Yesterday Angus wrote,
Outside the golf club we meet our Edinburgh solicitor. I say he’s our solicitor but the firm of lawyers we’ve used forever has been taken over and amalgamated into a large international ‘practice’ as their Scottish outpost. As a consequence he’s become rather too grand for us. The takeover supposedly enables us to access a ‘wider variety of services’ but our needs tend to be rather prosaic and corporate restructurings and access to an international network of offices across Asia and the Gulf aren’t high on our list of priorities.
He tells us that the number of Americans wanting to come and live in Scotland has doubled in the last year. Obtaining residency permits is keeping him very busy and, from the looks of his large Mercedes SUV, well remunerated. I think he said nearly 10,000 American families had already applied for Scottish residency this year but it could have been 20,000. We will doubtless bump into him again and when we do I’ll ask what the numbers are. He also says that cold weather tourism is indeed a thing. His Edinburgh client base of hotels have never been busier. Tourists that used to go to London for a week are now heading north for some of the time. Volumes are up 15% over last year which is, seemingly, unheard of. 2027 is shaping up to see similar growth with early bookings from Spain and Italy surging.
I hope Scotland doesn’t start getting so crowded that it ruins the things we loved about it.
August 18, 2026
Wow! It is a lovely country.
I’m so glad you went to St. Andrews your junior year.
That’s a lot of families moving there.
Yes.
…US streets are no loger paved with gold.
That’s for sure.
If I could I would be one of those people applying. I would like Scotland.
We really liked it.
Trump is driving everyone out. Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland to live. People used to say that they would leave the country if a certain person was ever elected, but most never actually acted on it. Now they are!
We’ll have to see. Everything in the world is changing.
One of the bloggers I read leads a pilgrimage from the US every year. This year they went to Scotland. It was one of her smaller groups, though.
We really liked Scotland when we visited.
Scotland is a beautiful country, just from the photos and videos I have seen. I am just relieved that I live in Canada, and not the U.S. I am pretty happy here in Montreal.
I haven’t been to Canada much, but I have a warm spot in my heart for it. I think a lot of Americans do.
Let’s hear it for cold weather tourism!
I have a feeling it’s just getting started.
I would love to visit Scotland and Ireland, I am Scot/Irish, Hale/Urquhart and Terrell/McCall… but not to live. I love Florida Sunshine. I wanted to live in Florida for half my life and I have now spent 1/2 plus 2 years in Florida.
The best would go to cooler country for a visit.. the problem here is the people who live in Cold Climates come here to get warm and added to all the ones moving in, yowsa. But we don’t have much time left on this earth, so Florida is it for us… I would love to visit Canada and even Alaska. I have only been in 40 states. Lived in three. Kentucky, Georgia, Florida.. I also would love to visit your state and your mountain, and Arizona. and do a train ride throught the wild wild west.