Canada
Sable Island
A crescent of sand 300 kilometres offshore where wild horses outnumber visitors and shipwrecks number 350.
Sable Island is a crescent of sand 300 kilometres offshore in the Atlantic, home to over 500 wild horses, 100,000 grey seals, and virtually no people. The Graveyard of the Atlantic has claimed over 350 ships. Visitor permits are rarer than Everest summit passes.
Sable Island National Park Reserve sits alone in the Atlantic, 175 kilometres from the nearest land. The wild horses — descendants of animals confiscated from Acadians during the 1760 Expulsion — have been left unmanaged since a 1960 federal law forbade their removal. Grey seals breed on the beaches in winter in the largest colony in the world. The island is a 42-kilometre sandbar that shifts with storms and currents, its shape changing year by year. Fewer people visit Sable Island each year than summit Everest — access is by charter flight only, with strict visitor limits enforced by Parks Canada.
Solo
Sable Island is for the solo traveller willing to wait months for a permit and pay for a charter flight to one of the most remote places in eastern North America. The reward is standing on a shifting sandbar with wild horses and no other humans.
- Over 500 wild horses roam a 42-kilometre crescent of sand 300 kilometres offshore — no fences, no humans, no roads.
- Known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic — over 350 ships have wrecked here since records began.
- Grey seals breed on the beaches in winter, with over 100,000 gathering annually — the largest colony in the world.
- Visitor permits are extremely limited — fewer people visit Sable Island each year than summit Everest.
You bring everything you eat — no shops, no restaurants, no permanent buildings beyond the research station.
Pack-in provisions eaten on a sandbar while wild horses graze metres away.
The best meal is the one you eat back on the mainland, having survived the Graveyard of the Atlantic.
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