Fiona from York: <<Are there any Orcadian estate agents online...? I'm dreaming now... >> We all need a dream! Lows of Orkney have a web site : www.lowsorkney.co.uk as well as properties for sale it also gives information on buying property in Scotland which is quite different to the rest of the UK. Sian Graemsay

Hi Fiona from York! So, the old ownership bug has smitten thee, yes? Proceed with caution. The way you acquired property in Orkney, according to my accredited and copious notes, be ye local or be ye otherwise Orkney-rooted, is to sign up with the Hudson's Bay Company in Stennes, jump aboard a leaky wooden sailboat with some other teenagers, and head for iceberg-strewn Hudson's Straight by way of southern Greenland. You arrive hungry at Fort York (now Churchill Manitoba (see the HBC website)). Then you live amongst that great annualized variety of our punishing unrelenting lung-crushing and biting winter cold, and our miserable black fly and mosquito-infested misty midsummer oozy and inescapable heat, run up and down the rivers on long unending days, paddling sixty strokes per minute in a leaky overfilled birchbark canoes trading beads and booze for furs with people dressed in musty smoky hides, and if you are lucky and still alive years later , you then get to return to Orkney after your fifth year of being a slave to some pompous Brit fort factor who won't leave the comfort of the Fort, but gets a share of the spoils you produced, then at last maybe you actually return to Orkney, that being at this point an option (for perhaps you acquired a native family by happenschance and feel you'd miss your "country" family, or maybe you didn't save as much as you wanted to and signed up for another five years of adventure) and after all is said and done and upon your eventual unceremonious arrival home in Stennes, with a festering arrow wound in your backside, and clad in moose hide, if your intended Orkney love has not written you off for another, you hand over all your money to the father of your betrothed, and "Bingo" you now have a croft. I think they called the program the "Orcadian Beaverquest for a Lovenest", or was it the "Orcadian Voluntary Depopulation Scheme."? Alternatively, it seems you had to avoid the trip, stay home and either marry an only child of a landowner, or wait for all your parents and siblings to die to get title to a place a place to grow bere and raise a few furry hagis- in -waiting, and create a home for your beloved and some youngin's. A guy named James Davie showed up on my grandmother's doorstep in Toronto in the late sixties after my Grandpa died, and announced that he was "Cousin Jim" from Finstown Orkney, and that he wanted to see my Grandpa. He was here to raise the money to buy the farm from Tom Davie who was threatening to let it go out of family hands for first time in history(which he did). Uncle Jim became a repeat and celebrated visitor, and was passed around the family like a a bottle of 24 year old single malt, to be sampled by all and cherished, which ceremonious entertaining left one sharp businessman uncle the opportunity to ask if Old Jim was even related! Gee Fiona, I'm stupid. I should go to Orkney and pass myself around as the key to the old Davie farm in Ontario! Hmmm. Anyways, your question of ownership sort of pierced my skin. We have similar thoughts as a family group, but I'll wager it won't be easy. Now that our history came together in a book form, everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon, including cousins who perhaps could be convinced that Orkney was a new brand of cookie, or an ailment specific to the midlower leg. Maybe it is a good thing that real estate there isn't handed out on a platter to anyone with a whim. It would be a shame to see Orkney invaded by idle romantics, pushing up the price of everything. But of course, Fiona, we are active romantics, deeply rooted, so there should be room for us, n'est pas? Happy NewYear .........Stephen in Brrrrrrr.....Canada (-32) On Sunday, January 11, 2004, at 11:35 AM, SIAN.THOMAS wrote: > Fiona from York: > <<Are there any Orcadian estate agents > online...? I'm dreaming now... >> > > We all need a dream! Lows of Orkney have a web site : > www.lowsorkney.co.uk > as well as properties for sale it also gives information on buying > property > in Scotland which is quite different to the rest of the UK. > > Sian > Graemsay > > > ==== ORCADIA Mailing List ==== > To unsubscribe from the Orcadia mailing list, send an e-mail with the > word > 'unsubscribe' in the message body to orcadia-l-request@rootsweb.com >

There are three estate agents in Orkney with websites: http://www.dreverandheddle.co.uk/property.asp http://www.lowsorkney.co.uk/ http://www.orknet.co.uk/wgs/index.htm ===== Regards, Bruce Fletcher, Scarborough, Yorkshire, UK http://uk.geocities.com/ricardian@btinternet.com/ http://www.caytonwitheastfield.btinternet.co.uk