A CHARTERED surveyor is hoping to break the 28-year-old record for lone occupation of North Atlantic island of Rockall.
Nick Hancock said his preparations for the fundraising initiative in aid of the soldiers' charity Help for Heroes were almost complete.
He plans to live on the storm-lashed island, which is 186 miles west of the Outer Hebrides, for 60 days starting in early June.
He is heading out to Harris to await a suitable weather window when he can land with his equipment from a chartered motor cruiser.
Mr Hancock, from Ratho, Edinburgh, said he had almost completed work on his survival shelter, which is fully insulated.
He added: "The majority of my equipment and supplies have arrived and I have been distributing and packing them in the plastic drums which I will use to get my kit on to Rockall.
"I fully expect that I will have to repack several times to ensure I know where everything is, but otherwise I feel confident that I will be ready in a month's time for this amazing adventure."
The occupiable area of the 20-metre (65ft) high rock, named Hall's Ledge 1955 after the first recorded person to land there, is just 3.5 metres by 1.3 metres (11ft by 4ft). Former SAS soldier Tom Mclean set the lone occupation record of 40 days in 1985.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article