‘I'm paid £25k to live on a remote Scottish island'
Sitting outside her bothy, Lora Constable can see ravens flying overhead and gannets diving into the blue sound. She can hear the quack-like calls of great skuas.
'You step out of the door, and you see all these birds. You're right into nature,' she says. 'There's something really special about that.'
Constable, 25, moved to Handa Island, a rugged 760-acre island off Scotland's north west coast, in March this year. A biology graduate from the Welsh town of Tywyn, Gwynedd, she had first come to Handa for six months as a volunteer in 2023.
When she saw that the Scottish Wildlife Trust were advertising a six-month paid island ranger role earlier this year, she leapt at the chance to return.
'I'd fallen in love with Scotland,' she says. 'I loved being here.'
Besides Constable and a handful of volunteers, Handa is uninhabited. It has no address or postcode. There are no roads, no vehicles, no shops, no buildings – except for a visitor's shelter and the stone bothy that Constable and the volunteers share.
There are white sand beaches, rugged heathland and dramatic sandstone cliffs which attract some 80,000 breeding seabirds each year: arctic skuas, razorbills, guillemots, kittiwake, fulmar and the occasional eagle.
'The ranger role is overseeing everything,' says Constable. This includes monitoring the seabird population, which was decimated by bird flu, maintaining the food and gas supplies, managing the other volunteers (four long-term, two short-term), repairing the island's boardwalks, helping visitors (around 140 a day during summer), answering enquiries and fixing any problems.
If the toilet breaks or the power supply fails, it is Constable who must find a solution. 'You have to be good at problem solving. If one thing doesn't work, you've got to find something else.'
The bothy, says Constable, is 'similar to a youth hostel', with bunk beds, a communal kitchen and lounge area. There are no frills, and no fridge, but it 'has everything you need'.
Meals are cooked and eaten together, with rice and pasta dishes high on the menu. Chilled items are kept on the cool stone floor of the pantry. But without a fridge or freezer, some cravings are impossible to satisfy.
'Sometimes, if it's a hot day, I'd love an ice cream,' she says. 'At home, I'd just go down to the shops and get it. But here, if you wish you had something, you can't do anything about it. You've just got to get it whenever the next shop is.'
Constable's nearest shop is on the mainland, a ferry ride away, followed by a 15-minute drive – all in, an hour round trip. The staff aim to go food shopping once every fortnight, but this is easier said than done. If there are high winds, bad weather or lingering storms, the boats cannot run.
'There is emergency food on the island in a box stashed away that's only used if you were to completely run out of food and couldn't get off the island,' Constable explains. 'We've not had to use it in my experience. If anything, there's always too much food.'
Handa's weather can be fierce. 'When the storms come in, we're hunkered down. You can feel like the wind's going to take you away,' she says. 'Just looking at the swell crashing against the cliffs, and the noise. It's almost like a thunderclap ... It's pretty spectacular.'
Given this temperamental weather, Constable has learned to be flexible. If she's scheduled boardwalk repairs or bird monitoring on the cliffs and a storm comes in, those plans must wait.
'We're massively dependent on the weather, and that can be challenging,' she says. 'Sometimes you have plan A and plan B. But here, you're often getting down to plan F.'
Handa may be remote, but there is a strong sense of community among the staff who sleep, eat and live together.
Most are long-term volunteers who are also pursuing careers in conservation, but others come to Handa to escape their desk jobs and spend time in nature. In the evenings, they'll swim in the sea, go for walks, listen to music, play games and share stories.
'There's nothing here, it's just ourselves,' she says. 'You get people from all walks of life that come here. It's nice to hear about people's lives. Living on an island with that kind of community is lovely.'
With little to spend money on, Constable has almost no financial outgoings. Her full-time salary is £25,600, with accommodation included. The volunteers' food is covered under expenses. There is no commute and all her journeys on the island are done on foot.
'I don't spend a lot,' she says. 'I bought a new sleeping bag. That's all I've spent money on, and food.' Her savings, she hopes, will allow her to travel when the season finishes in September. She plans to see more of Scotland and, eventually, to visit friends in New Zealand.
Does she miss the hustle and bustle of life on the mainland? 'It's quite nice to be without it. I like remote places,' she says. 'When you come here, you don't hear any vehicles at all. All you hear is the ocean. It's incredibly peaceful. That's something I notice when I go back home, the amount of noise.'
Living on Handa has cemented Constable's love for the outdoors. It has shown her that she enjoys living in simple conditions, in tune with the rhythms of the natural environment.
'I think it's set me up for the future. I want to continue living quite basically, even when I'm not on an island,' she says. 'It's taught me that I love being in remote places and really immersing myself in nature. It has so many benefits. I think maybe everyone needs to do a bit of that.'
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