Making Connections

Figuring out buses, meeting new people, and getting settled into a new life.

Establishing a Routine

Now that we’ve been here for four weeks, we feel like we’ve moved beyond holidays and into establishing a life. It’s pretty mundane stuff like a grocery shopping routine, learning the garbage pickup schedule, registering with the doctor, opening bank accounts, going to the gym, and figuring out how to do all of this without a car. 

Grocery shopping

Dunoon has two major grocery stores - Morrisons and the Co-op. Both do delivery so we’ve gotten in the habit of doing our weekly grocery shop via the Morrisons app and having it delivered to our house. So far, this has worked really well for us, except that the Morrisons website won’t accept my UK debit card as a payment method so I’m paying for groceries on my US credit card - not ideal. 

We supplement our grocery shop with a weekly delivery from Fynest Fish for fresh fish, fruit and vegetables. They deliver to our area on Thursdays and we’re at the beginning of their route so it’s with us before 9am on Thursday. We really enjoy and prefer to buy local and are grateful for Fynest Fish and their products!

So far, it looks like we’ll have spent £750 on groceries for the month, which includes buying those annoying things to set up a house like cleaning supplies and spices. In South Carolina, we were spending around $1,200-1,400 a month in groceries so yeah, it’s nice not to be spending so much money on food!

Garbage and Recycling

We are supplied with two wheelie bins for our rubbish - one recycling and one non-recycling. Recycling and non-recycling are picked up on different weeks, and they run on roughly a 2 week schedule (a pickup every week for either recycling or non-recycling). Garbage pickup is covered in our council tax, and our council tax is covered in our rent (which is unusual - most tenants pay council tax directly to the council.). They are able to recycle more items here than what we could with Davis Disposal in Lugoff, SC, and the packaging of food and deliveries, where a majority of waste comes from, is more thoughtful and able to be recycled. I’m finding that our recycling bin fills up faster than our non-recycling bin, and the full-sized wheelie bin is needed!

Registering with a GP (the doctor)

Healthcare is organised under the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK and so the process of accessing healthcare is a bit different from in the US. Firstly, it’s worth saying that Lance and I did not regularly access healthcare in the US, nor did we feel like we could. Since we were both self-employed for the last 10+ years, we did not have employer-sponsored health insurance. Rates for us to get health insurance on the Marketplace ranged from $750-$1000 a month with deductibles of over $12,000 a year. We were in that donut hole of earning too much to receive subsidies but certainly not earning enough to be able to afford paying $1000 a month (more than our mortgage!) and coming out of pocket $12,000 before health insurance kicked in. This meant we did not go to a doctor unless it was an emergency, and in that case we would go to urgent care and stress about the bill.

British citizens pay nothing for their doctor’s appointments and very little for prescriptions through the NHS. As part of Lance’s UK Spousal Visa application, we paid an IHS (immigrant health surcharge) of ~$4000 for him to get access to the NHS. That $4000 is for 2.9 years so although a big number, it’s less than what we would pay for 6 months of health insurance in the US. The IHS is relatively new as well - this didn’t exist 20 years ago when I moved to Scotland on a student visa. I believe it was put in place by the Tory government as there were fears, founded or not, that immigrants were coming over to the UK and overwhelming the NHS.

When moving to a new place in the UK, you register with a GP (general practitioner) surgery for that area. Some catchments will have more than one GP and more rural areas will have one option. We fall into the catchment area of a GP surgery just 2.5 miles down the road so we rode our bikes there last week to fill in forms and show our IDs. I thought they would scrutinise Lance’s residency documents more but they just looked at his passport and his BRP (biometric residence permit) and were fine with that. They scheduled an intake appointment for us both for this week. During the week, they located my NHS number and had all of my previous UK records in their system. They applied for an NHS number for Lance and had that in time for our appointment this week, in which they took our height, weight, blood pressure, and asked questions about our health and family history. Now we’re able to make appointments with the surgery, access the pharmacy, or go to the emergency room (called the A&E here) without coming out of pocket. You’d be amazed what sort of relief that brings.

Opening bank accounts

I’m lucky that I already have a bank account here with RBS opened way back in 2000, but it has been a struggle opening one for Lance. This is an ongoing complaint from people moving to the UK for the first time. The difficulty comes either because a bank will require a credit check, and if you’re new to the country, you won’t have a credit score, or because you have to provide proof of address with a letter showing your name and UK address from very specific sources like a council tax bill or a utility bill. The problem is that our utilities and council tax are paid by our landlords so we’ll never receive that in our names. RBS will accept a letter from HMRC (the equivalent of the IRS) so we applied for Lance’s National Insurance Number (like a SSN) the first week we moved here, and he finally received that letter this week, giving him the final document needed to open an account with RBS. We did this online because they won’t do it in person (all the banks are pushing to do everything online now, much like the US). I know Lance is happy that he’ll have a UK account and his card in hand soon so he can move money over here and stop paying for things on his US card. 

