On an island called Unst, right at the top of the Shetlands, there’s a bus stop. It might be the best bus stop in the world.

The tiny shelter has a comfy armchair, paintings on the wall, fresh flowers, knick-knacks, books and a computer in case you get bored. It’s all provided, gratis, by people from the local community, just to make life that bit more pleasant.

It wouldn’t last five minutes elsewhere in Britain. Things would be stolen or vandalised. But it’s on an island, and islands are different. They have an otherness, a removal from the norm, which springs from geography, but ends up being much more than that. They’re out there, in more ways than one.

Believe me, I know. There are about 1,000 islands around Britain, and I recently spent four months travelling round some of them. What they all have in common, what makes them so exciting and magnetic, is that otherness.

Britain's 10 best dog-friendly beaches

Stuart Kirby, author of Britain's top 100 beaches, picks his favourite beaches for dog walking

• Camper van man: my British coast highlights

Why Butlins is booming

Nationwide belt-tightening means the British holiday camp is buzzing - but is Butlins for everyone?

• The seaside hotel that welcomes kids

BACKGROUND

• The horrifying cost of Britain's top attractions

• Britain's 10 coolest seaside restaurants

• The 80 best days out in the UK

• Britain's best 10 family days out

Britain's great steam days out

More and more steam trains are going back into service on mainline tracks as demand grows

Related Links

• Britain's 10 best dog-friendly beaches

It starts with the journey. Getting to an island requires planning and con­sideration; it can be unreliable and challenging, so it becomes an event in itself. They get harder to reach — and, in many ways, harder to live on — the further north you go. In the Shetlands and the Hebrides, survival is a constant battle against the elements.

On Eigg, a tremendous little place in the Hebrides, I was climbing An Sgurr, the central volcanic peak, with Scruff, my local guide (and, in the way of islands, a fisherman, builder and lifeboat man). It was fine weather when we started, but then the rain came, and the wind.

What a wind. A blast almost blew me up a canyon, and as I was getting my breath back, Scruff calmly mentioned that a 120mph gust had taken his roof off the year before. I wondered what it did to you, living in a place where that could happen so casually. “Oh, islanders are a bit more patient,” he said with a wry smile. That’s resilience for you.

All across the northern islands, you feel a powerful sense of community. It’s as if the surrounding circle of coastline concentrates and focuses it. And the marvellous thing is that there’s no tension between that and tourism.

Visitors aren’t about to spoil these places; they enhance them. The money they spend goes towards keeping the islands alive — and it’s a particular type of tourist who visits an isolated northern island. They don’t want a casino, they don’t want a bouncy castle.

It’s not much good for Americans, because there’s no cable TV or ranch dressing. People come to see the flora and fauna, and to appreciate the place for what it is, so the welcome’s still genuine.

They come for the beauty, too, of course. Barra is officially the most beautiful place in Britain. I’m not sure how they measure that — by length or by weight? — but it certainly is lovely: the contours, the colours, the beaches. (It has the only airport in the world where the beach is an official runway, which is rather fun.)

It’s a hard life, though, and the sense of togetherness is just as strong. While I was there, I happened to meet three different people whose lives had been affected by a drink-driving death. They all talked of being “enveloped by care” from the whole community. What a wonderful phrase. What a wonderful thing.

Times recommends

• Checking into ‘Europe’s dirtiest hotel’
• The best out of season European breaks
• Smugshots special: wintersports