Surviving Scottish Slow Living: A Memoir of Mud, Midges, and Finding a Life That Fits

Holly left her office job for the Instagram dream. The Scottish Highlands had other plans. At twenty-seven, Holly was drowning in the gentle panic of modern productivity. Her solution was drastic but aesthetically pleasing: quit the Glasgow agency, buy a battered Peugeot campervan, and drive north to discover the photogenic serenity of slow living. She expected quiet mornings by misty lochs, deep revelations, and a perfectly curated existence.

Instead, she got damp socks.

Surviving Scottish Slow Living is the unglamorous, fiercely honest story of what happens when you try to escape modern life and run headfirst into Highland weather.

Through freezing bothies, broken engines, and long forestry tracks alongside her relentlessly practical partner, Calum, Holly slowly dismantles the myth of the perfect, curated escape. She discovers that real slow living isn't a masterplan or a meditation retreat.

Funny, unsentimental, and deeply tender, this memoir is for anyone who has ever wanted to run away from it all—and a reminder that sometimes, the most radical act of all is simply learning how to stand still in the rain.