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Living Remotely or Off Grid


Dougie Do'ins
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57 minutes ago, Skidfingers McGonical said:

Did 4 days at Loch Lomond for my 40th at the beginning of September. Absolutely love the place. No signal, no telly, just us in a caravan and absolutely stunning scenery. 

 

Spent hours with Skids Jr throwing stones at rocks and searching for treasure and shit. 

 

On our way back home we hit the city and I felt like my world had collapsed. I’ve not been right since. 

 

Wheb you leave this scenery, it’s hard to want to be anywhere else.

 

 

Camped on LL a few years ago and cycled up the west side of it on the big ride. Fucking stunning place. Gut wrenching re-entering the concrete jungle.

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I was marooned on an Island in Scotland for 6 months in my 20’s. Uninhabited and quite wild. My only friend was a football called Wembley who washed up on the beach one day. I was eventually rescued by Timothy West and Prunella Scales sailing their old Sloop called Sybil. 

It was hard on that island, lack of food and drinking my own urine to survive, I have never drank Fosters since and cannot even look at a Coconut.

I still look back fondly on the starry nights though, just me and Wembley.

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4 hours ago, mattyq said:

When I retire I'm going to buy a little boat and spend my time sailing around the world

You can't get more of a wilderness than the middle of the Atlantic

On a previous trip the wind died so we decided to have a little swim which was great and it was only when we got back on the boat that the skipper told us Africa was 500 miles one way, South America 1500 the other and the ocean was 4 km deep... makes you think

You were lucky not to end up as shark bait.

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3 hours ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

Camped on LL a few years ago and cycled up the west side of it on the big ride. Fucking stunning place. Gut wrenching re-entering the concrete jungle.

I love it up there. First visited back in the beginning of 2000. Only drove through on the way to Glencoe (my experience of that visit was the most stunnnig thing I have ever seen). Camped on one of the islands on the Loch (southern end) a few years later. Proper roughed it. Went island hopping and got to see a Stag and his family wandering through the forest. I’ve never been so in awe of any place ever. I always feel at home up in Loch Lomond and the Welsh northern countryside. As much as I love our fair city, nothing beats the green grass of my ancestors. 

 

I just wanna get the family together and set off there. 

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6 hours ago, neko said:

The wife and cats and I will be living off-grid when we retire. We just bought a 110 ace parcel of waterfront property overlooking a beautiful lake in Northern Ontario.

 

I'm excited about the change in lifestyle, but it brings with it a steep learning curve - I've never lived like this before. We're not very far from civilization, but the property will have solar power, water pumped from the lake and a septic field for waste.

 

UYFZeQX.jpg

 

Definitely not living there in winter though.

 

 

 

 

This is it, man. Remember when you promised to be my sponsor so I could move to Canada? You’re gonna need someone to guard that 110 acres during the winter.

 

I have extensive security guard experience in high end places such as Stansted Airport, Cambridge University, three separate Tesco stores, an Essex shopping centre and a waste management site that was undergoing renovation and stunk of shit. I’ll be able to prevent people nicking your maple leaves no bother and the septic field malarkey is already on my CV. 

 

All I’m asking for is five acres, a basic wage and the use of your house with the nice garden in the summer, whilst you’re living it up in your remaining 105 acres. I’ll even feed the cats. 

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That looks brilliant neko. 110 acres is quite a large spread, enough room to do whatever you like for sure.

 

Solar has come such a long ways. I've mentioned before how I grew up in the Amazon, we had 4 solar panels and about 6 car batteries that was just about enough to run a shortwave radio, a water pump and a single flourescent bulb. Nowadays you can power an entire regular home on just 10 of them!

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Spent a couple of winters living in a log cabin in north-central British Columbia, for work. Wood stove for heat and cooking, outhouse, no running water.

 

But back to the city every ten days or so.

