Remote homes with lots of land

Ten days ago, I was tripped up by a runaway dachshund on the prom. All very 70s sitcom.
Which has meant me being stuck at home nursing a face that could scare horses and small children.
But today, the bruises have faded, the scabs are gradually falling off, and I'm itching to be out walking. 
Which is why I've found myself picking properties to show you with BIG walking potential and NO chance of errant dachshunds. Because with these picks, you own all the land.
Clydach Dingle, in the Brecon Beacons national park near the town of Brynmawr, comes with what may be a Wreck of Week record of a massive 32 acres of land. 

It's not just a dilapidated farmhouse, it's a farmhouse that was three dilapidated cottages.
Plus the remains of what had been a Welsh mining hamlet - ruins of homes, a pub, cobbled street, the mine building and sealed off coal seam.
Further back in time, Clydach Dingle had been the last staging post before the crossing over the mountain to Crickhowell and the Black Mountains, its stone barn housing weary horses.
If history's your thing, you would own 32 acres of it here.

Anyway, since then practical rather than historically sensitive works have squished three homes into one and that too has deteriorated over time. The property comes with planning permission to meld everything together with the horse barn and create something snazzier.
But, looking at the planning decision (another wreck first - plans included a shelter for wild horses!!), permission was granted way back in 2020 and would have expired last September unless works have kept it active?
That's not clear from the property info and makes the £400k asking price a bit of a punt. Which may also partly explain its 18months on the market.
The ref by the way is 20/18812/FUL via the Beacons national park planning portal.
The plans were for a four bedroom, two bathroom house, with a large open plan kitchen, living, dining area, a separate snug and a large bootroom. Which all sounds hunky dory but clearly whoever planned those plans, pre-Covid and pre-double-Trump, didn't get a great deal further than the on-site caravan in their renovation dream.

Honestly I get that - if I had 32 acres in this gloriously wild bit of the UK, I could easily spend 15 years just walking it, planting it, and looking for wild horses.
On the market through agents James Dean at £400k. Details and more pictures from the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
My next pick is even more remote and therefore carries even less dachshund danger - an island off a bigger island.

Now normally I wouldn't show you land-only properties on Wreck, particularly land overseen by a fairly territorial set of planning officers and local councillors who have so far rejected both plans for a tourism business and plans for a low-impact, off-grid, sustainable home.
Perhaps they're hoping for wild horses too?
But I'm showing you this because, well, we don't often get to consider private islands and because if you dream of a living and working space surrounded by water, you'll find your way through this particular island's gatekeepers.

Eilean Loch Oscair is off the coast of the Scottish island of Lismore in the Inner Hebrides' Firth of Lorne. Access is by your own boat (or helicopter) from Lismore's ports and there's sheltered mooring on the island. A ferry links Lismore and Oban.
The island is just under ten acres of designated croft land, uninhabited by livestock or people. There's an island spring supplying water but no services beyond that.
It puts me in mind of the Isle of Jura and the "extremely un-get-able place" where George Orwell hunkered down to write Nineteen Eighty-Four, and of Craig Easton's wonderful photobook.

Eilean Loch Oscair too feels like a place to write, to create, to rewild. Beautiful.
On the market through Knight Frank at offers over £125k. Details on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.

Jumbly gems from Scotland's less popular coast

Some years ago, hubby, hounds and I were on our way to the Isle of Mull for a much-needed holiday. We were big fans of the Scottish island, having married there (here) and returned often. This particular trip however was a bit of bust.
God-awful weather meant ferries stayed safely in ports and we spent three days arguing in the carpark at Oban over whether to wait or go, as our precious holiday days ticked away.
After one particularly blistering row that saw me storm off into the wind and rain and return to the car  dripping-wet and weepy, we set off driving.
And drove and drove, through gales that knocked down power lines as we passed, snow storms that hid roads from us. Passing sea and lochs and mountains, all the way to Ullapool. One night hunkered down in a cottage that had lost its power. Another in a lodge where we temporarily lost a dog to the forest.
We've all had holidays like this; endurance tests that morph over the remembering into fondness.
Anyway, where I'm going with this is that what we took away from that experience was a real appreciation for the overlooked Northwest of Scotland - Oban to Ullapool.
We hadn't planned to holiday there, not as obviously pretty as the islands we normally chose, more working, less tourism. But ruggedly wild, sometimes rundown, frequently beautiful. 
So I'm taking you there this week with two house picks for fellow explorers.
This four-bedroom, two-bathroom detached house on the shores of Loch Etive, is about eight miles from Oban. It needs work (including a new roof) but its location - loch-side but on the coast road, is quite gorgeous. That picture at the top of this post sums it up.

