Cosy Cosies Location

I am really lucky to live and work in one of the prettiest wee coastal villages in Scotland - Cromarty. The town is situated at the very tip of the Black Isle, just north of Inverness, on the mild east coast of the Highlands. With warm summers, and remarkably gentle winters (except for early 2010 of course), the climate suits me much better than the south of France ;), where I lived for 10 years.

Cromarty is the best preserved 18th Century town in the Highlands, and has a long and fascinating history. Two hundred years ago it was a busy place with a thriving economy and a population of over 3,000, but the collapse of the herring fishing industry in the 19th Century led to the town's decline. Many families emigrated, leaving the buildings empty and unchanged for 100 years. The North Sea oil boom in the 1960s and 1970s brought investment and people back to the town once more, and it's now a dynamic and creative wee place to live, with lovely period architecture.

Walk around the older, narrow Fishertown streets, though, and one can still get a real feel for how people must have lived in a bygone age.