Next up is opening a joint account and savings account so we can continue establishing a life here.

Gym and Library

We’ve signed up for a family membership at Live Argyll in Dunoon, which includes the gym, swimming pool, and library. For £43 a month, I think that’s pretty good value for money. Now that the 2 week school holidays are over, they’ve opened up more time slots for lap swim so I’ve been able to swim between 1 and 3:30pm twice this week. On Monday, I rode my bike to and from the pool, a 16 mile round trip that’s not particularly difficult, but can be taxing on the body when you throw in a 1 hour swim in, too. On Wednesday, I caught the bus in and out to see how that would go. All going well so far!

Transportation

We are without a car, and plan to be for a while to keep costs down. We are renting a beautiful house 8 miles outside of Dunoon so unfortunately, we can’t just pop down to the shops or the pub. We’ve been using our bikes to get into town, but that can be limiting if the weather is particularly bad, or we have to carry stuff, or if our bodies just don’t feel like it. Luckily, a lot of places deliver here so we’ve been able to do things like order firewood, dog food, and items from the hardware store and have them delivered within a few days for a small charge.

Luckily, we live half a mile away from Benmore Botanic Garden, an attraction for locals and tourists alike. This means we have 4 bus routes with a stop close by. It’s not like a city bus with buses every 10 minutes at all hours, but we get a bus every hour starting at 8:21am and finishing around 6pm. It takes a bit of planning, but we haven’t missed a bus yet, and I personally enjoy being able to travel without driving, for a multitude of reasons.

Family bus stop pic

Making Connections and Building a Business

Besides settling into routines for essentials, we’re working on making connections to fulfil the social aspects of our lives, and keep making steps towards building a business.

Business Connections

After researching online for help starting a business in the UK, I found resources provided by Business Gateway Scotland, kind of like the SBA in the US. Lance and I attended an online seminar about “How to start a business: the basics”. While much of the content around marketing, market research, P/L and cash flow projections was stuff I already knew, the practicality section near the end about business entities, how to form them, and taxation was exactly what we needed to help us understand the UK terms and what to expect in regards to taxation and insurance. And the marketing and market research section was a good reminder for me and got the creative juices flowing for some more research to do on my part. Stay tuned because I’ll need your help with this!

Cycling Connections

Last week, we went and met with Sara at the Dunoon Bothy Project, a non-profit funded by Cycling UK to help folk overcome barriers to active travel. She was great with answering our questions about getting around without a car, and how to connect with other cyclists in the area. The Dunoon Bothy also does bike loans to help encourage locals to ditch the car and travel by bike. We plan to get an e-bike loan soon so we can see what we like/dislike about e-bikes for commuting before we buy one.

I also got to ask Sara about cycle guiding training that I had seen mentioned on the Facebook page. British Cycling offers Ride Leadership training for confident cyclists who are enthusiastic about taking groups out on the road or mountain bike. Thinking about the insurance that will be involved in running a bike tourism business, getting first aid training and ride leadership training will help with our bona fides and hopefully reduce insurance costs. This will take some planning to locate courses and testing so we’ll see how this develops over the next six months.

Sara is also the new chair of the Cowal Mountain Bike Club, which we found on Facebook but were able to chat with Sara about also. We connected with committee member Tony and were able to join their Sunday Club Ride out of Benmore, only a 2 minute ride down the hill from our house. We ended up on a true adventure ride for over 4 hours. Unfortunately, I have no photos to share, but we started on paved roads that led into forestry tracks. A couple of hours in, we left the forestry tracks and traversed old tracks that hadn’t been travelled in a few years at least, based on all of the foliage (some super jaggy like cactus!) and deterioration of the path surface. There were sections of hike-a-bike, water crossings, technical bits that Lance managed but I had to walk, and beautiful views. It was really nice to have people leading us who had an idea of the way to go, and stretched our comfort zones a bit. 

Gratitude

Thank you to Sara, Tony, and John from the Cowal Mountain Bike Club for chatting and riding with us this week. We look forward to more club rides!

Le gaol (with love in Scottish Gaelic),

~Fiona & Lance