Trifter

Choosing only a few is not going to be an easy task. I have always been interested in the most remote, hard to reach and rarely visited pieces of land. Islands, more often than a place in the mainland are among those places, out of the way to your final destination. For some of them it has taken me years before I could see them from the plane. They are too small, or were not exactly on my route, or I couldn’t see them because it was clouded that day. Let’s go with my list.

I’m going to start in the Mediterranean. There some places that many people never heard a word about like the Alhucemas island, Velez de la Gomera rock in the north of Morocco or Parsley island in Gibraltar, that I could only see very recently in flight to the Canaries. In the area I still haven’t seen Alborán, a former shelter for pirates and resting place for Soviet submarines, which is half way between Málaga and the African coast. The atoll shaped Columbretes, a former volcano standing on the edge of the continental self 30 miles off the Valencian coast is one the islands I like best. Looking at the small size of Alhucemas and its proximity to Morocco, makes you wonder if it is really worth keeping such a fortress, impossible to defend and where the Spanish military presence is only justified by history.

In Sardinia, without any doubt Tavolara is the one I like best. High and long, standing like a dragon’s crest, where only a few families live and with a very curious history behind. It was an independent kingdom and later a republic that only became part of Italy in the XX century. The present monarch Tonino owns the only restaurant on the island. Another mysterious and beautiful island in the same area is Montecristo. It has a conical shape, desert, and receives very few visitors along the year. It’s not surprising that Alejandro Dumas chose Montecristo to hide a treasure. Further south in Sicily I choose the Eolian isles, a enchanting group of tiny islands in front of Trapani. Still in the list of Italian islands that I want to see are the Lipari. Unfortunately they are not close to any route I usually do so it will take some time before I have a chance to see them.

Now let’s go to the Baltic Sea. In a flight to the south of Sweden I look for the white cliffs of Mons. Most Danish islands are low, covered with fields and forests but this one has a high coast. It looks as if it was sinking on one side and going higher on the side where the cliffs are. Without going too far but already in the North Sea, another island that I always try to find is Helgoland. It is very small, in a place where nobody would expect to see land, so far from the sandy coasts of Germany and Denmark. Despite the size its small size it is populated and visited by lots of tourists every year.

In the Atlantic we discover new landscapes. Next to Guernesey I look for the cliffs and green fields of Shark. I wonder how can people subsist there, and where supplies are disembarked as I haven’t seen any ports on the island and the coast is very rocky. Though the other Channel isles receive thousands every year, surely very few people go to Shark. And one more island in the bravest and windiest Atlantic Ocean is Staffa on the western Scottish coast. The island is a bird sanctuary and a geological wonder. On top of a base of imposing hexagonal basaltic columns there is another mass of more rounded rock, making it look like a giant muffin.

The last two in my list of favourite ones are islands in inland waters. One of them is Mediana isle, in the middle of Mequinenza water reservoir on the river Ebro. It is a large artificial lake famous for the monster size catfish brought by German fishermen. The island itself has perfect drop of water shape. It was created when the lake flooded one of the meanders of the river. There is a big contrast between the green river banks and the arid landscape around it.

And my other favourite island in fresh water is Montisola in lake Iseo in the Italian Alps. Iseo is one of the great glacial lakes in the southern side of the Alps. It closes the valley before reaching the flat lands of Lombardy. The island is something more than a piece of land, very stepped and green like the mountains around it. It is as well Europe’s biggest lake island.