After four years, near divorce and a toll on his finances, decorator Andy Strangeway became the first person to sleep on all of Scotland’s islands
You might think Britain ran out of travel frontiers long ago, but decorator Andy Strangeway has found one of his own. Last August, after a four-year odyssey that tested his marriage and his bank balance, the 42-year old Yorkshireman became the first person to sleep on all of Scotland’s islands over 40 hectares (about 100 acres).
Andy admits the definition of an island is controversial, but the 162 that make his list represent an undeniable adventure. They ranged from easy ferry-rides such as Barra in the Western Isles (where he started) to uninhabited, storm-lashed lumps of rock in the Outer Hebrides (such as Soay, in the St Kilda group, where he finished), reached by scrambling ashore from a heaving boat.
Where possible he stayed in spare rooms or hotels, but mainly he slept in a one-man tent, accompanied only by a teddy bear called Clyde. His worst night? “Camping on Gairsay in the Orkneys in a force 11 gale was pretty hairy,” he says. “My tent held but I have no idea how: it was like being in a continuous car crash for five hours.”
And his best morning? “Boreray in St Kilda. I woke up in my bivvy bag to a view through two giant rock stacks over the ocean, while sheep grazed and the sun came up behind me. The best hotel room in the world.”
For his next trick Andy has chartered a yacht to Rockall, the guano-spattered outcrop 300km west of St Kilda featured in the shipping forecast. “More people have landed on the moon than have landed on Rockall from the sea,” he says cheerily.
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