 

Other than the very cold toilet seat, I enjoyed it. We had good food, we got along well as a crew, and we were making decent money. Had a Walkman for music, and all the books I could read.

 

I wouldn't do it permanently, though. I like the comforts of the modern world much too much. 

 

 

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9 hours ago, Skidfingers McGonical said:

I love it up there. First visited back in the beginning of 2000. Only drove through on the way to Glencoe (my experience of that visit was the most stunnnig thing I have ever seen). Camped on one of the islands on the Loch (southern end) a few years later. Proper roughed it. Went island hopping and got to see a Stag and his family wandering through the forest. I’ve never been so in awe of any place ever. I always feel at home up in Loch Lomond and the Welsh northern countryside. As much as I love our fair city, nothing beats the green grass of my ancestors. 

 

I just wanna get the family together and set off there. 

 

Glencoe is my favourite place on the planet. Majestic and imposing whether it’s summer, winter, rain, shine or snow.

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9 minutes ago, Anubis said:

 

Glencoe is my favourite place on the planet. Majestic and imposing whether it’s summer, winter, rain, shine or snow.

 

You’re not wrong. It helps when you See the setting winter sun on one side of velvet sky and the moon rising on the other side and snow covered scenery all around. Mind well and truly blown. 

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15 hours ago, Captain Turdseye said:

 

 

This is it, man. Remember when you promised to be my sponsor so I could move to Canada? You’re gonna need someone to guard that 110 acres during the winter.

 

I have extensive security guard experience in high end places such as Stansted Airport, Cambridge University, three separate Tesco stores, an Essex shopping centre and a waste management site that was undergoing renovation and stunk of shit. I’ll be able to prevent people nicking your maple leaves no bother and the septic field malarkey is already on my CV. 

 

All I’m asking for is five acres, a basic wage and the use of your house with the nice garden in the summer, whilst you’re living it up in your remaining 105 acres. I’ll even feed the cats. 

 

I'll keep that under consideration. We're not yet ready to retire, so in the meantime perhaps you could rake up all the leaves to prevent any forest fires.

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My boss did the trans-siberian express when he was younger and has a number of cool stories. One of which was when he and his mate got to Lake Baikal they wanted to visit an island in the centre of it. With some very limited Russian, they arranged for a local fisherman to take them there and return for them in 2 days. 

 

He took them to a nice remote spot on the island and they were left with their tent and 2 days worth of food. The problems started when the fisherman did not return after 2 days. One day my boss was smoking on a cliff that overlooked the beach where his mate was sleeping in a tent. He noticed a Bear patrolling the beach and pass the tent, which still had some food in it at the time, luckily it just had a couple sniffs and got on with it. 

 

At this point they started reading up a bit more on the island and it had something like 10 times the density of Bear population as well as Tigers running wild. They kept what little food they had away from the tent after this. They were obviously getting hungrier after 4 or 5 days and managed to catch a Rabbit and kill it. But they got grossed out skinning the thing and threw it away! 

 

They also decided to start exploring the island as they were in a real survival situation now and needed food, despite the dangers of the wild animals. They saw an old tent that looked like it had been there for years but were too creeped out by it to open it!? They returned back to their camp where the fisherman picked them up after a week, turns out it was a hilarious misunderstanding. 

 

Is it weird that I'm a bit jealous that this happened to him? 

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21 hours ago, neko said:

The wife and cats and I will be living off-grid when we retire. We just bought a 110 ace parcel of waterfront property overlooking a beautiful lake in Northern Ontario.

 

I'm excited about the change in lifestyle, but it brings with it a steep learning curve - I've never lived like this before. We're not very far from civilization, but the property will have solar power, water pumped from the lake and a septic field for waste.

 

UYFZeQX.jpg

 

Definitely not living there in winter though.

 

 


I've never been but like the idea of North Ontario. Blue, blue windows behind the stars. Yellow moon on the rise. Except in winter, it leaves you kind of...

 

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