos from our adventures in the outer habits coming your way soon these scenes from our life were filmed in october when there wasn't so much coronavirus about and most of the islanders were keen to welcome careful visitors still we made sure to self-isolate before and after the journey just to be safe now though even the outer habits are in strict lockdown so if you are thinking about following in our footsteps soon please make sure you're up to date with the current rules and also with what the island communities want we soon fell into a very simple routine we started our days off with coffee and porridge the perfect breakfast on a rugged windswept island every day we looked at the map and chose another patch of the island to explore you might guess that this is an unchanging wild landscape but in fact there were many more people living here in some periods and no one at all in others in the 19th century during the highland clearances the locals were all kicked off vatisay and forced to settle on the overcrowded neighboring islands so that vatisay could be turned into one big farm to profit the rich absentee landlord we just found these abandoned houses here on vatican and so we've just been exploring them and it's really exciting it feels a little bit spooky but in a very nice way yeah let me show you around in 1906 the land owner was lady gordon cathcart who lived mostly in england and had only ever visited her property once she had ignored the struggling islanders requests to be allowed to farm even just a small part of their homeland so a small group of these islanders bravely decided to return to vatican anyway to build homes and plant potatoes for this they were sent for trial in edinburgh convicted and imprisoned but there was so much support for the so-called battersea raiders and their community that the government bought the island from lady cathcard the house we stayed in is owned by the descendants of one of the raiders in 1912 when the next island over called mingele became unsustainable the inhabitants established this settlement i'm not going to attempt to pronounce its gaelic name in my german accent so you can just read it off the screen the village was abandoned in the 1970s [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] do i forgot the name of the mushrooms what was it so yesterday we collected a bunch of well actually yesterday and today we collected a bunch of meadow wax cap mushrooms and made soda pancakes and creamy garlic mushrooms vegan creamy garlic mushrooms and it's really delicious okay i'm gonna attempt it [Music] um [Music] so [Music] barra was given the nickname barabados because of its many long wide soft sandy beaches and the clear turquoise water we spent our days walking along the shore going for freezing cold dips in the ocean and we even found a couple of caves i'll share my favorite of these adventures with you in the next few videos so i really hope you enjoyed this video thank you for watching and as always i will see you next time

Channel: Alexandra Reuter

Views: 1,906,199

Keywords: Barra, Isle of Barra, Vatersay, Outer Hebrides

Id: AbEtH1CLip8

Length: 8min 10sec (490 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 08 2021