We begin our journey in Edinburgh, a spellbinding capital built on an extinct volcano, with a castle on the rock and a medieval town running down its spine. The Enlightenment happened in these streets, and half the world's explorers passed through them on the way north. We meet here.
The Balmoral has stood at the east end of Princes Street since 1902, a Rocco Forte hotel with a Michelin-starred restaurant and a whisky bar with several hundred bottles. In the evening, we sit down together for our welcome dinner.
Eighteen islands in the North Atlantic, halfway between Scotland and Iceland, with some of the highest sea cliffs in Europe. A green dragonscape, where the weather changes by the minute and the villages have not changed much in centuries.
The islands rise green and vertical out of the sea, blackened cliffs with the Atlantic working away at their feet. Three nights here, and the Faroes reward it: the islands are small, the roads are good, and each day goes out from the same door.
A cluster of traditional wooden cottages by the water, with grass-covered roofs and the cliffs behind them. Inside, pale timber runs from floor to roof beam, with a long table for gathering and a wall of glass facing the weather as it arrives from the sea. Warm, light and uncluttered.
Kayak or hike to the lake that seems to float atop the cliffs, high above the ocean, with lunch outdoors and a spa hidden in the hills to end the day.
Walk out to the Drangarnir sea stacks along the edge of the western cliffs, where a natural arch stands alone in the water, and follow the cliff path with the ocean far below and the Atlantic working away at the rock.
Another day begins under sail, bound for the island of Koltur, home to a handful of residents who tell its story themselves. The crossing is part of the day: open Atlantic water, a green dragonscape of cliffs rising from the sea, and weather that changes by the minute. From there, the boat carries on to the caves.
From Koltur, the boat carries us into vast sea caves along the coast, where the light comes green through the water and the rock rises on every side. You can swim if you can stand it. It is cold, it is clear, and it is entirely optional.
In Bøur, a farmer opens his house: lamb from the hillside, fish from the harbour.
A long Faroese dinner, where the seafood is as good as any in the North Atlantic. Skerpikjøt and ræst kjøt, mutton wind-dried in the sea air the way the islands have always kept it, and fish straight from the boat.
A peninsula on Iceland's west coast, with a glacier-capped volcano at the end of it. Jules Verne sent his fictional travellers down through this mountain to the centre of the Earth. Icelanders call it the country in miniature: lava, black beaches, waterfalls and hot springs.
A farmhouse from 1884 on the banks of the River Langá, where it runs into the sea at the foot of the peninsula. Nine bedrooms with a Scandinavian interior, fireplaces and a cognac room, and outside, a hot tub, a cold tub and a sauna facing the river. The whole house is ours.
A day on the peninsula under Snæfellsjökull: lava fields, a black-sand beach, basalt cliffs, and a fishing village or two with a church painted black.
The group chooses one of two days inland: by super-jeep across glacial rivers into Þórsmörk, Thor's Valley, for a barbecue and a waterfall you can walk behind; or a flight into the Highlands for a vast canyon, a lava cave and a hot waterfall.
The largest town in East Greenland has about two thousand people, and the only way in is by air or by sea. We land at Kulusuk and cross by boat to Tasiilaq, past icebergs that come down from the north. The mountains come straight down to the water, and the dogs are still working animals, grouped in teams along the shore.
Standing above King Oscar's Harbour since 1973, the oldest hotel in Greenland, with a terrace over the town, the fjord and the mountains. Recently renovated rooms, a sauna, and icebergs drifting past below.
Greenland sled dogs are working animals who have never been anything else, and East Greenland is one of the last places they still work. Hear from their musher about how the teams still run the winter sea ice, and from Inuit hosts whose families have hunted this coast for thousands of years.
We hike across the glacier with crampons, harnesses, and ice axes, walking over sculpted ice and crevasses before entering a natural meltwater cave. The ice shifts colour as the light changes. Everything here is moving, slowly, under your feet.
End the day the Nordic way: a sauna, then a plunge into water dotted with icebergs, on a coast most visitors to Greenland never reach. The (really) cold plunge is optional.
This is the day the aircraft earns its keep. Leaving the east coast, we climb onto the high polar plateau, ice stretching to the horizon in every direction, and, when conditions allow, land at DYE-2, a Cold War spy station abruptly abandoned in 1988. More than sixty people once lived here, listening for Soviet bombers coming over the pole. Walk through the dome and the dormitories, past meals half-eaten and books left open, all frozen in time.
Ilulissat means icebergs, and the name is well-earned. The Sermeq Kujalleq glacier moves faster than almost any on Earth and pushes a tenth of Greenland's icebergs into the sea, filling the fjord with icebergs the size of city blocks. We arrive from across the ice sheet, two kilometres of ice beneath the wheels, and spend one night on the shore, where the view changes every hour as the ice moves.
Low on the shore, with icebergs drifting past at window level. Simple, warm rooms, a restaurant cooking from the fjord, and a terrace facing the ice.
We cross the ice sheet at low altitude, up to three kilometres thick and the second largest body of ice on earth, then descend to the west coast.
In the morning, before the flight south, kayak or paddleboard on the still water between the icebergs, close enough to hear them. Still haven't had enough icebergs? Join an optional midnight paddle, lit by the dusky sunset glow that goes on for hours.
Nuuk is the smallest capital in the world, and the fjord behind it is one of the largest on earth. An hour by boat from the last building, a camp stands alone on the shore, with drifting ice, waterfalls and a silence that takes a day to get used to. Three nights here are what the whole route has been building towards.
Reached only by boat, with nothing else built for miles, and ours alone. Heated tipis with proper beds and private bathroom tents, a main tent for long dinners, and a hot tub and sauna on the fjord.
Kayak among towering icebergs, fish for cod from the boat, pull sea urchins from the rocks, then hike to a waterfall that pours straight off the ice. Eat what the fjord gives you: char, musk ox, suaasat, and mattak if you are brave.
On the last day, go deeper into the fjord by boat and land on a deserted island. Forage for herbs and berries that grow in the short summer, then a Greenlandic barbecue feast on the shore.
That night is our farewell dinner, where the story of the journey gets told around the table, and a closing ceremony with a local angakkuq, in a tradition older than any building in Greenland.
