For sale: Scottish isle with old house, wallabies included

July 11, 2020 12:22 PM

You can own your own Scottish isle for £500,000 — the price of a London flat (House Beautiful). Specifically, Inchconnachan Island (Google maps) in Loch Lomond, 40 km (25 miles) northwest of Glasgow. That price includes permits to replace the derelict 1920s timber bungalow (Forbes) with a 5-bed lodge house, boathouse and pier, but residency is limited to 60 days per year. Also, your neighbors will be feral wallabies (Atlas Obscura). [Via Mltshp, and an article from The Guardian]
posted by filthy light thief (27 comments total)

Do I need a special permit to build a Wasp Factory?
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:32 PM on July 11, 2020 [10 favorites]

The residency restriction is a killer I'm afraid. Unless there are another five islands available?
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:56 PM on July 11, 2020 [6 favorites]

Yeah, I was getting out my checkbook till I saw the residency restriction. If I own a cool island, I want to live there...
posted by Windopaene at 1:02 PM on July 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

The residency restriction is a killer I'm afraid.

Yeah, so much for the MeFite retreat/lair idea.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:13 PM on July 11, 2020

Is it 60 days per year for anyone, or per person?
posted by acb at 1:31 PM on July 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

Looks like we have a timeshare on our hands laddies
posted by Kitchen Witch at 1:31 PM on July 11, 2020 [9 favorites]

For half that price (yes, really, £250,000) you can live year-round on different Scottish island. This also needs development but, if you were ready to cut a cheque for half a million, why not spend the other half you seem to have lying around fixing it up.

(Wallabies not included, sorry.)
posted by deeker at 1:39 PM on July 11, 2020 [11 favorites]

Are there other restrictions? Can I invite a disreputable group of people and force them to solve each other's murders? How about a wicker man?
posted by betweenthebars at 1:41 PM on July 11, 2020 [12 favorites]

but am i allowed to farm tweed
posted by lazaruslong at 1:43 PM on July 11, 2020 [10 favorites]

The maps image show several boats anchored in the bays of the island; I'm guessing as the land owner you can't prevent that so not quiet as private as one might wish.
posted by Mitheral at 1:57 PM on July 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yes, Mitheral, Loch Lomond can get very busy, especially in the summer, such as it is. (It got to the point, with appalling scenes of litter and abandoned campsites, that large swathes of the park no longer allow wild camping, although the permitted camping zone, where one books a specific spot for an admin fee, has greatly improved the situation. Lots of the park is still regularly ruined by hordes of daytrippers who can't or won't respect the place.) I'd be constantly worried about wedgies coming over by boat and setting up camp for sure.

(The island I linked to above, off Shetland? Not so much.)
posted by deeker at 2:04 PM on July 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

You had me at feral wallabies
posted by thivaia at 2:27 PM on July 11, 2020 [6 favorites]

As a New Zealander, in all honesty, I'd have to recommend the island without feral Wallaby neighbours ;)
posted by maupuia at 2:30 PM on July 11, 2020 [12 favorites]

Those canny Scots always leave out the midges part.
posted by srboisvert at 2:44 PM on July 11, 2020 [14 favorites]

The feral wallabies would go well with the feral goats that can be found a bit to the north.
posted by Mogur at 2:49 PM on July 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Loch Lomond

Captain Haddock would be right at home. At least for 60 days in the year.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:50 PM on July 11, 2020 [5 favorites]

Pedantic Scottish person alert: it's Inchconnachan, not Inchconnachan Island. "Inch" means island, so you're getting your naan bread all up in my ATM machine.

60 days a year, with Loch Lomond midges, is roughly 60 lifetimes in hell. Also it rains a lot. A lot lot. I used to mountain bike round the trails above the Loch, and our late 80s MTBs with chainstay-mounted brakes would get mired to bottom-bracket level. We were so envious of the few who could afford or handle the waitlist for UK-design mud-friendly bikes like Overbury's.
posted by scruss at 3:19 PM on July 11, 2020 [24 favorites]

Pretty sure some of my pals have swum there from the shore, for the novelty of swimming to an island with wallabies on it, so you'd need to be prepared for folk appearing out of the deep and staggering up on the beach to explore.
posted by penguin pie at 3:33 PM on July 11, 2020 [10 favorites]

thivaia: You had me at feral wallabies

That was my focus of this post, but I felt that clarifying the lodging limitation (which appears to actually be 90 days*) like something worth including up-front.

But in my haste, I failed to highlight that the wallabies are now some 15,000 km (about 9,400 miles) from their native habitat in or around Australia thanks to Fiona Bryde Colquhoun, later known as Lady Arran, who was a renowned power boater (Bluebird Electric).

The Countess was reckoned to be the “fastest woman on water” and subsequently the “fastest granny on water” when, in 1980 (aged 62 or there-about), she reached 103mph on Lake Windermere in a rocket-like craft called Skean-Dhu, an achievement that earned her the highest accolade in powerboating, the Segrave Trophy.

Although an unlikely champion powerboater, in October 1971, at the age of 53, Lady Arran followed in the wake of her hero Donald Campbell, racing her speedboat Highland Fling across Windermere in a hailstorm to lift the Class 1 record to 85.63mph. In her next 12 races, contending against all comers, she won three times and was never placed lower than third. In 1979, at the helm of her 26ft powerboat Skean-Dhu, she set a new Class II world record of 93mph.

