I hope I'm not the kind of townie who panics when the pavements end, but all the same when last week's Twin Otter flight from Glasgow to Barra was diverted to Benbecula due to poor weather conditions I did feel a flutter of anxiety.

However, as we hurtled in a minibus down the single-track main road through South Uist to catch the ferry over from Eriskay (we shared that journey with a group of schoolchildren whose utter nonchalance about their unusual daily commute was salutary) my mounting angst was not about missing the fantastic landing on the cockle beach that is Barra Airport (Benbecula's runway is boring old Tarmac), or even getting to our final destination; it was centred, as usual, on my growling hunger pangs and the prospect of having nothing to eat at our remote holiday house until next day.

How, I wondered, did islanders without abattoirs or dairies of their own cope with the vagaries of supply and demand when everything - cars, boats and planes - depends on the weather?

I feared the shops and cafes in Castlebay would be closed, and fretted that we should have taken the car ferry from Oban and stocked it high with goodies sourced from our local Waitrose.

By the end of our week's stay, though, I was convinced that actually, it's we townies who have a lot to learn from islanders about how to live sustainably and well. I was bowled over by the number of local networks in operation: people grow their own produce, and pass on tips about what's available and where, often dropping off bags at friends' houses; Buth Bharraigh, the community co-operative shop in Castlebay, sells home-made produce from Barra and Vatersay, such as bread, home baking, meat, jams and chutneys; vegetable seedlings, herbs, leaves and plants grown at the social enterprise community garden in Northbay; Barra smoked salmon; local free-range eggs, and cheese and crackers from Lewis and Skye.

I was impressed by the other high-end items available, such as Himalayan pink rock salt, high-end breakfast muesli , porridge oats and organic bread flour, Puy lentils and even Chai seeds.

Combined with daily foraging trips to source local shellfish - mussels, cockles, spoots - plus oysters and snails from entrepreneur Gerard Macdonald, and the freshest monkfish, scallops, haddock and langoustines from the nearby seafood market Barratlantic, together with pre-ordered deliveries of Smoked Gigha Halibut, and smoked scallops and pates from the Hebridean Smokehouse, we really were sorted.

So sorted, in fact, that our stash of recipes by the likes of Tom Kitchin and Yotam Ottolenghi were easily achieved. We were even able to make our own locally sourced kale and sea lettuce chips; home-dried seaweed flakes also helped season our booty.

Once we'd got into the natural rhythm of life, we didn't care the local Co-op didn't have any milk left at 4pm one day; we were happy to wait until the next ferry from Oban dropped off more at 8.30pm because the store stayed open until 10pm. Or I'm sure we could have borrowed some from neighbours.

Now I've got a taste of island life, I realise I've pretty much lost my appetite for treading the pavements in search of so-called sustenance in the city.