Aug 20th, 2013

Author: marionmccune

In which we decide to bid farewell to Suburbia

I said that we lived in a boring suburban house; well finally we have decided to move to somewhere not boring at all.  Basically the company has been going pretty successfully for over two years now – and as 95% of what we do is remote testing, we are now going to do that from the Scottish Highlands.  Our new house is six miles down a single track road, and then another half a mile down a forestry track – so pretty much wilderness territory by any UK standards.

I thought it would be interesting to document how we get on in our new environment, partially for the benefit of anyone else thinking of the same kind of set up.  Specifically, we are not trying to either downsize or to distance ourselves from technology; we are more trying to see how far today’s technology (and the progress of the Internet) will go to allowing a tech based business to thrive in the middle of a beautiful part of Scotland where houses are traditionally cheap because there is little employment outside agriculture/forestry and the tourist industry.

So at the moment:-

a) Internet connectivity – 100MB Cable and 20MB ADSL.  Reasonable 3G coverage from all UK providers.

b) Supermarket/M&S/Starbucks/PC World etc – 5 minutes drive away.

c) Nearest big city – 18 minutes by train

Going to

a) Internet connectivity – 5 MB ASDL and 23MB Satellite.  2G coverage for mobiles if we are lucky – so effectively no data connection for mobiles

b) Post office and local shop in village

c) Nearest supermarket and ‘proper’ shops about an hour’s drive away in Dumbarton

The many advantages will be 3.5 acres of garden, our own river, five minutes walk to loch, more mountains to climb than you could shake a stick at, fantastic views and the chance to have red squirrels on our bird table and deer in our garden.

We are also planning to grow at least some of our own food (we have a large greenhouse so in theory we should be able to have fresh veg year round) and potentially some chickens and goats.  R says if we have goats I have to sign an undertaking that he does not ever have to look after them.