Scotland
Fair Isle
Britain's most remote inhabited island — knitwear as intricate as the bird migrations overhead.
Around fifty-five people live on Fair Isle, midway between Orkney and Shetland — the most remote inhabited island in Britain. The knitting patterns have been passed down for centuries, and the bird observatory has recorded around 390 species, because three continents' migration routes converge over this single speck of land.
Fair Isle sits in turbulent water between Orkney and Shetland, its isolation making it a natural landfall for migrating birds from across the northern hemisphere — the observatory's tally of roughly 390 species is staggering for an island three miles long, and rarities appear here that turn up nowhere else in Britain. The island's knitting is among the most technically demanding in the world, five colours or more worked into a single row, each household's patterns subtly its own. The mailboat crosses from Shetland a few times a week, weather permitting, small planes hop over when the fog allows, and gales can strand visitors for days — an eventuality the islanders treat with complete equanimity. Remoteness here is practical, not theatrical: it simply is the farthest you can live from anyone else in Britain.
Solo
The ultimate solo island — fifty-five neighbours, hundreds of bird species, centuries of knitting pattern and the genuine possibility of being weathered in. Fair Isle rewards patience and observation.
Simple island meals from what the croft and sea provide.
Home-baked oatcakes and island butter — food as a function of weather and tide.
Tarfaya
Morocco
An airmail museum faces an Atlantic trading fort marooned beyond the harbour wall.
Quabbin Reservoir
United States
Four drowned towns sleep beneath the reservoir; their dead left one hearse at a time.
Bahía Bustamante
Argentina
A seaweed-harvesting hamlet turned wildlife reserve, its beaches resting empty of visitors.
Atlin
Canada
A gold-rush lake town drowses beside jade water beneath far-northern peaks.
Loch Ossian
Scotland
A loch beside Britain's most remote railway station — no road, no village, only the train.
Cape Wrath
Scotland
Britain's north-west corner — a lighthouse beyond a live bombing range, at the end of everything.
Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park
Scotland
Britain's first Dark Sky Park, where the Milky Way spills across the silence like luminous dust.
Glencoe
Scotland
A valley so haunted by massacre the mountains themselves seem to mourn in low cloud.