From CA to Scotland

Eco-holidays are all the rage, but how eco are they when the offer mains power and water, and all the other luxuries of modern life? Here are four genuinely off-grid vacation opportunities, though whether they are really weekend getaways depends on where you are travelling from.

Martin Foster, a farmer, has an off-grid holiday cottage by the banks of Loch Sween in Argyll. The cooker runs off bottled gas while the lights are powered by a small �300 second-hand wind turbine -charging two tractor batteries. “You get about three hours’ television on a windless night, and if it’s windy you can watch all night,” says Foster.
To rent Martin Foster’s cottage visit www.scotland2000.com/ashfield or write to Ashfield Farm, Ashfield Estate, Achnamara, Lochgilphead, Argyll PA31 8PT

Lost Trail Lodge, California

Lost Trail Lodge in California�s Sierra Nevada near Donner Memorial State Park, is a series of four private cabins connected to a shared kitchen with private Jacuzzis, and wooden lofts where kids can sleep. There are large windows looking out on snow-covered trees, and stone hearths that always glow with a wood fire. There is no Internet, and you bring your own food on the mile long hike to get there.
Lost Trail Lodge, Tahoe West Company, 8600 Coldstream Trail, Truckee, Calif, (530) 320-9268; www.losttraillodge.com . Rates are $69 a person a night. Two-night minimum. The Web site has listings for places to rent equipment.

Tulum Beach, Yucatan

As with most lower-priced eco-resorts and on Tulum Beach, Suenos Tulum has party tents, kitchen appliances and water heaters run on butane gas; solar panels generate the lights and electricity in the office and kitchen.

The laid back feel combined with the pristine white-sand beaches of the Yucatan Peninsula, is what has lured yoga and wellness practitioners to the area in recent years.

It feels more tribal than touristy. The 12 rooms are in five stucco buildings, with round port-hole windows and balconies shaped like the prow of a boat. Hand-painted murals, wall reliefs and mosaic inlays in traditional Maya motifs adorn the buildings. The incessant roar of the wind and rhythmic thunder of the ocean drown out any sound of civilization, thus intensifying the seclusion. Booking and payment is handled online before arrival, so you�re greeted with a margarita instead of a registration card, and then led through the palm trees to your hideaway.

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A couple miles north of the property on the road from Tulum to Boca Paila is Punta Piedra, an enclave of small resorts, restaurants and shacks selling natural and organic food. Further north are the Maya ruins. A denser collection of restaurants and shops can be found in the town of Tulum, about five miles inland.

The solar power doesn�t kick in until dusk and even then the rooms are dim. Backup Power lanterns are available in the office. You can buy a flashlight in th local town. The five master suites and seven junior suites all face the ocean. The master suites, on the top floor of each building, have king-size beds with built-in shelves and private terraces. Junior suites have two double beds and either a private patio or terrace.
The showers are tiled and open to the room. The water pressure and temperature are ideal. The poor lighting could make primping for dinner problematic, but the ��wash and go’� attitude at the beach seemed to negate the inconvenience.

There are no telephones, TV�s, CD players or other electronic luxuries. You can access a high-speed Internet connection or charge your cell phone in the office. More to the point, there are a half-dozen boogie boards available. The open-air dining room atop the second floor of the kitchen building offers prime ocean views. The food is fresh and simple.

The service at Suenos is like being at a friend�s beach house. You can take breakfast or dinner on your terrace, the beach or poolside. There is no menu; instead, the menu offers one tasty meal based on whatever ingredients are natural and organic food ,from nachos with cactus on the beach to breakfast in bed. Breakfast typically consisted of a heaping plate of pineapple, mangoes, bananas and grapes drizzled with granola and yogurt. Dinners feature freshly caught local fish or shrimp; margaritas and cerveza are available day or night.

PRICE & LOCATION � Rates vary by season: $160 to $285 for master suites and $120 to $250 for junior suites. There is an additional 12 percent tax. Breakfast is included.

Suenos Tulum is at Kilometer 10 on the road from Tulum to Boca Paila. Information: (52-984) 876-2152 or by e-mail to calles2000e@hotmail.com. Please mention you read it on Off-Grid.

Anything goes at No Name Keys
Even in a chain of islands whose residents have been known for their odd manners and general aversion to conformity, No Name Key has always stood out. Or rather it has tried not stand out. The residents of the island prefer anonymity to celebrity, and want to stay that way. But huge interest in properties on the island and its bigger neighbour, Big Pine Key, is giving them a headache.
No Name Key has lovely waterfront homes but no electricity. Residents have fought for years to keep their refuge off the grid. Now the rocketing price of properties on the neighbouring island has led developers and City types to No Name, and the newbies want to change it, reports the Miami Herald.
�The locals who have been here for 30 years are moving out because they can no longer afford to pay the property taxes,’� said one resident.
In 1968 there were about 500 people on Big Pine and No Name Keys � the two primary Keys where the majority of the tiny indigenous deer population is found. Today there�s about 5,000.

