whats the Isle of Lewis like?!.

[kiwirach]

i've been doing some day dreaming and looking at a few property sites this arvo
i've come across a lovely little cottage by the sea with 8acres of land and i'm happily daydreaming away!!.
so, whats the Isle of Lewis like?. weather, what grows there etc?.

now, all i have to do is rob a bank and bobs your uncle

**wanders off to think of sea views and 's

[Bluemoon]

Very beautiful and kind of weird. There's a lot of religious (Christian) fundamentalism there, it's a very strange atmosphere, no-one works on a Sunday and a kid I spoke to believed firmly that the dinosaurs are a lie to test his faith.(and this is apparently even taught in school) This was a few years ago now, and things might have changed, but I don't think they have. I'd visit again, I might even consider living there now, but it's not somewhere where I'd have liked my kids educated.

[Bluemoon]

Perhaps I should say, before I put my foot in it again, that I didn't mean the above as an attack on the Christian faith, just that this place seems to have taken it to an extreme which, being unused to it, made me rather uncomfortable.

[Stonehead]

Is that the place with salmon and trout fishing rights, a peat bank, etc? On Rural Scene? If it is, I almost considered trying to persuade the Other Half to move...

[Thurston Garden]

Looks promising but what Rural Scene are not pointing out in their schedule is that all you are buying outright is the house (hence the price). The 8 acres is on a Croft Tenancy and is not owner occupied.

I do like Lewis. Nothing happens on a Sunday. In fact I don't even think plants are allowed to grow on Sundays.

[kiwirach]

Is that the place with salmon and trout fishing rights, a peat bank, etc? On Rural Scene? If it is, I almost considered trying to persuade the Other Half to move...

shhhhh..... yep!!.

[kiwirach]

Looks promising but what Rural Scene are not pointing out in their schedule is that all you are buying outright is the house (hence the price). The 8 acres is on a Croft Tenancy and is not owner occupied.

I do like Lewis. Nothing happens on a Sunday. In fact I don't even think plants are allowed to grow on Sundays.

i did see that on the details. i dont mind that nothing happens on a sunday....i do that now to balance the working week!!.

[Thurston Garden]

You are not allowed to even hang your washing out on a Sunday

We visited friends of a friend a few years back. I was most amused to hear that the octogenarian parents still went for a 'wee lie down' on a Sunday afternoon.

I saw an old chap wobbling along the road on his bicycle. "Oh here comes Wullie - must have been at so-and-so's Shed". He was very drunk! Turns out that the men take turns in hosting a drinking session in each other's shed at the bottom of their Croft on a Sunday. Wullie had clearly had a good time and was biking home pish3d.

[baldowrie]

I was in contact with someone who lived there and was selling up. He echoed what Bluemoon said. He also was never accepted as resident and always treated as an incomer to the point of the entire family being desperate to move off the Island.

Mind you his views could also be 'radical'.

[baldowrie]

You are not allowed to even hang your washing out on a Sunday

His wife did that once.....some of the things she was called for doing that were unbelievable

[theabsinthefairy]

I have a close friend who has lived on Lewis for about 13 years.

The first 3 years none of her neighbours spoke to her because she hung her washing out ONCE on a Sunday.

She managed to get a job - and no-one spoke to her.

She had a local boyfriend - and his family cut them off, and when he attempted suicide years later after they had split they blamed her entirely.

I have visited her there, and found the fundamentalist closed attitude very alienating, there are very few chinks in the armour there, and once an outsider always an outsider.

The island itself is beautiful, and the scenery magnificent.

But a hard place to live.

[Stonehead]

It's not just Lewis and not just outsiders. A local farmer was telling me how his father, an elder, quit the kirk after he was condemned for not going to church on a Sunday. He'd stayed on the farm to look after some very sick sheep and apparently retorted "that he was a good shepherd caring for his flock".

We caused ructions when we told the previous head teacher at our school that our boys would not be going to the kirk with the rest of the students, nor should they be forced to take part in services at school or say grace at lunchtime. (This is supposedly a secular state school, BTW). The new head is much, much better.

What's ironic is that many of the people who absent mindedly attend church or let their children justr drift along with the crowd, don't actually lead very Christian lives themselves. There's nothing like hypocrisy and double standards to make the world go round.

[MKG]

That's completely wrong, Stonehead. It's hypocrisy and double standards which make the world an oblate spheroid.

[Stonehead]

I did wonder if anyone would pick up on that last reference about "making the world go round".

[mrsflibble]

I got it.