Having visited writer Tom Buchan and his wife Alice in this remote spot on the North Ayrshire coast, the Taylors move to a 300-year-old cottage at the base of the Three Sisters cliffs with views over the Firth of Clyde to Wee Cumbrae and the island of Arran. For a peppercorn rent, Alasdair and Annelise keep an eye on landlord’s potato fields to prevent theft. Northbank had no electricity, no mains water, one toilet and one sink. Their closest neighbour was Hunterston nuclear power plant. The cottage was the scene of a notorious unsolved murder in the early twentieth century. In the late nineteenth century, it was the studio of Scottish landscape painter, George Houston.