She also kept a group (cete or clan) of badgers on Inchconnachan Isle, who apparently resided under the veranda and came out to chase off visitors.


* Rightmove.co.uk has what appear to be more detailed information on this sale, including:

The main lodge is restricted to holiday occupancy only (no more than 90 days by any individual or group in a given calendar year). Occupancy of the Warden’s House is restricted to a resident employed by the purchaser as a warden.

It also notes that Simpson and Brown Architects have a plan for the replacement lodge, if you want to see what's on the books for this island.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:02 PM on July 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

the wallabies are now some 15,000 km (about 9,400 miles) from their native habitat in or around Australia thanks to Fiona Bryde Colquhoun, later known as Lady Arran, who was a renowned power boater (Bluebird Electric).

Wait, she was boating to Australia and kidnapping wallabies?
posted by lollusc at 11:13 PM on July 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

it's Inchconnachan, not Inchconnachan Island. "Inch" means island
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:27 AM on July 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

For half that price (yes, really, £250,000) you can live year-round on different Scottish island. This also needs development but, if you were ready to cut a cheque for half a million, why not spend the other half you seem to have lying around fixing it up.

That page has a link to a company ("Vladi Private Islands") that rents and sells, well, private islands all over the world. Some of them are crazy expensive, but it is surprising how low the price point can be for some islands. There are four pages of results for islands under 100,000 euros, for example. I'm sure with most of them that buying the island is not the expensive part -- it's paying for the boat, constructing docks, building structures, engineering off-grid water and power, navigating permitting, etc. that would add up.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:07 AM on July 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

you'd need to be prepared for folk appearing out of the deep and staggering up on the beach to explore.

Every other comment here makes this place sound more like a lost Scooby Doo episode than a real estate investment.
posted by mhoye at 11:40 AM on July 12, 2020 [4 favorites]

Current hypothesis: Nessie may be a nearby wallaby or a faraway llama... in a boat. Wrong Loch, but still.
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 12:34 PM on July 12, 2020

That page has a link to a company ("Vladi Private Islands") that rents and sells, well, private islands all over the world. Some of them are crazy expensive, but it is surprising how low the price point can be for some islands. There are four pages of results for islands under 100,000 euros, for example. I'm sure with most of them that buying the island is not the expensive part -- it's paying for the boat, constructing docks, building structures, engineering off-grid water and power, navigating permitting, etc. that would add up.

I live on one of the more populated islands of southeast Alaska's Alexander Archipelago and while I live in one of the region's towns, I have friends and acquaintances who commute to town by skiff from smaller islands nearby. Some of them live on islands by themselves, more of them live on outlying islands with no roads or utilities but shared with neighbors, but all of them have had to solve the problems of insular living.

You're quite correct that maintaining the infrastructure for such a home is very often more expensive than the home itself -- I've lost count of the number of homes I've visited where the dock is obviously worth more than the house.

In my region drinking water is not generally a problem (as we are coastal temperate rainforest and most outlying homes just have catchment systems that direct the rainfall from their roofs into private water tanks) though it can be the biggest challenge in other climates (not Scotland, however, I would assume.) And here heating is solvable with either money or muscle power (in the latter case: go out in your skiff on a high tide, find floating logs, which are common in the waters of this area, attach a chain and drag them home, then beach the log on a high tide and use a come-along to edge it out of the tidal range, then when it is dried out enough to cut into firewood cut it up and stack it out of the rain until it is dried enough for use. Doesn't sound easy, does it? One of many reasons why I live in town..) One way or another, being a self-sufficient homestead takes a fair amount of resources as well as dedication and creativity and a considerable amount of manual labor even in this comparatively easy location.

Finally, the kind of remote island living I know anything about takes a near-constant commitment or things fall apart in a hurry. I have no idea how you'd achieve anything workable by dabbling in it for only 60 days a year. I would guess the only way to do that is to pour in enormous amounts of money to substitute for the time you can't spend there.
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:02 PM on July 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

Also, nobody has yet addressed my chief question about this property, which is: would you be in violation of the terms if you trained the [currently] feral wallabies to do your bidding?

Asking for a friend with supervillanous tendencies.
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:05 PM on July 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Well, jaysus: Bloody banks of Loch Lomond -- Wallaby colony under attack as macabre killer leaves skinned carcass on beach Boatman makes grim discovery of animal skinned and then dumped by heartless animal killer. (Daily Record, August 2017) Disturbing picture, and mention of previous attacks, including: "In 2009, visitors to the island reported finding one wallaby shot dead and the charred remains of several others." Incidentally, there is a preponderance of day-trippers to Inchconnachan, if the taxi driver who made the report is anything to go by: "I’ve been over around 200 times and I’ve seen wallabies on many occasions."

If you buy the island, do try to catch these butchers at it? Wallabies are most active at dusk and dawn, so cracking this case shouldn't eat up your entire weekend each month. Oh, and generally a wallaby can top out at about a meter long, but if the island population descended from Lady Arran's single pair of specimens...

[On preview: Nerd of the North, perhaps that's already been tried, and this 'culling' is some sixth-rate Moreau trying to rid themselves of the evidence?]
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:17 PM on July 12, 2020