About

Hi, I’m Kim. In 2023 my husband and I moved from our crowded, over developed, suffocating town in Sussex, 30 miles outside of London, to a charming little cottage in friendly little village in the middle of the Scottish Highlands.

This isn’t quite like those stories you hear about people to leave their tech reliant lifestyles in the middle of bustling cities for an isolating life on a remote island, but it’s still a huge change for us.

James and I have been married for five years and together for 12. We both work in digital, I do digital marketing and he does data analytics. As I’m freelance and James has a super awesome employer, we both get to work from home so can therefore work anywhere in the world.

We have three much loved dogs

Osric – Our 6 year old Australian shepherd. He’s one big ball of energy, needs lots of exercise and attention and love to be the centre of attention. He’s very intelligent but also stubborn so is only allowed off lead in very open spaces when there’s no one around (like the wonderful beaches up here).

Elodie – Our 10 year old ex-racing greyhound who adopted us 5 years ago. She’s my delicate little princess and is a typical greyhound in that she’s a scatter cushion we have to feed twice a day. She’s very accident prone, has an old racing injury that causes her to limp sometimes and wants nothing more in life than somewhere warm and soft to snooze the day away and the occasion snack.

Shadow – Our 10 year old failed foster husky who adopted us four years ago. We’re not sure what happened to him in his previous homes but we know he’s been mistreated in the past. He’s generally a scared little lump but very affectionate and loyal once he knows he can trust you. He matches his brother for energy but uses his age to apply more common sense to his actions.

Our old life

This was the view from my old home office window:

And this is what I get to look out over every day now:

We bought our first home in Sussex mid renovation project and completed the rest of the work ourselves. We made a lot of mistakes but we learnt a lot too.

Over the last few years, we also learned a lot about ourselves:

We were happier out in nature
Our favourite part of the day was our dog walks
We hated the entitled attitude that was becoming more and more prevalent in our old Sussex town
We hated how overdeveloped our old Sussex town was becoming
We hated that all we could hear all day everyday for years was the sounds from the multiple building sites
We wanted to live somewhere quiet, friendly and peaceful
We wanted to be surrounded by stunning scenery
We wanted an endless possibility of walks to explore (with the dogs)

So after multiple setbacks (health, work, financial and of course pandemical) we finally did it.

Our new life

On September 2023 we moved to a little village just outside Dornoch. We’re just under one hour north of Inverness. It has a population of 300 (our old town had a population of 22k, my home town in the midlands 58k and James’ home town is 111k) so it’s by far the smallest place either of us has lived in.

The cottage we bought had been in the same family for decades, it was a very much loved house that was filled with lots of happy memories. Now we need to create some of our own in it.

It needs a bit of TLC and some gentle coaxing to get it to join us in the 21st century (nothing is done with blunt force or urgency up here). Whilst I’m looking forward to doing all the fun design stuff, we need to focus on the more important and expensive stuff first.

We need proper fencing installed that’s strong enough to keep the dogs safe and can withstand the North Sea wind and Scottish weather
The windows and doors let strong enough drafts in you can see the curtains blowing
The whole house is on a pre-pay electric metre on an extortionate tariff which is currently costing us £600 per month!
The primary method of heating is a back boiler which are notorious for being impractical and inefficient
One of the first things we did was install a set of Rointe electric radiators. Budget gouging energy tariff aside, are cheaper to run and really efficient
We need a new heating system, or at least a way of having hot water on demand with some semblance of water pressure
The only bathroom has a ‘power’ shower and pump which has as much water pressure as a urinating geriatric hamster
The kitchen is a wonderful size but dated and some parts are inaccessible
There is no insolation so when we can get the house to a comfortable temperature, we’re also heating the street and not doing the environment any favours
We need new and more plug sockets throughout the house and new lights in most rooms

Once we’ve got this list done, we can start thinking decoration and accessories.

So, while we wait for all the important work to be done, we’ll just have to get on with exploring our new home and the wonderful Scottish Highlands.