Fair Isle: Walking Into a Painting at the Edge of the World
Far Out Yet Still Close
Britain's most remote inhabited island. We flew in this morning. It feels like walking into a painting.
Walking Into a Painting
Britain's most remote inhabited island. We flew in this morning. It feels like we are walking into a painting. Think Norway meets Hawaiian islands and Father Time and Mother Nature have a field day.
No man is an island, as John Donne wrote, but north of the border, you can live on one. Scotland's Shetland is good like that, with 15 inhabited islands to choose from. We are here on Fair Isle, Britain's most remote one. It feels like we are moving through paintings as the ever-changing weather lights the landscape in unique and splendid ways.
Being There
Fair Isle, First Frame
Walking Into a Painting
Fair Isle on arrival: Norway meets Hawaiian islands, with Father Time and Mother Nature having a field day.
Fair Isle Morning
The landscape changes by the minute as weather becomes the island's lighting designer.
Far Out Yet Still Close
North of the border, no man is an island, but you can live on one.
Living Off the Grid
Fair Isle is not connected to the National Grid: wind, solar, batteries, torches, and dark skies.
On the Edges
Zero light pollution, no street lights, and the edge-of-world feeling Fair Isle does best.
Population 55, Now 57
Thanks to the popularity of the TV series Shetland, we had it on our radar as a place to visit this year. Of all the 115 islands in the archipelago, just a few - 15 - are inhabited. We are at Britain's most remote island, Fair Isle.
First, Sarah and I flew into Lerwick, Shetland's mainland, via Edinburgh, Scotland. Next, we got a PCR test for Covid: think positive, test negative. Then we followed on to Fair Isle, population 55, now 57. What a place to self-isolate during the global pandemic.
At first I thought Fair Isle was the Faroe Islands. That is Danish and in the sub-Arctic Circle. The Shetland Isles are located in the North Atlantic, closer to Norway than to Aberdeen. Go Vikings.
Two Ways to Reach the Island
Fair Isle: are we there yet? Being there.
There are two choices for transport to reach the island - take it or leave it. The first involves a 20-minute straight run aboard a puddle jumper, a seven-seat fixed-wing plane from the mainland of Shetland. It is a twin-engine prop plane, a heart-in-the-mouth flight, up close and personal with the pilot and his control dashboard.
Thankfully, that link was not cancelled due to fog, wind, or just plain bad weather. Otherwise it would have been the ferry, a converted fishing vessel and the only other alternative: a notoriously rough two-hour crossing aboard the island's ferry, the Good Shepherd IV. Sometimes the North Sea is even too rough for the ferry.
Living Off the Grid and Living on the Edges
Fair Isle is not connected to the National Grid. Energy is generated on the island by the Fair Isle Electricity Company using wind turbines and solar, then stored in a battery backup system. We brought torches - flashlights - because there is zero light pollution and no street lights.