Would you spend R30 000 for the chance to sit on a wet island, on a flat surface roughly the size of a single bed in the middle of the ocean for twenty minutes? It sounds like pure craziness, but a tour to Rockall island, some 400kms west of Scotland, allows tourists to do just that, and it’s sold out.
In early May 2020, 18 tourists and around seven crew members will board a 1918 tall ship to be the first public tour group to visit Rockall where they will put on wetsuits, boots, and floatation devices before climbing onto the rock, which is said to be extremely slippery due to being covered by bird excrement.
“It is a pretty barren place and you can’t really move around too much,” tour leader Nick Hancock told The Sunday Post. “The main ledge is about the size of a large single bed. There is another flat area on the summit which is about half that size”.
Only some two hundred people have ever visited the volcanic shard in the million of the sea and those who do clamber ashore will immediately become members of the “exclusive” Rockall Club, which was founded in 2012 in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Rockall joining Scotland.
The island is said to be windy, rainy, slippery and freezing cold, but Lupine Travel is tentatively planning a second trip for $2,220 (R32 000) in May and June of 2022.
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