If you dread the morning commute then spare a thought for the hairdresser Derek Preston. His day begins at 6.45am, when his father, Tom, picks him up from his flat in Leith and negotiates the early-morning traffic to Edinburgh airport.

Preston then catches the 9.10am Continental Airlines flight to Newark, New Jersey, where, 7½ hours later, he jumps in a cab and settles back for the final leg of his journey to his second home and salon in New York’s East Village.

Door to door the journey takes about 11 hours, but with the time difference, Preston can fit in an afternoon’s work when he arrives. “Actually, I don’t mind the travelling,” he insists. “I take my own pillow on the plane and sleep for the entire journey.”

Preston, 45, is among hundreds of Scots who manage to combine a fulfilling career and social life by commuting to work abroad. Although no separate figures exist for Scotland, the government’s Labour Force survey found there were 8,000 UK residents doing the same as Preston in 2004.

Ten years ago, the hairdresser’s hectic lifestyle would have been considered impossible. However, the explosion in budget airlines coupled with advances in technology has made the prospect of living in Glasgow while working in Geneva not only feasible but rewarding.

It’s an arrangement that Elaine Goldsmith knows only too well. She divides her time between the Highland village of Newtonmore and the French resort of Chamonix, where she works as a mountain guide.

She says: “I tend to go out to Chamonix on a Wednesday and come back on a Sunday night. I just so enjoy being out there. It’s absolutely beautiful in the Alps.”

Goldsmith, 42, overhauled her life three years ago after the sudden death of her cousin, who was the same age as her. “I’d been at university with him. He was fit, he’d done all the Munros and he died after slipping on his front step.

“After that I thought life is too short. I knew I wasn’t enjoying running my own dentistry practice. I needed a change and loved the outdoors.”

Once she had made her decison, Goldsmith sold her business, qualified as an international mountain leader and headed for France, where she takes summer walking parties in the mountains and snowshoe tours in winter. Back in Scotland she continues to work part-time as a dentist in Edinburgh.

“Sometimes I think there are two people living my life. The friends I have in the Alps probably wouldn’t know me in Edinburgh. Dentistry is such high-pressure work that I probably look 20 years older here.

“In France, life is more relaxed. I do some work when I can get it. I speak French and Spanish and I get by in Italian, so I take parties of all fitness levels from all over the world.”

To work in France Goldsmith does not need a visa or permit. She would be liable to pay tax, however, if she worked there for 183 days or more. Regulations in the United States are boot-camp tough by comparison. Preston must have a visa and has qualified for a green card, which allows him to live and work there.

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