The Blue Cabin: Living by the Tides on Islandmore

'By Christmas we were living to the rhythm of the tides...' In 2002, following the collapse of his business and the loss of a much-loved family home, Mike Faulkner and his artist wife Lynn left Scotland for a cabin on Islandmore, an uninhabited island on Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. Familiar to Mike as the holiday haven to which his father, the last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, had gone with his family during the worst years of the Troubles, moving there to live year-round was a different prospect. With no mains electricity, an erratic water supply and access to the mainland only possible by boat, life on Islandmore is one part catastrophe - storms, broken generators, escaping dinghies - to three parts idyll - long walks on the shore, sunsets from Eagle Hill, year-round picnics, visits from friends. The result is a book imbued with sense of place; an honest, often funny, and moving account of one couple and two dogs living the kind of uncomplicated life that so many of us yearn for.