The Talk around Town

Ganavan Sands--the beach camping "resort" with tiny quaint summer holiday cabins and RV hookups--is supposedly being bought by developers who aim to turn the area into ritzy expensive houses to the tune of £600,000 each. Double that for the American dollar price. While locals are tut-tutting and looking cross, I'm thinking that it's surprising that more of this kind of thing hasn't happened already. Perhaps the development boom is just starting to reach Oban.

I'm continually amazed at just how empty this landscape is, and how beautiful. It's hard to imagine in the U.S. a gorgeous coastline like this without a line of fancy houses along it, or just the sprawling developments of coastal towns. Here, fields, sheep, rocks, castles. Oban itself is bustling and growing, but perhaps not as much as you might expect. Of course, there's the weather to reckon with, and the limited economy.

It is too bad to have a public beach sold for private millionaire housing--though I hear that agreement will include provision for public access and public toilets on the beach to remain. But these days it's almost hard to imagine the million-dollar views not being snapped up by those who can afford second and third (etc.) homes. Where are the rich people from? Inevitably America and England.

On a related note, many are arguing here for a closed housing market just for locals--to counteract the current situation in which local buyers are priced out of the housing market by buyers from "south of the border." The housing market seems to be heavily slanted towards rich people who are looking for a summer home or second home, and Oban estate agents (realtors) have been quoted as saying that 2 out of 3 buyers are from out of the area. All too often, this doesn't mean that people are moving to Oban to settle and live here full time--no, they come here for a few months in the summer and then go away again.

Meanwhile people who have lived and worked in Oban for a long time or who have grown up here find it impossible to buy a house these days. The local council is trying to address the need for affordable housing and will presumably be planning to build to fill the need.

So, while Oban seems quaint and small and compact, it is slowly starting to expand, creeping up the glens--Glenshellach is full of trucks and bulldozers and construction tape where it used to be all farms.

In other news, the hoof-and-mouth outbreak last week in Surrey is bringing back nightmare memories of 2001 for local farmers. Since Saturday there has been a ban on all moving of cattle, sheep, and pigs, and all shows and sale auctions are off. Nobody wants to see the mass culling of animals that happened 6 years ago, when animals were shot and burned by the millions.

A sheep farmer from Kerrera I was talking with told me that their year's income relies on the autumn sales of their lambs, and if they can't sell, it will be devastating. It took them 5 years to recover after the events of 2001, she said. She didn't even want to think about what could happen if the outbreak were traced to Scotland. This doesn't look too likely at this point, however.