Sublime Britain

It's a well-known fact that Britain is located on a heavily indented territory and it takes no more than around 150 kilometers to reach seawater from any place inland. Britain's northern fringes are virtually sprinkled with archipelagos, lending the Scottish landscape the aura of rough, wild beauty. The Orkney Islands and Shetland off its northern coast and the Hebrides off the west coast are sparsely populated and its islands were once used as wind-swept isolation destinations (like Bute, where troublesome Polish army officers were detained during the WWII by their own commanders).

The Guardian ran a brilliant piece on St Kilda, a group of the most remote British islands off the west coast, which for some time hosted a secluded, self-sufficient community. At its peak it housed 300 people, mostly living off the land and from fowling, but as contacts with the central Scotland became more intense, the community went into decline and was eventually evacuated in 1930 following the death of a pregnant St Kildan who couldn't get to the hospital to give birth in Glasgow and died.

The event inspired the 1937 film The Edge of the World and the archipelago has recently attracted fascination among travellers and birdlovers.

Before the article I wasn't aware of the phrase sea stacks, like Stac Lee, which sticks 172m out of water.