Living Off The Grid - Is it Possible?

While reading How Scotland is leading the way in living without mains power, water or sewerage, I recalled that my father told me that two of his Greene County aunts refused to have electricity run from the road to their farmhouses. That was in the middle to late Forties.

Nick Rosen, a writer who travelled the UK in a camper van powered by vegetable oil to chronicle the lives of people living off the grid, has claimed that Scotland is a pioneer of the lifestyle.

Rosen released How To Live Off-grid: Journeys Outside The System, last week. It is the Domesday Book of a burgeoning subculture, documenting the bewildering mix of visionaries and eccentrics who have made the decision to become self-sufficient.

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What he found were people living in traditional yurts, sailing the canals in boats or living in eco-friendly palaces with every modern comfort but none of the pollution or carbon emissions.

Around 100,000 people in the UK are thought to be living off-grid, with a possible 5000 in Scotland, although accurate figures are extremely difficult to come by.