Nine Mile Burn

Nine Mile Burn sits out where the Pentland Hills do the talking — a scatter of houses and farm buildings along the A702, more sheep than street lighting, and nothing that could be called a high street at all. This is the kind of place people move to precisely because it isn't a town.

There's essentially nobody here — the population figure for this hamlet rounds to a single household's worth of people, and the density confirms it: somewhere around 15 people per square kilometre against a Scotland-wide average pushing 2,000. That single fact tells you almost everything about daily life. Median age sits close to 51, well above the national figure of around 43, which is the quiet signature of a place settled by people well past the school-run years rather than a place attracting them. If you're weighing this up with young children in mind, you're looking at a long drive for a run of ordinary things.

The numbers that do exist paint a place with money and space but no infrastructure to speak of. Nine Mile Burn sits in the top income decile and decile 8 for deprivation, meaning this is among the more comfortable corners of Scotland by most conventional measures, and the median house price of around £281,000 reads as accessible precisely because you're paying for land and quiet, not proximity to anything. Full fibre reaches over 90% of premises here, which is a genuine surprise for somewhere this remote and worth noting if working from home is part of the plan — connectivity won't be the thing that lets you down.