Many of us dream about giving up the rat race for a new life in the country but Elle Duffy actually did it. She gave up her job as a journalist in Glasgow to move to Rum. Here, she explains why she made the move - and how you can follow her adventures in The Herald each week.

There’s a stretch of sea off the west coast of Scotland that feels like crossing into another world.

It takes an hour and a half to cross from Mallaig - slightly less if the wind is just right - on a ferry that leans into each wave with a slow, steady force. On one side of the water, it’s a race. The mainland, where I’ve spent almost all of my 26 years, is demanding and fast and all-consuming. And on the other, it’s the Isle of Rum, where time bends and stretches to the whim of the tide and air. And it’s here, on this island, that I have made my new home.

It’s odd, thinking about a time when walking boots weren’t my norm and when gas was topped up via an app. But that reality was just two months ago. I had lived and worked in Glasgow for the last seven years, it’s where I studied for a career in journalism, it’s where I met my husband, and it’s somewhere that’ll always feel really special. And life was good. We ate well and we loved our teeny tenement flat in the city centre. But I found that I couldn’t sit still. I was always waiting for something to happen; not a lottery win, but a different kind of win. A change.

And so when I told everyone that we were leaving everything behind and moving to a remote island home to just 40 people, it didn’t come as much of a shock. I expected a sea of protests. Surely, someone somewhere would warn me I was making a mistake; I’d regret leaving the buzz of the city for the quiet of the island; my journalism career - which was ten years in the making - would miss me and I it. But instead, my admission would be met with a second’s silence, before a jaw-drop, and then an exclamation. “You are literally living my dream,” one pal said. Others would groan with a jealousy I hadn’t quite anticipated.

Elle Duffy on Rum (Image: Elle Duffy) In truth, this decision wasn’t as spontaneous as even I had thought. The seeds for adventure and change were planted long before I hit submit on the application. I grew up across the Central Belt, Ayrshire when I was a teenager, sharing a room with my sister until I was 16 - privacy was something........

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