I spend perhaps an unhealthy amount of time staring at the Maps app on my phone, zooming into remote roads, tiny islands, or the middle of vast plains peppered with isolated buildings. One place I always come back to – via satellite image, that is – is the Shetland Islands, or more specifically, Out Stack, a small skerry in the North Atlantic Ocean marking the northerly point of the British Isles. There’s just something so satisfying about an endpoint, an extreme boundary, that keeps piquing my curiosity during my late-night virtual explorations.
So when I found myself this summer standing on the cliffs of Shetland’s Hermaness National Nature Reserve, looking directly out at the uninhabited rocky islet that poses as the final full stop of Britain, I finally understood why Romantic poets found our country’s nature so powerfully awe-inspiring. Other walkers we chatted to along the cliffs also shared these feelings; we were all harbouring a triumphant secret that day about what it's like to be the most northerly people in the country.
