Fair Isle Sketchbook: Weaving Words & Wool
Fair Isle
Ed, Sarah And Skyelark Live Off Grid In Shetland
Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy. It's worth remembering, here, that "busy is a decision" — one we constantly make, and often to our own detriment.
Travel is an activity not an accomplishment, yet lately, because of the global pandemic, one of the great cruelties and great glories of traveling nowadays is the wild discrepancy of timelines between vision and execution. When we dream up an itinerary, we invariably underestimate the amount of time and effort required to make it a reality. Our Fair Isle return took 6 months!
Rather than a cognitive bug, perhaps this is the supreme coping mechanism of the pandemic mind — if we could see clearly the toil ahead at the outset of any travel plans, we might be too dispirited to begin, too reluctant to gamble between the heroic and the foolish, too paralyzed to walk the long and tenuous tightrope of hope and fear by which any worthwhile destination is reached.
Set in the middle of the North Atlantic, 38km (23mi) from Shetland and 43km (27mi) from Orkney, Fair Isle is as far away from civilization as it's possible to get in the British Isles. Measuring barely five kilometers across and two kilometers wide, the island is home to a tiny permanent population of just 45 people. In fact, it's the most remote inhabited place in the UK.
Experience Fair Isle
When you visit Fair Isle, you step into a world where time stands still. The island's dramatic cliffs, rolling green hills, and clear blue waters create a landscape that feels both primal and peaceful. Here, life moves at a different pace – one dictated by weather, daylight, and the natural rhythms that modern life so often obscures.