Selfsufficientish.com

Yep, you heard it all before but this time it looks as though I almost certainly have a house in the mountains......since I wrote this I can now confirm I do have the house.

Good points: lovely late sixties early seventies interior with a 'hunter' range in a nice biscuit (light tan)colour. It burns turf (peat) and I will have to buy a bog plot to be cut next month and go there on the scooter to stack the turfs for drying on good days.

The house is a sensible size inside which is good for heat retention. The landlords son is a plumber and he is putting in central heating which can talk to the range, that way when the cen heating is off and the range is on it can heat the same radiators.

Needless to say thanks to good advice from Nev and Judy in the Woods I will be making all lightbulbs saving ones and I will obtain individual timers for the radiators.

The water taps are great with piped spring-well water carried by gravity down to the house.

The house is in the mountains well above Lough Fea which supplies Cookstown with water.

I arrived after a drive across an unusually unspoilt mountain plain at the house, just as the mountain road dips down to the other side we came upon a large view of miles of valley below. Very nice during the day but at night there will be the lights (albeit far) of the rapidly booming and growing 'civilisation.'

The nice thing however is one only has to walk a few hundred yards back uphill and one is up in the mountains with no sight of below.

The house is dug into the hillside as with many cottages in Wales and Ireland the building is in a slice as it were, which means little in the way of garden, though the landlord has indicated that he might give me a plot of garden perhaps at the corner of the moor above, not private enough to grow herbs sadly, but I can do that indoors.

Now I don't have a shed, there is a huge shed belonging to him that he says I could use part of to store my turf, strimmer, chainsaw and scooter. He has offered to build me my own shed for the scooter but I am concerned that it would take up to much precious space around the house.

He does keep cattle in wintering sheds down below the house on the left so there will be the almost invariable tractor activity every day. But on the whole given that I dont have the money to buy it seems to be a reasonable prospect. Unfortunatly as the case invariably with renting, it is it is not long-term and so it is only a matter of time until one of them landlords children gets married and I have to move again.

I can go for nice long walks along the mountain and there is a very, very pretty little miniature two-story house up the road from me with a lady just a few years older who lives alone. Her family are only a few miles away so she gets visitors, but hopefully she and I can strike up a friendship and I could drop in and visit a few days a week.

One thing is for sure; with piped mountain water and a functioning range to make my own bread, I will be much closer to the good life!..............for a while anyway
mountaingirl

G'DAy Mountaingirl,

That sounds great! I am really happy for you!

Nev

Sounds fantastic, do you need a lodger ?

Hi - This house sounds really great - I hope you are settled there soon.

I am up in Scotland, so I wouldn't be able to help, but maybe you can get a work team in to help, a house warming party, bake breads and cakes, maybe some beer ... and get a load of projects going quickly.

I'm all for getting a community going.

I miss Wales (born and grew up there). Miss my mountains.

Best wishes!!

~Malcolm

This sounds like a fantastic adventure, Mountaingirl. I prefer the remote and isolated, too. One day I'll try and get back there.

Good luck with it all.

It really does sound idylic, keep us posted.

Firstly thank you Nev, Andy and Dave for your kind wishes and I am very hopeful for this house, it is smaller than the one I have now and has far less garden and no trees or hedges but it is out of quasi-suburban cattle-country and up into sheep country (with some cattle) so I am going up in the world physically which is better than materially. And I may add I now have an easier to heat house with a range AND I am in the mountains. I have also discovered that it has two little windowless rooms in the roof, one can happily do for me 'erbs' as I have nowhere private outside!

I am very lucky that this place is £70 pw, normally the Housing Executive pays sixty for someone on benefits but I am quietly confident that they will pay all for me as I had an accident at work with a firebell going off a couple of meters away and have a consultants letter advocating I live somewhere quiet.

Rents are now £80 a week on average for a place which is still low by English standards but it is unfortunatly squeezing out people on benefits who can usually only get £60, unless they have a small source of income to make up the difference.

There is an ongoing economic boom here with many hundreds of thousands of new houses being built everywhere, still, if you have a house that is reasonably away from other people then it is very nice.

Everyday I pray for an economic slump in the Western economies that would stop the development and free up more houses for rent, who knows it may soon come along with peak oil, loss of confidence in China and so on. Then the barbarians who returned here after 'the peace process' can return to the suburbs of Philadelphia etc and leave us all alone.

Thanks Playing with fire and muddypause also. The mountains are closer to heaven in my book.........as long as urbanites dont downsize themselves up the mountains or in the case of NI idiot emigrants return with bags of cash and try to turn the countryside into suburbs!

I hope there is some way that I can post pictures on the site when I get some in June when the house is ready to move into. Tom would be so proud of my solid-fuel range being married to the central heating!
mountaingirl