A pristine Scottish island for sale at the price of a garage in Fulham
A dot on the map of the west coast of Scotland has come on to the market, where you'll be surrounded by sea, living off grid and be neighbours with the local seal colony.
With £125,000 to spend, you have a lot of options.
Perhaps a nice new Range Rover? They start at around £105,000, but by the time you've ooh-ed and ahh-ed your way through the options list then £125,000 is probably about where you'll land.
Already got a nice car, but fancy a trip that you'll remember until the day you die? There's a lot to be said for making priceless memories, and with this budget you could take a group of friends and family on one of the world's great yacht charters; travelling the near-deserted islands of Indonesia aboard the Kudanil Explorer, for example, starts at £129,000.
Or how about this: a garage in Fulham for £120,000. It looks a very nice garage indeed, on a good street, and near the Tube at Parson's Green.
It is, however, just a garage, and not an entire island... which leads us to the true topic of this piece: an island called Eilean Loch Oscair, which is listed via Knight Frank for offers over £125,000.
It's listed as an 'island croft' of 9.98 acres (considering the impossibility of making such measurements with accuracy, let's just round that up to ten) that sits in the waters off the north west coast of the Island of Lismore, in the Firth of Lorne, just across the water from Appin, and a few miles north of Oban, making it a fairly accessible spot in Western Isles terms.
While there's no house or even a bothy on the island, it is a croft, and thus able to support grazing and agriculture as well as be a place you can stay. The Scottish government's Crofting Commission has guidelines on what you can and can't do with this crofts, and it'd certainly be worth checking to make sure you're happy.
You'll also have to be happy sharing the island with the local seal colony.
What Eilean Loch Oscair definitely can't offer, though, is a community in and of itself. Thankfully. Lismore is just a short hop in your boat (clearly you're going to need your own boat), and it's a charming island that was once an ancient Celtic Christian settlement.
Lismore lighthouse is one of the most beautiful in Scotland.
It's an island which currently supports a population of 200, with village store, a post office and a village hall, as well as a passenger ferry and a vehicle ferry across to either Port Appin or Oban, both of which (and the latter in particular) are thriving spots with shops. hotels and restaurants. What more could you need?
Eilean Loch Oscair is for sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.
Oban is one of the biggest settlements on the west coast of Northern Scotland.
