It's odd. We are both fundamentally city-dwellers/city-lovers, but in recent years we seem to have made a habit of travelling to (mostly) remote island communities. Our trip next month to north Norway and the Lofoten islands will be just the latest in a string (an archipelago?) of visits to places many people have hardly heard of and still less have any inclination to visit.
I think that it started in 1999 when we decided to stop off for a few days in the Åland islands on our way from St Petersburg to Stockholm by train and ferry. Five years later we had no hesitation in repeating the mid-Baltic experience - in the opposite direction that time. And the following year we concocted a North Atlantic island-hopping itinerary through Orkney, Shetland, and on to the Faroe islands. Then last year we included the Danish island of Bornholm on our zig-zagging tour through Holland, Germany, Denmark and southern Sweden. And on that occasion we also managed to visit the tiny off-offshore island of Christiansø. In between there have been numerous trips to "inshore" islands in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, and Dave has even managed to get to one of the Frisian islands.
I don't know quite what it is about these places that appeals. They are mostly small, remote, isolated, and on the fringe. But they have also all been friendly, welcoming and utterly engaging, at least to us as travellers. There is certainly something about island communities that appeals, but it is difficult to put your finger on it. Just getting there usually takes some effort (mostly involving catching a ferry or two), and for us at least that is something of the appeal. All these places have strong maritime associations, and maybe that has something to do with it too. Of course, many of these islands have fantastic natural landscapes and scenery, but also, as islands, rather than mainland "wilderness" areas, they also have well defined cultural and community centres, which means that you are not usually far from a decent place to stay and eat (always important for us).
So, I still can't really say why it is that I like the idea of spending a few days on a remote island 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle with a population only slightly larger that the building we live in, but in two weeks time that is precisely what we will be doing, and I am rather looking forward to it.
I am in an island mood tonight. I've just been reviewing the photos from our 2005 trip to the Faroe Islands. What a great trip that was. I'd only ever met one other person who had visited the Faroes, and he had described them (and the capital, Tórshavn) as a fish-stinking dump. Our exprience was rather different. OK, so we might have been blessed with exceptionally good weather - which was great when we were driving around the islands, but we were also very pleasantly surprised by the friendly and almost cosmopolitan nature of the tiny capital. With only 19,000 inhabitants, Tórshavn must be one of the smallest capitals in the world - rather less than 0.3% of the size of London. Nevertheless, we spent three very enjoyable nights there, eating good food and enjoying good (if rather expensive) beer. We even went to a late night bar and a nightclub (but that is another story!).
