Excerpt from rcinet.ca
On the United Kingdom’s northernmost island, the new space race is getting under way.
AAs part of my lifelong odyssey of cycling around aimlessly but always north, this summer, I decided to bike across Shetland, the United Kingdom’s northernmost stretch of territory. The trip would also get me closer to completing my two-wheeled and two-footed journey around the “Kingdom of the Isles,” as the Viking settlements that once stretched across the islands ringing Britain were known. In 2019, I biked across the Outer Hebrides and ran a marathon in Orkney. Now, I would cycle across the Norðr-eyjar, or northern islands.
While making my Shetland plans, when I went to book a hostel on Britain’s northernmost island, the accommodation’s Facebook page bore an unlikely message. Saxa Vord Resort was not open to guests. “The site and facilities are being used by the SaxaVord Spaceport as construction begins later this month,” the site announced.
It seemed fantastical: a spaceport? To be built on an island called Unst, home to all of 600 people and many more well-coiffed ungulates?
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