IslayBlog.com -> 2008 -> Settling on Colonsay?

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Monday, 15/Dec/2008

Settling on Colonsay?

Picture of a group of walkers having a picnic on rocks overlooking a sandy beach

No blogging about Islay today, instead we take the ferry from Islay to Colonsay for two or three links about Colonsay. Both are slightly older, but I only discovered them recently. The first one I'm going to mention reminds of a Royal link with Colonsay, the second is about opportunities to settle on Colonsay as well as high fuel prices:

I think I have heard this somewhere before, according to an article in The Times Even the monarch is entitled to downtime the Queen's favourite beach is on Colonsay:

Wherever it is, it is still not her favourite beach. That honour belongs to a remote spot on the western coast of the little isle of Colonsay, in the Inner Hebrides, where the yacht always called for an informal picnic on her annual journey to Aberdeen for the start of the summer holiday. [..]; Colonsay is a place for the Barbour and the woolly pully.

I believe the beach in question is Kiloran Bay, having visited the best beach on Colonsay (and also one of the best in Scotland) several times I'm not surprised by her choice.

If visiting that beach on a daily (or at least more frequent than once a year) basis is something you might like, then it might be worth taking a look at the Colonsay Crofts Project. I don't know how many of the crofts are still available, but there has been some reporting in the national press about the project: In March The Times wrote Colonsay: Hebridean island seeks new residents while in June The Guardian/Observer reported £40,000 bounty to bring new settlers to a dying island.

While fuel prices have come down recently the problems with very high fuel prices on Colonsay (the situation on Islay and Jura isn't that much different) and the exclusion of these islands from the RET pilot mentioned in The Guardian/Observer remains. Certainly something the government needs to address to help communities like Colonsay to remain viable.

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