Libby Purves, Simon Hoggart and other adventurers went off the beaten track for the Observer Magazine of 2 January 1983 (‘Travellers’ Tales’). Purves sailed to the tiny French island of Ushant (pop: 1,200). She’d tried to land there before and admitted her trip was eccentric – ‘even the most sanguine pilot books describe it as “unremarkable and hazardous… all too often shrouded in fog, offering little to persuade the cruising yachtsman to pause”.’
Purves explained the unlikely appeal of ‘one of Europe’s most notorious graveyards of ships: It was brought on chiefly by the thrumming, insistent refrain of our best shanty – “From Ushant to Scilly is 35 leagues” – and by the perennial, curiously British itch to go to the uttermost edges of the land, and look out on empty ocean.’
A local told her: ‘We have all we need: the electricity, the helicopter for emergencies, the little aeroplane. On est bien ici.’ The island’s priest had more existential concerns: ‘The rich who buy ruins for weekends, the idle who live in them as they are… Islands, today, are dangerously too attractive.’
Meanwhile, Simon Hoggart headed for the Yukon. He met a man in a bar in the capital, Whitehorse, who could do moose calls – a highly prized ability in hunting them – though the downside was that you may attract a hungry grizzly bear instead. Hoggart took great delight in describing 56 ways of preparing moose from The Yukon Cookbook, including ‘roast moose, moose hash, moose soup, moose pâté, boiled moose nose (listed unconvincingly as a “delicacy”), instant moose – everything except moose mousse’.
Apparently the mosquitoes were the biggest hazard. Even visiting Tibetan monks ‘had almost broken their vow not to kill any living thing when faced with this ultimate test’.
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