We were isolated already, say communities the pandemic missed

If it wasn’t for the news, pandemic that devastated Europe would have passed by many people on western edge of continent.

Portree on the Isle of Skye in the Inner Hebrides, Scotland

Years of social distancing have made Lucy Conway well prepared for the pandemic.

Her home on Eigg, in the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of mainland Scotland, remains untouched by coronavirus because its remoteness and the sea are natural barriers against the infection that has killed more than 28,000 people in Britain.

“We are very used to isolation so there’s been very little change for us,” Mrs Conway, 58, explained. “Although some things are different now, our day-to-day approach to living is more or less the same.”

Her sense of relative security is shared by much of the rural population of Britain, which encompasses about 6.4 million people, 165,000 of whom live further than 2km from a significant road, pharmacy or supermarket.

Winter weather can mean that the island’s 110 residents are cut off from the mainland for weeks at a stretch. Only accessible by ferry or helicopter, and off the national grid, the community has learnt to manage on its own. Eigg generates its electricity from renewable sources and, at less that 10km long and 5km wide, it has “resilience built in”. Panic buying has not troubled its one shop, which has managed to keep its shelves well-stocked and its customers satisfied.

For Mrs Conway, the routine has hardly changed. Strolls on the beach with her husband, Eddie, and their Lakeland terrier Fiji have continued and her friends and neighbours still chip in to help grow potatoes, leeks and herbs in their gardens. She enjoys chats with about 15 islanders she passes daily on Eigg’s one road, or meets in the store. All at a safe distance, of course.

“Tourism has been badly hit, but in terms of everything else it’s kind of normal. People are just getting on with life as usual,” Mrs Conway, who works in the primary school, said.

There are no intensive-care beds with ventilators on the island and it is a long, long way to the nearest hospital, with any medical evacuation dependent on the weather. The school has shut for the time being and the ferry service, for essential re-supplies only, has been reduced to three times a week. But there have also been no recorded cases of coronavirus infection.

“During the lockdown we’ve not been isolated from anything that we’re not already used to being isolated from. All our support mechanisms are still there,” added Mrs Conway, who is also a trustee of the Eigg Heritage Trust.

The remote islands of Eigg and Rum in the Inner Hebrides.

“What preys on people’s minds most is what if the virus did come here. Because if somebody gets a cold on Eigg, then everybody gets a cold on Eigg. But now we’re at the point where as far as we know the virus isn’t here. So we’re not being relaxed or anything — still social distancing and so on — but it does mean that we feel that we have got to this kind of position where we’ve shielded ourselves.”

Ben Thompson, a councillor who is one of the co-ordinators of the island’s response to the pandemic, said that every year the residents might be two or three weeks “without any food supply” when the weather turns and ferries are cancelled.

“They’re living a level of resilience that you or I aren’t in our daily lives,” he said. “But they do it all the time. In some sense, they’re better prepared for this crisis than most places in the UK.”

A month ago while Mr Thompson was scrambling to organise community groups as the crisis unfolded, he said it was Eigg and the neighbouring island of Rum that he was least worried about. “They are totally on the ball. You’d think it was a world-class NGO that had gone into a disaster zone based on the resilience planning,” he said.

Mrs Conway said the relentless weather in January and February prevented the island’s farmers, elderly and families from living their normal lives.

“That was actually a lot more stressful for everyone. Now, even though our choices have been limited, we’re living relatively stress free — ignoring the fact that our businesses are all screwed of course!”

Eigg’s lockdown story is similar to that of the dozens of populated islands of the Western Isles, but it resonates with the lonelier parts of the mainland, too. Some 19 per cent of the UK is not served by primary, secondary or tertiary roads and Britain ranks 14th in Europe in terms of rural accessibility, behind France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, and the Netherlands.

Rutland, the smallest county in England, is recording approximately 54 cases of coronavirus per 100,000 people — the lowest figure for any English local authority. The number is so low that the council is concerned that residents of the farming community will begin flouting social distancing instructions. In public announcements it has stressed the “critical” need for people to stay at home and not become “complacent just because the number of recorded cases of COVID-19 in Rutland remains comparatively low”.

Agricultural workers in the village of Lyddington, in the south of the county, have barely noticed a change to their daily lives. Most have been out enjoying the acres of green surrounding their homes and have managed to steer well clear of infection.

Andrew Brown, 56, an arable farmer whose family have been in Rutland for 300 years, lives with his wife and three grown-up children. Their nearest shop is 8km away.

“We live in a lodge which is a mile (1.6km) from the next house,” he said. “We’re so lucky here, because I can walk about on 620 acres (250ha) carefree. My life hasn’t really changed at all because I’ve still got my day-to-day job to do out in the beautiful British countryside.

“In the springtime it’s the best time to be out in it and as a key worker — as a farmer — I can still go about my business. Whereas a lot of people are stuck in their houses in more urban areas. It must be awful for people stuck in a flat in the centre of Birmingham or London or any city with three kids. With nowhere to go.

“Rutland is the most rural county. A massive farming area. So obviously a lot of farmers are carrying on as normal. I’m a sole trader so nobody comes to see me anyway!”

The community had been using an app called Next Door, which provides a private social network for neighbourhoods, long before the crisis emerged. Now it has proved invaluable in co-ordinating the local response. “Being a small community-based place, as soon as this thing happened, the villages already had community groups set up even before the government started doing anything really,” Mr Brown said.

Despite being potentially sheltered from the dangers of city contagion, the looming threat of COVID-19 is prompting sleepless nights for many rural dwellers. It is feared that just one case of coronavirus could cause catastrophe if it infiltrates their isolated bubbles.

On the Isle of Wight, islanders have expressed concerns that second-home owners will move from contaminated city suburbs and bring infection with them. With an estimated 87 per 100,000 people infected with the virus, the island is one of the 10 least exposed places in the UK.

However, residents of Chale, a village with a population of 320 on the south of the island, have said they are worried that “the virus is on our doorstep” and are making their own personal protective equipment.

They have crafted more than 150 handmade facemasks.

David Stewart, a county councillor, said the few people that populate the area mean social distancing isn’t a major problem.

“At a local level people have adapted fairly quickly to the lockdown restrictions in a way that those in a central London high-rise block can’t,” he said.

“The big fear is second homes. We have a lot of second homes, and even some in Chale. People worry that somebody will get over across the ferries and suddenly we’ll all be infected.”

Edwin Cole, 81, a retired truck driver living on his own in the village, has been growing most of his food for years. Ill health has made that more difficult, but apart from his neighbours now delivering food, he says life hasn’t changed at all for the eight households at his end of Chale.

“I feel safer from the virus being out here. It’s bound to be better protected. At the moment the only people I see are the occasional dog walkers going up to the field. But that’s no different to normal.”

Elsewhere in England a far more relaxed approach to the pandemic can be observed. With no tightly-packed tubes or cramped residential blocks, Southwick in west Wiltshire has been identified as another rural safe haven. Farmland surrounds it and the biggest blow so far was when one of its pubs, The Farmhouse, closed its doors.

George Harrison, a writer aged 23, whose house backs on to a field, said of Southwick, which has a population of about 2000: “If it wasn’t for the news, I think it’s possible that the whole coronavirus story could have passed us by completely. Wiltshire is so cut-off from the rest of the UK that it can feel like a different world at the best of times — and that’s even truer now,” he said.

The Times