If for some reason you don’t feel other islands in the Outer Hebrides offer sufficient solitude, then Berneray, barely more than a raised belly button in the Sound of Harris, is the place for you.
Two vast shell-sand beaches stitch a twinkling silver membrane along the island’s flanks, illuminating even those (frequent) days when a steely grey sea is mirrored by skittish clouds the colour of liquid metal.
A couple of hills make for an undulating, grassy interior, while a tight-knit, if dispersed, community of just 140 people call the island, two-miles-wide, two-miles-long, home.
In 1987, one high-profile individual in search of solitude and an induction into island life certainly found what he was looking for here. For that was