Retiring from a demanding career as a litigator in London threatened to leave a sizeable gap in Richard Stein’s calendar. But, rather than continuing to live the same life he had always enjoyed “on the same two pages of the A to Z” in Clerkenwell Stein, 71, decided the time was ripe for a new challenge. In 2015 he and his partner Sally Lovell, 63, who had worked for the BBC, borrowed a camper van and toured the west coast of Scotland. They did not find anywhere to settle on that trip, but the following year they happened upon Harbour Island, a short boat ride from the village of Crinan in Argyll.
The nine-acre island was uninhabited aside from a single 1950s-built and virtually untouched pebbledash bungalow with three bedrooms and an overgrown garden. Despite Lovell’s insistence that she did not want to live on an island, she was persuaded to have a look. After just five minutes walking around it, the couple decided it was perfect.
In 2017 Stein finally left his job. Three weeks later the couple were installed on their own private island. “People call it a bit of a cheat island, it is only a five-minute crossing from the mainland. We’ve got mains electricity and water, broadband and a telephone,” says Stein. And yet, when it came to moving in and undertaking building work its island credentials certainly made themselves known. A removal van carried all their possessions from London as far as Crinan and then a barge spent the day ferrying them across the water. Renovating the tired property was not quite so simple. The couple needed a 13-tonne digger to hack out some of the rock for their extension and found it virtually impossible to find somebody with a big enough boat to transport it. “The nearest one I found was in Orkney, two days’ sail away. In the end we were lucky to find a fish farm just 40 minutes away with a large boat they could lend us,” says Stein.
To add to the drama, the couple were not only moving more than 500 miles to a private island, they were also moving in together for the first time. “A lot of people thought it was quite a dramatic move, but we haven’t killed each other,” says Lovell.
Instead their life fell into a rhythm of building work, DIY, gardening and sorting out the logistics around sailing to the mainland to shop, attend council meetings or have an evening out. For bigger cultural events, they sometimes made the two-and-a-half hour trip to Glasgow. But now the couple are putting the island, along with the house and outbuildings they have renovated and extended, on the market with Savills for £1.25 million and heading back down south. “Island living has been incredible,” says Lovell. “Being surrounded by the water and nature has been a big part of the joy of being here. We have a lot of wildlife, waterfowl, ducks, geese, oystercatchers and seals. The weather can be quite dramatic but the light is just extraordinary. There are a lot of artists in Argyll, and you can see why because it’s just beautiful. It is going to be hard to leave that aspect of things.”
Less hard to leave will be the need to be organised in order to do just about anything off-island. “Until last year I would have said I never wanted to live in London again but last spring I spent a week or so there wandering around and realised I missed the food, the culture, the socialising, the shops and the buzz,” says Stein. Family and friends are another pull, says Lovell, with new grandchildren and ageing parents to spend time with. “When we moved I thought that we’d always live here,” says Lovell. “We completely fell in love with the island and with Argyll and we poured our heart and soul into it. But you don’t have a crystal ball, you don’t realise how your priorities will change.”
