A familiar scene of velvety highlands and soft moor unfolds as we approach the far north of this island nation, entering a proudly independent province where a resilient people guard their distinctive language, dress and culture. But I’m not touching down in Scotland, as the thousand-metre volcano at the end of the crumbling runway confirms: this is Batanes, the Philippines’ last frontier.

The contrast with Manila, just 70 minutes behind me, could hardly be greater. The smog of the capital is swept away on a warm, salty breeze and the honking highways give way to the whirr of bicycles, the cluck of chickens and the constant rumble of the all-embracing ocean.

Adjusting to this languid new reality takes a matter of minutes, as does familiarising myself with Basco, the main town on Batan, foremost island in the 11-strong Batanes group. The hospital, school, town hall and police station parade smartly down the main street to the coastguard station; connecting at right angles is the ‘commercial’ street, comprising a pair of dusty grocery stores, a jeweller’s operating out of a tin shed, an umbrella repair shop and a nondescript shuttered business bearing the sign ‘closed for Christmas holidays’. It’s the end of January. And that’s it – everything else has to arrive on the monthly cargo boat from Manila. I won’t be needing my Visa card for a while.

Wandering up a side street to the shyly curious looks of locals, I’m surprised to find an Internet cafe installed in an old trailer. If the connection can be erratic (in common with the electricity and water supplies), this represents the most exciting revolution in Batanes since cable TV was plugged in five years ago. Anyone over 30 remembers the days when the telegraph station was the sole link to the outside; now mobile phones are commonplace.

Maybe it’s down to the cheerful weather – I’ve arrived during the first sunny spell in days – but most people are grinning from ear to ear. The sea is calm, and neatly uniformed children turning out of school hurry down to the port to help their fisherman fathers with the day’s haul; others make for the little basketball court, the social hub for teenagers. As the light fades, smoke from roadside barbeque stalls drifts around the alleys, and another day of simple living is done. By 9pm the entire town is asleep, and I’m left alone under the incredible night sky. With no street lighting or illuminated shop fronts to diminish the purply blackness, Orion beams down in glittering detail. Rooted to the spot, I begin making plans for my retirement villa.

The next day is a washout. The rain sets in by 4am and only intensifies as the day struggles gloomily on. My pac-a-mac flaps pathetically around my legs, and I end up taking my umbrella to the repair shop. The retirement villa is mentally downgraded to a holiday cottage.

With little incentive to venture, I turn to the radio. There are several Chinese voices (we’re closer to Taiwan than the Philippines), but the island’s only channel is what local radio is all about. One woman rings in to appeal for her lost kitten; another tells her husband to hurry up and get home.  

These domestic dramas are interpreted for me by Eduardo, head of a body dedicated to preserving the culture of the indigenous ivatan people. Batanes, he tells me, could have been a British colony. “There was an English explorer and buccaneer called William Dampier who landed here in the late 1600s, but he found the climate and the people hostile, and didn’t hang around.” The business of colonisation fell instead to the Spanish conquistadors, from whom the ivatan are directly descended. Like most people in the Philippines, Eduardo is incurably courteous. There’s no need to keep calling me sir, I tell him. “Sorry sir”, comes the reply.

The next day is bright and blustery, perfect for a bike ride. The first man I ask hands over the keys to his Honda Dream for a small fee, and I head out of Basco on the single 33-kilometre track that circles the island. Thanks to the negligible number of vehicles on the grandly named National Road, I’m quickly exposed to the full charm of Batanes. There may be a more dreamlike coastline somewhere in this world, but I’ve yet to see it. Every twist in the road reveals another vista with the deeply surreal beauty of a Renaissance painting. Time and again I’m brought to an unconscious halt by the brilliance of light green waves foaming over serrated volcanic outcrops, snapping photos through the invigoratingly salty spray that envelops me. 

Eventually I come to Ivana village and meet 81-year-old Lola, sole inhabitant of the oldest ivatan house in existence since 1936. “Life here is a contest with nature”, she tells me. If so, it’s one the islanders are winning: there has never been a weather-related fatality, even in Songsong village, abandoned after being hit by typhoons and tidal waves in 1953. Her thick-walled cottage needs a new thatched roof, she tells me with imploring eyes. “They could do the job in a day, and it would see me through another 30 years, but I don’t have the money”, she smiles, sensing my soft-heartedness before thanking me with a heartfelt ‘dios mamajes’. 

Then I’m making another voluntary donation at the Honesty Cafe, an enduring symbol of Batanes. Visitors to this tiny establishment, staffed only by an ageing Labrador, can make themselves a coffee and help themselves to a snack on trust of depositing the right money in a box.

Thus fortified, I turn inland onto a cattle path – hardly the brightest move given yesterday’s downpour – and slither between meadows of waving cogon grass into a chequerboard landscape of teetering hedges that demarcate fields of root vegetables (most trees are stunted by the strong winds). Before long I’m high enough to drink in the churning sea whichever way I look: the Pacific to the east and the South China Sea to the west.

The point at which these two bodies of water meet is the choppy channel that separates Batan from its two inhabited neighbours. Navigating it is not without hazard: one luckless fisherman was recently swept all the way to Taiwan in a rowing boat. I can’t find anyone willing to attempt the 25-nautical-mile crossing to the forbidding mesa of Itbayat, so on a day of sunburn-strength heat – my fourth season in as many days – I join a weekend tour group heading for Sabtang, 45 queasy minutes away by falowa boat.  

If Batan has little time for 21st century trappings, Sabtang stands altogether outside of time. Heavy stone cottages are the norm here, clustering around Spanish-era churches to form barrios in the shelter of rugged valleys; several women wear the vakul, a kind of waist-length protective wig made from palm fibres, while men wear a similar waistcoat-style garment called a kanayi.  

Standing on a limestone clifftop gazing down at yet another perfect stretch of coastline, I wonder at how many of these bays would be submerged by five-star development elsewhere. Despite the weekly influx of wealthy Manileños, stunning beaches strewn with sky-blue chunks of coral teem only with hermit crabs; restaurants and cafes are absent, replaced with excellent seafood buffets at the few basic hotels. Looking more closely, I notice tiny ten-year-olds herding muscular water buffalo up steep hillsides, prior to starting their own daily treks to school across the same hills. People here accept hardship, I decide, solely to preserve this way of life. For them, these idyllic surroundings come at a price. 

On my final evening back on Batan, a Friday, the locals let their hair down in unexpectedly raucous fashion. The Port karaoke bar, run by Daryl and her seven sisters, was recently relocated to the edge of town owing to noise complaints – noise to which I contribute, under protest, with a woeful rendering of ‘If you leave me now’. It’s only 8pm but everyone, from the 15-year-olds with bottles of Red Horse to their schoolteacher lying happily on his back, is quite drunk. The yellow beam from the lighthouse skids across the rain-lashed windows as the fairy lights flicker around the bar. Plates of coconut crab and yam salad appear, and promises of enduring friendship are made. Who needs the outside world anyway?