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Faroe Islands For Sandoy, a small island in the north Atlantic that is home to rugged farms, a few scattered villages and some 1,200 people, 2024 is the start of a new era. A 10.8km sub-sea road tunnel has linked it to Streymoy, the Faroes’ largest and most populated island, meaning the once isolated communities are now as little as 30 minutes drive from the archipelago’s capital, Tórshavn.
The tunnel is the longest in the Faroes and 155 metres below the seabed at its deepest point. Construction started in 2019 and it was opened just before Christmas. The project has cost DKr1.3bn (£150mn), or £125,000 for every resident of Sandoy. The plan is for the investment to be eventually recouped via tolls; cars will pay DKr175 (£20) each way to use the tunnel.
The project is the culmination of 20 years of undersea tunnelling that has revolutionised communications in the Faroes. Four tunnels now connect five islands, with two more accessible via causeways, meaning that 90 per cent of the population is linked without the need for ferries. One tunnel, completed in 2020, boasts the world’s first undersea roundabout.
The Sandoy project has been seized on by campaigners from other islands beyond the Faroes, including the Outer Hebrides, Shetlands and Isle of Wight in the UK, as evidence of the viability of sub-sea connections. Meanwhile, the communities of Sandoy hope the tunnel will bring a halt to its declining population (as well as proving a boon to the island’s single café). visitfaroeislands.com
Gloucestershire Barnsley House, a popular Cotswolds boutique hotel in a 17th-century manor house, is to close next weekend and be relaunched in the summer as part of the Pig group. The 18-room hotel in the village of Barnsley, which has gardens created by the renowned designer Rosemary Verey, had been bought in 2021 by the London-based furniture brand Timothy Oulton, but will now instead become the ninth hotel in the Pig chain. The group’s chair Robin Hutson said the property had been in his “peripheral vision for many years as a possible acquisition”. Hutson opened the first Pig in the New Forest in 2011 and is now overseeing its expansion after investment from private equity firm KSL Capital Partners in 2022. Two further Pigs are currently being developed, one near Stratford-upon-Avon, which is due to open by the end of the year, and another just outside Tunbridge Wells, due in summer 2025. thepighotel.com
