I live in Britain’s loneliest house… nearest neighbours are 25mins drive & it’s an hour to Aldi but I love living here
WHEN Sue Edwards needs to pop out for a pint of milk, she faces a mammoth hike or a treacherous drive to the nearest shop.
The 49-year-old lives in Britain’s most remote home, with dog Jura for company and hardly any electricity, let alone loads of tech.
She holds the keys to Skiddaw House, 1,550ft up in the heart of the Lake District.
It is 3.5 miles from the nearest road and, if she must drive, it has to be by 4×4 — and only when the weather hasn’t made the land impassable.
The hostel is completely off-grid, using solar panels to generate its electricity and a nearby spring for its drinking water.
Sue, who has never heard of Love Island, has been living and running a hostel there for the past two and a half years, with just 10mb of wifi data a month.
“I’m watching the TV series 24 on DVD at the moment,” she tells me over a campfire outside.
“I don’t have enough data for Netflix.
“But it suits me.
‘Full-on expedition’
“I love being away from technology.
“I do have WhatsApp and the ability to digitally communicate, although people will send me a little gif or video, and I’ll be like, ‘Please stop! It’s pulling at my internet’.”
Sue opens Skiddaw House as a hostel every weekend in the summer, and uses her day off each Tuesday to stock up on the week’s groceries.
While most cars aren’t able to get anywhere near the house, Sue has had her vehicle installed with “grabbers”, special tyres that can cope with mud, snow and sand.
But with a long, steep and rocky 50-minute drive down the hill to her nearest Aldi in Cockermouth, it is a full-on expedition to go out for essentials.
She says: “In the beginning, there would be times when I got home and realised I’d forgotten bin bags or something, but I’ve got the shop down to a fine art now.”
Despite her low mileage, Sue’s car has still had three punctures in almost three years — and getting help is difficult as her nearest neighbours at Dash Farm are a 25-minute drive away and mobile phone reception is patchy.
She says: “Honestly, it’s a real pain in the a**e, especially if it happens on the other side of the gates.
“There’s no signal there, so then I have to run back up here to get a signal, or run to the Dash.
“Then it’s the mechanic who looks after the generators, Dave, who’ll come and look at it.
“I’ve tried to do it myself and I can’t even get the wheel nuts off.”
Sue grew up in Lincolnshire, as the daughter of a farmer, but never wanted to follow in his footsteps.
“Ironically, I remember at 14 or 15, deciding it was too lonely a life,” she says with a laugh.
After three years as a PE teacher in Slough, Sue made her way into working in hostels, and was based at one in Portishead, Somerset, when Skiddaw House fell into her lap.
The previous wardens had a baby, and their lease was coming to an end, so they advertised on social media, and Sue responded.
She says: “I was in a place where I thought, ‘I’d love to come up the hill’.”
Her only concern was whether she would be able to manage everything on her own.
It’s taken quite a while to realise that I quite enjoy the location.
Sue Edwards
She explains: “I wasn’t worried about living on my own.
“It’s just you sometimes need to go and get a contractor.
“Can one person do it all?
“But the former couple ran it for six years together, and they both said they’d do it again on their own.
“So that was enough for me.
“I love it.
“I mean, I just love it.
“It’s a privilege.”
Skiddaw House was built around 1829 as a keeper’s lodge and grouse shooting base for George Wyndham, the third Earl of Egremont.
The building was originally divided into two dwellings — one for the gamekeeper and his family and the other for a shepherd’s family.
This joint use continued until 1957 when the Leconfield Estate was broken up and Skiddaw House, with its associated grazing lands, was sold to a local farmer.
The two resident families left, but a shepherd, Pearson Dalton, stayed on to work for the farmer.
For 12 years he lived in the house, with only his goats, cat and five dogs as company.
And, while Sue says she could not do what Pearson did, “as appealing as it sounds to live like a hermit,” she insists she never gets lonely.
She says: “It’s actually really nice.
“In the middle of the day, I usually get time off, and I can go for a jog, or if it’s a wet day, read, and then I’m back on at 5pm to open up and welcome guests.
‘Midlife crisis’
“It’s taken quite a while to realise that I quite enjoy the location.
“I love the purpose of it, of living up here and having a remote place to live, and there are always guests.”
When the winter draws in, Sue closes the hostel, leaving the property available for private hire.
With Jura in tow, Sue heads over to York, where she has her own place.
She spends her time off seeing friends for coffee, but really wants to just catch up on the Netflix shows she has not been able to see.
But on-demand TV isn’t enough to get Sue down from the hill just yet.
She adds: “I’ve got two and a half years left on my lease, and maybe at the end of that, I’ll be thinking, ‘You know what? I just want to go somewhere and get a cheesecake down the road, or have more contact.
“Maybe in ten years’ time, with a midlife crisis, I’ll let you know.
“For now, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.”