There's an integrated garage leading off the road and off-road parking. The property, all one level, has a large living room and kitchen, another reception room, three good-size bedrooms overlooking the loch and a smaller bedroom facing the road.

To be fair, the rooms are a bit of a jumble of spaces and hallways and having your bedrooms rather than living areas face the views seems daft - you'll want to change that.
On the market through Bell Ingram with a guide price of £260k. Details, video and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here. 
My second pick is much further up that north western coast, at Achiltibuie, around 15miles on from Ullapool, looking over Loch Broom towards the Summer Isles.
A similarly large and jumbly-roomed house, this one is split into two, with a three bedroom main house and attached one-bedroom annex. Before I get onto that complexity, here's some pictures.

So, we have the main house with that extraordinary sunroom off the living room. A large-ish kitchen, a bedroom and shower room downstairs, and two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. The separate annex (the attached cottage in the picture below) has a living room, bedroom, shower room, and narrow and damp galley kitchen downstairs, plus a large loft. 

I like that its owner was crafty - all that varnished wood, all those painted seascapes; someone enjoyed their life here. Not sure I'd keep any of it though...
Clearly a lot of work to do in stripping back, changing configurations and turning this into a living, breathing eco-house, but the under £200k price tag will help.
What it offers in return is a house plus holiday let (or multi-family) in a wildly lovely hidden corner of Scotland.
On the market at offers over £170k through Bell Ingram. Details, video and lots more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
Here's Robin Wallace, to take us on a breezy hike around the area.

 

Homes under £100k, two churches and a prefab

So here's part two of my promised search for cheaper, but still gorgeous, wrecks to show you. And I have three unusual properties for you today, all on the market at under £100k.
Starting with this sweet Welsh chapel (below) in Carmarthenshire at £80k. Now the pictures aren't the best but then what you have here is a building in transition. From this:

To this:

And via all of this:

On the plus side, you have an unlisted chapel without graves (or indeed bats) to worry about and in which big jobs - new rafters and roof, mezzanine, underground pipes for services have been done, and it's sitting on a good size plot.
On the less-plus side, it's being sold without planning permission for residential (or any other) use, and something clearly put off or stopped the owner from finishing the job.
The building consists of a large porch with original tiled floor and the main hall of the chapel with new mezzanine level. Outside is the gated frontage with the garden/drive, and a large garden to the rear, including brick outbuildings (presumably one was the loo?) and backing onto the stream that runs through the village of Llandybie.

On the market at offers over £80k via John Francis. More details and pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.

My next property to show you is also a church - this time in Scotland, and with planning permission already in place to convert it into a three-bedroom home.
B-listed Glassary Church is in a very, very beautiful location.

  
At the edge of the village of Kilmichael, in Argyle. A handful of houses and a primary school in front of you, hills and fields and openness behind.
Lots of original features inside but also the essentials - mains electricity, well looked after. And the already approved plans are actually pretty good and allow for the public bits of the project.

Which is that the graveyard is owned by the council and stays open to the public (a plot at the rear would be yours as separate garden, parking and garage), and the church's war memorial board would be moved to a separate lobby so it can still be accessed.
Also, there's no mains water or drainage as yet and you would need to negotiate and pay for both to be run through the graveyard.
On the market at the (recently reduced) fixed price of £65k through Bell Ingram. Details, plans and more pictures on the agent's website here and on Rightmove here.

My final pick for this week is very, very different. A prefab bungalow in the North Yorkshire village of Norton, a suburb of the pricey and popular Malton.

I have a real affection for prefabs. Growing up in Hull, visiting friends' grannies in their post-war prefabs. Buildings meant to last a decade or two but still being lived in and loved in the 90s, when I worked at the Hull Daily Mail and we covered the pain of families as their prefabs were demolished.

The prefabs themselves incidentally were fast builds but not cheap builds, each one costing around £1100 - more than the cost of a bricks and mortar house. No wonder they lasted so well.
Anyway, back to our North Yorkshire prefab.
All one level. Two bedrooms, large living/dining room, kitchen, slightly damp-looking bathroom, hallway. And sitting in a big garden - albeit with no car access.

It's one of just four remaining prefabs sitting on the prettily-named Plum Street, a cul-de-sac off Norton main street. The four share an access path.
But it's the inside that appeals to me. That was was one colour-confident lady who lived here! And the neat-as-a-pin interior reminds me so much of all those grannies of friends prefabs I loved in Hull. 

The Plum Street prefab is on the market at £97,500 via Mark Stephensons. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.