Eco-hideaway in France

Bob & Diane Kirkwood live in France, have done so for about six years, and over the last two have become accidentally involved in the world of off-grid living and holiday lets.
About three years ago they bought a small parcel of woodland, two and half hectares, just down the lane from their house. Its a lovely spot, a heavily wooded valley with a small, source-fed lake. Set back from the edge of the lake is our holiday rental cabin. It is small, only 5 meters by 4 meters, but it contains all you need to live. Bob Kirkwood takes up the story: At the beginning, the cabin, such as it was, was a singularly uninspiring building. It had been built some years ago by the previous owner and was essentially a reinforced concrete box with a single, steel door to the front. I considered knocking it down at one point, but decided against it when taking into account all the work involved, not to mention getting rid of the rubble. We decided it would be easier to alter the �box� than to remove it, so I set to, adding a second floor and knocking openings through for the windows & doors. A roof was added, the main timbers being chestnut poles cut directly from the woodland, the tiles were salvaged from a nearby barn conversion. We�ve spent very little money on the building, our main cost saving comes from having a mobile sawmill. I bought the mill a few years ago when I was converting a barn on our land. I already have a fully equipped joinery shop, so to be able to cut my own timber seemed a good idea. I�ve no need to cut healthy trees, there�s always stuff being blown down or damaged to keep me going.
I converted chestnut logs into waney edge boarding to clad the outside of the cabin. The doors, windows and stairs I made from oak, along with the kitchen units and some of the furniture. We tacked a small wet-showerroom on the side, added an oak deck and that is essentially it. We left the boarding bare as we wanted it to go silver and blend in with its surroundings.
The flushing wc goes into a 3000 litre tank that has to be emptied when full, my intention is to install some kind of natural filtering system to deal with this. Our water is drawn from the lake using a wind-operated, belt-driven, pump and stored in a 1000 litre tank, fitted with filters, behind the cabin. The pump works well, has few moving parts and pushes the water around 8 metres up and around 50 metres along. I made the windmill from oak and various parts salvaged from an old woodworking planer. The pump itself is just off-the- shelf plastic plumbing parts and an o-ring.
The hot water for the shower is heated by the woodstove, a 10mm copper pipe coiled around the flue pipe acts as a heat exchanger and works really efficiently, heating around 25 litres in an hour and storing it in a small, lagged tank. We managed to find a chain-pull showerhead and with this fitted, we have the perfect delivery system. The showers it produces are hot, economic and unexpectedly pleasurable!
For lighting we use mainly candles, they�re always reliable. We have a rise & fall candelabra on a counterweight for the main lights, with various other fittings mounted on the walls. We�ve used fittings that are safe to be left unattended and use mirrors to reflect as much of the light as possible. There is a collection of wind-up things kept at the cabin; torches, radio, fully working gramophone, mobile phone charger. We also have a wind-up reading lamp on the wall, over the bed.
The cabin is never finished, we are always doing some improvement or the other, me doing the woody stuff and Di taking care of decorating, furnishing, running the website and everything else! It has a cosy, cluttered feel. Anything that goes in must have a useful purpose, there�s no room for ornaments.
We decided last winter to see if we could rent out the cabin, not so much for the income, more to see if there were anymore people out there who would appreciate it. We thought of a name, covertcabin.com, built a very simple website and naively sat back, expecting the enquiries to roll in! Of course, that didn�t happen, so we started to think about how to advertise it. We would email two or three worthy organisations a week, people we thought might find it interesting. We got lucky almost immediately when The Guardian newspaper responded and ended up doing a small thing about us in their travel section. Our hits went from about 50 a week, to over 1500 a day. Its settled now to around 500 a week, which we�re very pleased with. I did at one time email MI5 suggesting covertcabin as being the perfect holiday retreat for spies. As yet, we�ve had no response, or maybe we have and we don�t realise it!
I�ve already begun work on another cabin, of a different style, more of a pioneer/frontiersmans cabin. That should be done by next summer. Im already thinking of other more ambitious cabins and would like to build a burrow type dwelling, hobbit-like, using the local granite and of course, plenty of oak!
We�ve had a good response, so far, from the people who�ve been. Its good when that happens, we must be on the right lines. If you fancy a look, go to www.covertcabin.com, all the info and prices are on there and Di is always on hand to deal with any enquiries.

Tags: off-the-grid, california, off-grid-vacations, scotland, Mexico, weekend-vacations, off-grid-homes, Yucatan