Like table tops, the Faroe Island backcountry rises and falls in oblong bluffs and promontories, dressed in flat-topped, treeless heaths and rolling grasslands where snow and ice and salt sea spray have carved out countless grikes and caverns through the rock. The coastlines create a sort of unruly dynamism with the ocean, waterfalls spilling off the cliffs like something out of a Morris Escher painting (check out much-photographed Gasadalur). Inland, and mist-topped Slaettaratindur looms high, the moors come peppered with painted timber villages like Vagur - part Iceland part Scotland - and storm petrels meet seals on the shores. Faroe Islands tour guides also love to extoll the hearty welcome that’s always on offer in their capital, Torshavn. Here, fishing taverns roar with shanties and puffin steaks are washed down with frothy local brews. And then there are the 700-meter-high walls of rock at Vestmanna (a bird watcher’s mecca), the Middle Age churches of Kirkjubour, rustic landscapes at Gjogv village, old Nordic architecture at Klaksvík, and plenty, plenty more!