Harris
A Stay at the Isle of Harris,
our South Coastal self catering retreats and hide aways and pods.
Our story: We fell in love with the Isle of Harris on holiday, be aware it might involve great consequences! For us being Dutch, we bought our old White House 27 years ago. Our 3 children enjoyed every holiday fishing, walking, beach fires, shooting, freedom and space! Contrary to our city lives in the overpopulated Netherlands where we were born. Jan and I had demanding jobs, we were in traffic jams every day and we always longed for Harris! After 10 years all 3 had left the nest and we thought it was our time to chose a different path in life, Harris it was, why not dive in the deep?
Some years before….Surprise… our daughter was born. She knew no better then going to Harris every holiday, our elderly neighbours taught her some Gaelic. We liked the idea of emigrating, but we needed to be able to sustain ourselves. Harris had no work for us initially, so we had to create our own work by building 3 holiday cottages with the help of local builders and both our sons and let these out. We would love to share our Harris freedom experiences with our guests and put all our money and love into building our cottages! And so it happened and we loved it! Of course we missed our family and friends but they came as much as they could and we now went to the NL for our holidays, our lives were reversed.
Our youngest daughter went to Leverburgh Primary school, learned English quickly and got used to a different culture, making new friends. Then onto Tarbert Secondary School. At 15 she had an idea. She would like to go to medical school and asked her dad if he together with her built a tiny house, so she would not built up a huge study debt for her long study ahead. We had stayed in a few tiny houses and we didn’t like there was no toilet and shower in them, so when mum designed the tiny houses those were included. She worked as our cleaner and waitressed at Rodel Hotel, and washed dishes at Scarista House. She was very handy with the sewing machine and sewn her own designs (whales, birds) made of Harris Tweed on headbands and buffs and sold these in local shops and at Stornoway airport. For building the tiny houses, she had put all her savings in buying all the building materials and together they started building Puffin Tiny House from scratch. Mum decorated and painted Hebridean Wildlife on the walls. Together we put all our love and energy in them and tried to make them as complete, comfortable, and beautiful as we could, to let guests enjoy!
She was 17 when she went to Aberdeen at pre med school, at 18 she started at Aberdeen uni. Coming home over the summer holidays she would welcome her guests and inform them all about Harris wildlife, walks and things to do and cleaned the tiny houses thoroughly. Now 9 years later she is a doctor at Brisbane Hospital in Australia (for a year)and we all are still proud of the tiny houses, which helped her through her study and are a still a feast to stay in for our guests!
our story, We fell i