Every year we travel 650 miles from our home in Surrey to Tarbert on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. People think we are mad. Why do we want to visit a grey, barren landscape every year, they ask us? With raging gales, horizontal rain and occasionally some sun, what is the attraction?

But there is much more than just greyness – there’s the dappled sunlight on the black basalt rocks, the mist and diamond-studded light. There is light and shadow changing by the minute, and there is peace.

During our visits I began to read about the people of St Kilda. I was fascinated by their simple lifestyle, how they lived in peace for over 1000 years and how their lifestyle became unsustainable as civilisation caught up with them.

On that August trip the conditions for a crossing to St Kilda were almost perfect. Tarbert was bathed in sunshine, the blue water of the Minch was calm and there were two places left on the small boat which was bound for St Kilda. I was determined to photograph our entire voyage. The seven-hour sail is not an easy one and it tested my stamina to the limits. Wedged against the side of the boat, in order to gain stability and prevent camera shake, I managed to avoid the sickness which many of my fellow travellers experienced.

The sea, though relatively calm, was throwing up salt spray on to my lens just to give me a bit more to think about.

The weird shapes of St Kilda looming up out of the purple, misty ocean was breathtaking. I will never forget that sight.

It is as clear today as it was on that perfect August day.

We steamed directly to Village Bay on Hirta. It was a grand vision. The semi-circular bay; the hundreds of beehive-like cleits cluttering the hillsdie behind the clear remains of the village street; the strange, skinny, brown shep dotted around the scene; the thousands of sea birds forming a skin over the protective cliffs either side of the bay.

It was a scene virtually indescribable.

We arrived at Village Bay at 6.15 pm. We spent only three quarters of an hour on land, exploring, before the sun set.

The following morning, having slept on the boat moored in Village Bay, it was a totally different picture. The previous day’s golden glow over the horseshoe bay had been replaced by sombre grey. A storm was forecast and we had to leave St Kilda straight after breakfast.

We went straight to the stacs. For a quarter of an hour the great grey monoliths of Stac Armin, Stac Lee and Borerary, rising straight up from the sea, were surrounded by an intense white light.

St Kilda is far more than the poignant story of the evacuation of its inhabitants in 1930. It is a place of unique peace, a place virtually unchanged since the beginning of time. It is a place which has changed my life.

Monica Weller