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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nOf particular interest to me was a cafe where I could have lunch, two cups of coffee, and a scone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cliffside trail beyond was in poor repair, and it was windy and cold, so I decided to go inland, which required a climb up a path to the plain above, which happened to be the Royal Tarlair Golf Course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To my surprise, I saw no golfers. I\u2019d seen them in worse weather on other courses I\u2019d passed in the crossing. If you like golf links, can hit reasonably straight, and don\u2019t mind walking\u2014there are no golf carts\u2014the Moray Coast is the place for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was cold and very windy. These tufts of fleece snagged on barbed wire are standing horizontal in the wind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cattle are a combination of curiosity and skittishness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This stone barn with a central tower is a design you\u2019d be unlikely to find in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I eventually approached the Mill of Nethermill\u2014\u201cthe mill below the mill.\u201d (There must be a story there, too.) It was below the brow of the coastal plain, a cluster of buildings with an arched stone bridge built in the 1700s, now closed to vehicular traffic. I was tempted to take it and save a few steps, but I opted for the official entrance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d texted Bill Pitt of my approach. He was waiting for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We exchanged pleasantries. I refreshed him with my 25-word autobiography, and also my interest in hearing how he got there. We agreed that the morning would be the better time to talk. He directed me to the closed tenting grounds (which he and his wife, Lynn, have decided to reopen) and invited me to find a pitch and return about 8.30 in the morning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a beautiful place to spend the night–a crescent beach bounded by the apostrophe of rocky cliffs, with a clear view to the Moray Firth. In the winter there are often Northern Lights, Bill said, but not now. Because of the perpetually cloudy Scottish skies there weren\u2019t any stars either. I haven\u2019t seen the moon in two weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a good place to have \u201cposh baked beans,\u201d especially if they are accompanied by Vermont smoked meat sticks and a wee dram of malt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill and Lynn Pitt have a long and interesting story, full of small but consequential moments of good fortune and a huge amount of work. I won\u2019t tell you all of it, but I\u2019ll tell you some of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lynn, who is 64, grew up in Charleston, South Carolina; she still has a trace of a Low Country accent. Bill, 66, was born in England, where his father was an Air Force intelligence officer (possibly CIA) involved in surveillance of the Soviet Union. When Bill was a toddler, his father was recalled to the Pentagon; the family settled in Germantown, Maryland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill became a steamship agent, a job that requires solving problems for large vessels whose downtime in port is measured in tens of thousands of dollars per hour. Lynn was a customs broker\u2014a person licensed to clear cargo through customs\u2014chrome ore, blue jeans, automobiles. They were both high-stress, on-call jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They have one child\u2014a daughter\u2014and were active in the Scottish Society of Charleston, which sponsored an American version of the Highland Games. Lynn has Scots heritage and they\u2019d visited the country several times and liked it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2005, they had a family reunion at the village of Crovie a few miles west of where they live now. It\u2019s a virtually inaccessible hamlet of a few dozen houses set with their gable ends facing the sea and the weather, their front doors on a narrow passage between houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We had a rental car, and on the drive back to Macduff I said, ‘One day we’re going to retire over here and I’m going to join that golf club’,” Bill recalled, referring to the links I’d just walked across.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Within 11 months we were here,” Lynn said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We got back to Charleston and all we could think about was Scotland,” Bill said. “We couldn’t get it out of our brains.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n They explored immigrating and discovered it would be much easier if Bill could prove he’d been born in the United Kingdom. To his surprise, he found his late father’s transfer orders from 1962 that listed him as an infant, which was enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They asked their daughter, who was 14, whether she was interested in moving to Scotland. She was all for it, “so we got that box checked,” Bill said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2006 they sold their house in Charleston at the top of the market. With the money they bought a fisherman’s cottage in Macduff. On the first day there Wallace, their dog, ran off. Within a few hours everyone in the neighborhood knew the Americans had lost a dog, and soon he was found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We knew at that point that we’d made the right choice,” Bill said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They lived there and in the neighboring town of Portsoy for four years. Lynn worked at a historic castle nearby; Bill played golf and fixed up a “holiday house” they bought and rented out. Eventually they learned of the Mill at Nethermill and bought it when a sale to a Frenchman fell through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The former occupants hauled water by hand from a well whose pump had failed. The grounds were nettles and brambles. They stored furniture from the holiday house, which they’d sold, in the old mill building. Someone broke in, stole it, and set the building on fire. Bill, Lynn, and their daughter moved onto the cottage on the property to keep an eye on things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They calculated they needed four rental units to have a profitable business. They started the long slog of renovating the mill, hiring local workers and a Lithuanian man whom they met when he was collecting shellfish on the beach. They took no loans, spent all their money, and were down to a credit card when they got an unexpected tax refund check in the mail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lynn took a pottery course, set up a studio with a kiln, and began selling her wares. Bill taught himself various masonry skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, they have four units in the mill building–the rehab cost more than the whole property did–that they rent out by the week in the summer and for a three-day minimum in the off season. A few years ago they won an award from a Scottish tourist bureau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rental business and the pottery shop both make a profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They’re involved in various local projects. Several years ago Bill helped organize a 40th anniversary of the movie ‘Local Hero,” which was filmed in the village of Pennan a mile away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although I’ve never seen it, the story apparently features a classic red phone box, which people now come from around the world to see. Bill and a friend named Eddie paint it every year–many phone boxes are shabby and derelict–and they planned to do the job the next day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s an unexpected and hard-earned and satisfying life Bill and Lynn Pitt have built for themselves in Scotland, a long way from Maryland and South Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n