We wanted an expedition, a taste of wilderness, a journey to somewhere remote. But without the budget of real Arctic explorers, my two friends and I came up with an alternative - a pilgrimage to Britain's northernmost hotel. So, in the middle of last month, we set off for Unst, the furthest-flung inhabited island in the Shetlands.
Unst is closer to the Arctic Circle than it is to London, and our journey involves two flights, two ferries, and about three hours' drive in a hire car. Getting there costs around £200 each, the biggest cost of the holiday - but it's certainly part of the adventure. The plane into Aberdeen is thrown around in the sky and I arrive sweaty and delirious. The flight from there to Sumburgh is even worse, and my head is too far inside a sick bag for me to notice that the landing strip is strewn with seaweed from the gale-whipped Atlantic.
'When you open the car doors, hold on to them or the wind will rip them off at the hinges,' says Diane at the airport hire car service, Star Cars. She's so friendly that she's already driven my friend Jackie (who arrived first) on a jaunt to the garage. 'Welcome to the Shitlands,' says a local in the lilting accent that owes more to 500 years of Norse rule than it does to Scotland. We stagger out of the airport with a new gait: feet wide, bodies tilted forward, faces smacked by stray bag straps.
We drive north through a landscape of peat bogs and pebble-dash bungalows sheltering behind cliffs, the scattered trees soon running out. The few things we know about the Shetlands suddenly make perfect sense. They make very warm jumpers, and their ponies have perhaps the shortest legs in the world - anything taller would blow over.
Finally we step over the threshold of our destination, the Baltasound Hotel. Accommodation is in wooden cabins, which cost £39 each a night if two of you share. Reasonable enough, but to be honest the rest of the place doesn't really merit the rigours of the journey. The 'Why Unst?' brochure on the counter starts to seem strangely appropriate.
We make for the hotel bar to drink some of the island's Valhalla beer. It's said to have restored the life spirit of slain Vikings, and a few pints of Simmer Dim - named after the surreal twilight of the Shetlands in the summer months - certainly helps ours. Locals engage us in friendly chat. We've chosen to visit during Unst's annual Up Helly Aa festival, where everyone drinks a lot and burns things in a Viking rampage, and within a few hours we've been whisked away to a party in a shed. This is a bit like getting into an Oscars pre-party, but with horns and fiddles: only friends and family of this year's Jarls (the band of revellers dressed as Vikings) are invited. Waterproofs rustling, we learn the Shetland shuffle and accept an enormous number of wee drams.
Next morning, after a night spent under three duvets, we head out. We have learnt that the Baltasound's 'northernmost hotel' crown has recently been stolen. A former military base a few miles to the north has been turned into the Saxa Vord Resort. It has double rooms for £30 - £15 per person, or £46 including cooked breakfast, packed lunch and supper - and self-catering semis sleeping six from £120 a night. A restaurant and bar run by a chef who used to work at Skibo Castle opens this weekend.
Saxa Vord is not much of a looker - a grey cluster of former RAF buildings still surrounded by a military fence - but it sits on a staggeringly beautiful peninsula. It's not luxury either: the standard rooms are like halls of residence, with shared kitchens and showers, but the newly refurbished self-catering houses are a warm dry delight, with conservatories looking out over the peninsula, and high-spec furnishings and kitchens.
'Most visitors are specialists,' says Pat, the receptionist, 'birdwatchers, archeologists, botanists.' With the gales preventing any sort of outdoor activity, we decide to catch up with our new friends the Vikings, who spend Up Helly Aa day visiting old people. Their ship is sitting on a trailer attached to a red Mitsubishi truck in the deserted gravel car park of the Baltasound Hotel. It's swaying in the wind, dragon eyes flashing, with 'Jackson' by Johnny Cash and June Carter playing. The island only has 600 residents, and by now we feel we know a significant number of them.
Back at Saxa Vord we cook dinner, and look at the view from the reinforced conservatory window. Hailstones fill the corners like fake snow spray at Christmas; the horizontal rain is deafening. At 7pm we head out to burn things on the beach, another part of the festivities, but it's been cancelled because of the wind. Everyone retires to the village hall for 'a spree': whisky, Cullen Skink (smoked haddock soup) and a lot of reeling to fiddlers. This land may be inhospitable in winter, but the people make up for it in friendliness. We strip the willow and Jackie strips down to thermals and a pair of Ugg boots and links arms with all the assembled: oil rig firemen, crofters, a man with half a tongue and the teacher who gave him 1,164 lines when he was at school.
Next morning, there's a miracle: the wind has died down enough for us to go out walking. We head to the Hermaness Nature Reserve and after a brisk hike to the top of a hill are rewarded by a view of the island of Muckle Flugga and its lighthouse, Britain's absolutely most northernmost point. The sun's out, we're out, seals are playing in the cold, clear water and there's so much fresh air that I get hiccups. We gaze in ecstasy ... then a weather front blows over, the sky darkens and we're pelted with hailstones. It's a bit like being shot at with an air rifle. Minutes later the sun's back, along with a beautiful rainbow. 'You don't get hail like that anywhere else,' says one of our new friends proudly that night. 'Not in Scotland, not in Iceland, only here.'
Essentials
To book the Saxa Vord Resort call 01957 711711; the Baltasound Hotel: 01957 711334.
BA (0844 493 0787; ba.com) flies to Sumburgh from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness and Aberdeen from £85 return. Star Rent A Car (01950 460444; starrentacar.co.uk) has cars from £30 a day. More at visitscotland.com.
