Driving north on the A9, somewhere between Inverness and Golspie, I hear those dreaded words:

“I’m going to be sick very soon.”

Luckily, my five-year-old is a very organised person and can inform me of such impending events in a calm, logical manner. “Soon” means we can make it to the next parking lay-by. “Very soon” involves the hard shoulder and flashing lights. He never says “now” – for obvious reasons, which I would rather not dwell upon. I suppose Dale’s expert ability to gauge the timing of these unfortunate incidents stems from the fact that he has done a lot of travelling, especially since my split up with the father of my three sons in 1999, when we left the Hebrides for some city life in Edinburgh.

I chose this city as a temporary refuge because I know and love it so well from my childhood and student days. Perhaps Edinburgh is my geographical security blanket. My comfort zone. It will certainly always be my favourite city, for its wide cobbled streets, its imposing, sombre architecture, its mature, lush gardens and quite simply because it is so familiar to me. In these last two years Edinburgh has been a good home for us. We have had some fun and healed some wounds. 

But city life holds a limited appeal for me.  I am not very good at coping with small spaces and lots of people. I begin to feel claustrophobic and in need of more elbowroom and air. My favourite places (Australia, Southern Morocco and West Scotland spring to mind) all have vast acres of nothingness and huge skies. I hate the lack of freedom and the constant need to be security minded. In the last two years I have locked myself out of the house four times. Getting back in has respectively involved: a locksmith; a fire engine with eight strapping lads (one to climb the ladder and seven to stand around looking hunky) and two agile friends both of whom managed to climb up to my first floor kitchen window. On many other occasions I have left the front door unlocked or even wide open. The car is never locked. Please don’t tell my insurers. I’m hopeless at parking into anything less than a coach-sized space. Traffic terrifies me.  Most of all, there’s no room to keep animals and to grow food and nowhere for the children to run free.

So I sought a place where my children could grow up with space and beauty and the freedom to explore it. A place with a small but thriving community and an excellent school. A place where I could afford to buy a property large enough to have dogs, ponies and hens and a garden full of vegetables. A very personal desire has always been to live with sea and sand close by (a friend once described me as a northern beach bum). I do so love to find sand in children’s ears and trouser pockets and socks. I began my search in central Scotland and looked further and further north in an effort to find something that met my list of criteria. When even Caithness didn’t feel right I realised that I was actually seeking an island life once more. 

So we are heading up the A9 to Orkney for a week of house viewing. It is mid-February with snow in the air and we have a very geriatric (wish I could say vintage) car: is this such a good plan? Why am I thinking of moving to a remote archipelago chillingly close to the Arctic Circle? (And why on Earth am I bringing the boys on a househunting trip with me? Well, they were all set to visit their father. Unfortunately he had a last minute crisis and just had to dash off on holiday to Mexico with his latest girlfriend. No no, really, there is no hint of bitterness in my words.)  Undaunted by my own utter madness, we whiz through the snowy wastes of Sutherland and Caithness and arrive, breathless with the buzz of a miracle experienced (the car made it!) at the breezy, but not at all balmy, port of Scrabster.

We face a two-hour crossing to Stromness, over the notoriously lumpen waters of the Pentland Firth. Dale is sick out on deck before we have even left Scrabster. Hmmm….

Have you ever been to Orkney? This crossing, Scrabster to Stromness, has to be amongst the most stunning in the world. The ferry follows the Sandstone cliffs of the West Coast of Hoy and passes impressively close to the Old Man of Hoy, a fantastic 450-foot sea stack. The pump of adrenaline that surged through my body when I first saw this put paid to any queasiness in an instant.

Our five days in Orkney pass in a whirl of houses to see, schools to be shown around, ferries to outlying islands and evenings with my friends who live there. The boys develop fast-flow colds and hacking coughs. I administer sticky syrup concoctions, mop noses and supply juice. The only plus about this dismal turn of events is that they are quite content to slumber in the back of the car, each wrapped in one of my “sheep” (excessively large woolly jumpers of the sort seldom seen since the advent of the much more practical “fleecy”) while we trundle around the Orcadian roads. The usual boy-child demands for attention, action and entertainment are temporarily subdued. And for small men, they are really being rather well behaved patients.

The stack of house schedules by my side dwindles and I haven’t yet found a house that warms my heart. On our last sleet-driven afternoon I negotiate a pot-holed, flooded track to view a cottage with plenty of “potential” only to find that I cannot gain access. Frustrated, I drift on and turn instinctively off the road at the welcoming sight of smoke billowing from the chimney of a friendly wee farmhouse. This track ends in a yard facing a stretch of stonebuilt byres and overlooking a sheltered garden. The appearance of a woman at the farmhouse door makes me uncomfortably conscious that I have trespassed. Embarrassed, I explain that I am house hunting and strayed up here because this place looked so invitingly cosy. By remarkable chance (fate?) it turns out that this property is probably coming up for sale soon! Wow, how did I manage that? 

So I have found my idyll. An old, cosy (as in four foot thick walls and small, deep-set windows) house set in herb rich pastures (yes, I can tell this even though it’s February – my Biology degree has not gone entirely to waste) with a workshop, a stable and a path leading to the beach. I cannot imagine anywhere I would rather live. 

©Julia Welstead