Rockall is the most isolated outpost of the British Isles, and is well northwest of Ireland. It strains the definition of island, as it is only 80 by 100 feet, and has almost no vegetation or even flat surfaces. No visits to the crag are recorded before 1810, and only four people are known to have slept there.

Islandman, also called Andy Strangeway, is an extreme island collector, and has slept on all Scottish islands of more than 40 hectares, and some 168 Scottish islands in all. On 94 of them, he was the only person sleeping on the island.

Islay has some interesting double islands, including Eilean Mor and Eilean na Comhairle (Council Island) in Loch Finlaggan, which served as administrative centers for the Lords of the Isles and Clan Donald.

Image courtesy ifyr, Flick
*********************************
Follow on Twitter: @Worldislandinfo

Balloons had made the trip before, but this first flight via airplane changed island geography. Ships were no longer the only means of reaching them, and isolation decreased rapidly as the speed of aircraft increased. And, in the First and Second World Wars, Great Britain and other islands were to discover that airplanes greatly diminished their status as fortresses.

It is not clear whether this was the first powered flight to any island; did aviators fly before this to the Isle of Wight, Long Island, or Manhattan, for instance?

(Image courtesy Smudge 9000, Flickr)

This would be the first fixed connection to the island in thousands of years, since ice-age landbridges were submerged by rising sea levels.

The article notes that Japan’s efforts to spend its way out of recession in the 1990s “produced a herd of white elephants including new, but little-used airports and ports, as well as a $250 million bridge to Kourijima Island,” population 361.

Grant Aldonas, a former American trade official, warns of a general problem: “There is a huge danger of bridges to nowhere.”

Image courtesy NASA.

Now they may bring it home. A Dutch government agency has proposed building an island off the coast of the Netherlands — and some have suggested it should be in the shape of a tulip. A 400-square-mile tulip.

This may or may not be a good idea, but it would at least make for the long-standing Dutch habit of destroying their islands through polder and dam building.

Near Mongolia but on the Russian side of the border, the ruined Uigur fortress is called Por-Bazhyn, and is on an island in Lake Tere-Khol. The rectangular fortress is visible in satellite photos.

Administered by Ukraine, it is pretty much the sole island of significance in the Black Sea, and also it’s most isolated.

[border disputes, Ukrainian  geography]

The list is of islands of the United Kingdom, hence the omission: the Isle of Man is not part of the UK, but a separately administered crown dependency.

At about 571 sq. km, it would be the 8th largest island in the UK if it were part of the UK.

Part of the 19th century causeway will be replaced with a bridge.

Says a leader of the project to hold back the encroaching land, “If we don’t do anything at all, in 40 years Mont-Saint-Michel will be part of the continent.”

“Being an island is part of its strong identity — a gem in the sea,” says the mayor of the island, which has a population of 26 but is visited by 3 million people a year.

Long a pilgrimage destination, its island nature also has symbolic significance:

Brother François, who heads a group of six brothers and five sisters from the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem who conduct services in the abbey, said Mont-Saint-Michel was laden with powerful religious symbolism that is important to protect — the mountaintop, the story of the archangel’s appearance, the sand flats where pilgrims wander, waiting for the parting of the sea at low tide.

After the causeway was built in 1879, Victor Hugo decried the change: “The Mont-Saint-Michel must remain an island. We must save it from mutilation!” People are at last responding.

[Image courtesy Neerav Mehta]