What a beautiful little village it is, and in what a glorious location. I have to say that the views over the loch as you come in down the road are superior to those in Lochgoilhead, because our road never gets high above the loch. There were some beautiful houses in the village (some of them were for sale as well and at very reasonable prices – so just as well that our house search didn’t get quite so far out as this) and even a bit of ‘E’ data coverage from Vodafone which was an unexpected bonus.

It was quite sad to see that a number of the shops were not tenanted and that on a fine Sunday in August there didn’t seem to be many tourists about (good for us, but not good for the area). R and I were discussing this, and we both agreed that as fast broadband makes it nearly everywhere, the few places left that don’t have it (much of rural Argyll for a start) are going to be increasingly disadvantaged, to the extent that businesses will not want to locate here and house prices start to fall off. We are supposed to be getting our rollout in Lochgoilhead next year – I will be interested to see how that goes.

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.