MARY Groat is off babysitting, she tells me as we strap ourselves into the tiny eight-seater plane. The retired hospital worker from Kirkwall is flying to Westray where her son Stewart and his wife Marian run a cafe and shop in the village of Pierowall.

"It takes about an hour-and-a-half to sail and only around 15 minutes on the plane," she smiles, settling back for the short flight. "So, this is far preferable."

Towards the rear of the cabin are a couple of folk headed to Papa Westray. Our pilot Captain Alex Rendall is sitting directly in front of me, a bank of complex-looking dials and switches at his fingertips. He is close enough that I could reach out and tap his shoulder if I so chose.

Rendall runs through some final paperwork, completes the safety checks and with a twinkly-eyed smile enquires: "Is everyone strapped up in the back?" Greeted with a chorus of replies in the affirmative, we begin taxiing in preparation for take-off.

The Inter-Isles Air Service serves six small airports to the north of the Orkney mainland including Stronsay, Sanday, North Ronaldsay and Eday, but today we're on its most famous route linking Westray and Papa Westray.

This 1.7-mile hop between the two islands holds a Guinness World Record as the shortest scheduled passenger flight. It takes on average around a minute-and-a-half – or a nifty 53 seconds with favourable winds.

As the plane climbs, I can see the spire of St Magnus Cathedral, a majestic sandstone building which dominates the Kirkwall skyline. Beyond that there's the bulky outline of a cruise liner, berthed at the town's Hatston Pier, while in a bay directly below us, a lone kayaker is paddling through the waves.

It is impossible not to gaze slack-jawed at the unfolding scenery. Yet, for the lion's share of people who use this service it is about more than simply spectacular views.

Essentially a bus in the skies, the inter-island flights are used by teachers commuting to and from schools, police officers, doctors, vets, estate agents, telecommunication engineers, bank staff and electricity workers among others.

It transports everything from blood samples to library books. All of human life is here: from mothers and their new babies travelling home from hospital to the repatriation of the recently deceased whose coffins can be carried in the hold.

Operated on behalf of Orkney Islands Council, Loganair began flying the routes using a Britten-Norman Islander aircraft in 1967 and has done so continuously ever since.

Upon landing at Papa Westray, or Papay as it is affectionately known, we are joined by 70-year-old Richard Pazara from Dallas, Texas, who is visiting on holiday.

He previously did what was then the world's longest flight – an eye-watering 16 hours and 45 minutes from Sydney to Dallas – and is here to book-end that with the shortest. "What's the in-flight movie?" he asks, chuckling.

Rendall expertly turns the aircraft on the gravel strip and our big moment is here. The plane soars into the air. A slight head wind means it is a sedate one minute and 27 seconds from the wheels leaving the runway in Papay to touching down across the water in Westray.

"Let's call it one minute and 20 seconds," jokes Rendall as I hold up my stopwatch afterwards. I ask Pazara if he enjoyed it. "Oh, yeah. Except the in-flight catering wasn't very good," he deadpans, sending a ripple of laugher around the cabin.

Through the window we can see Mary's grandchildren Tanna, six, and James, four, waving excitedly from the waiting room. She bids me farewell as a handful of new passengers join the plane.

A round trip from Kirkwall to Westray and Papa Westray costs £36. Is it worth it? Every penny. You can even get a certificate signed by the pilot.

Orkney has more than 70 islands, including 20 which are permanently inhabited. Back at Kirkwall Airport, our next flight is to North Ronaldsay. Among its claims to fame are a bird observatory and being home to the tallest land-based lighthouse in the UK.

Although this northernmost island in the Orkney archipelago is perhaps best-known for the seaweed-eating sheep which graze along the coastline.

As the plane flies over they can be seen scurrying about the shore and nimbly foraging among the wet rocks. A first glance they look more like goats than sheep. The seaweed gives the meat a distinct flavour which is much in demand with top chefs.

Rendall, 28, from Tankerness began flying with Loganair in 2012 and prior to that spent six years as ground staff at Kirkwall Airport. "I always wanted to fly for a job," he says. "When I left school I didn't think I could get into flying because it always seemed a bit of a privileged thing."

He gained his private pilot's licence in 2009 and a commercial licence two years later. After four years flying Loganair Saab 340 aircraft based out of Aberdeen, Rendall returned to Orkney last year to pilot the Islander.

"We carry everything people in the isles need in their daily lives," he says. "You get to know all the regular passengers well. One of the best parts of the job is getting to fly among such beautiful scenery – I can't think of many downsides."

Landing on the North Ronaldsay strip, the hazy silhouettes of Westray and Papa Westray can be seen in the distance. There's a quick turnaround on the ground and we're soon back in the air.

Each of the islands has a distinct personality, says Rendall. We pass over Sanday, known for its white sandy beaches and turquoise waters, followed by the jagged, star-shaped form of Stronsay where the annual seal pupping season takes place between now and November.

Over the coming weeks Stronsay's surrounding rocky outcrops, known as holms, will become thick with thousands of grey seals and their newborn young.

It was around these waters, says Rendall, that he saw a pod of orcas. "Some of the passengers spotted them when we were on the ground at Stronsay. That was pretty amazing. It certainly created some excitement for the rest of the shift."

While Rendall grew up in Kirkwall, his maternal side of the family come from Stronsay and another proud moment was being able to fly his mother and grandfather home to the island.

There is an ethereal quality to the light as we journey south. By now it is late afternoon and the sun is breaking through steely grey skies to bathe the landscape in silvery and gold hues.

Up ahead a few dark, heavy rain showers cascade. As we land at Kirkwall Airport the vivid rainbow seems to have been put there specially.

Earlier in the day, while hanging around the inter-island service desk, I get chatting to Premysl Fojtu, 32, who has worked as a customer services agent with Loganair for the past six years.

His role ranges from ticket sales and check-in to loading up cargo, dealing with paperwork and escorting passengers to the aircraft. "We do everything apart from flying and the engineering," he says, grinning.

Fojtu tells me that they regularly welcome passengers from across Europe, Australia, Japan, Canada and the US onto inter-island flights in Orkney. "We meet people from pretty much all the countries of the world each year," he says.

It turns out he is something of an island connoisseur himself. Originally from East Bohemia in the Czech Republic, he moved to Orkney in 2009.

In his spare time, Fojtu has undertaken a project photographing a different island here each month. Many of the locations are remote and uninhabited. He camps overnight with just a sleeping mat under the stars.

Through the camera lens Fojtu has captured scenes of wild beauty, rugged seascapes and night skies. "The things that people often don't notice or take for granted," he says.

Fojtu's words resonate with the growing bank of images in my own head. As a new day dawns, fresh adventures await with a flight to Fair Isle.

Loganair recently introduced a seasonal service – aimed primarily at bird watchers – from Kirkwall to the jewel-like island that forms part of neighbouring Shetland.

Sitting behind me on the plane are retired school teachers Roderick and Sylvia Thorne from Sanday. The couple are heading to Fair Isle for the first time in 36 years. "We are excited, but a little bit apprehensive," says Roderick. "We will see a lot of old friends which will be lovely," adds Sylvia.

Roderick, 70, was born in Berkshire and Sylvia, 68, in Hertfordshire. "We got married in Kent on Christmas Eve and arrived at Fair Isle for New Year's Day," recalls Sylvia. "I had never been that far north. Rod had taught in Shetland before including a term on Fair Isle.

"It was very remote and quite a hard life compared with today. It will be interesting to find out if it is equally as hard there now as it was 36 years ago. There was just two flights a week in those days. One boat in the winter and two boats in the summer."

The Thornes spent five years on Fair Isle before returning to Kent. Yet, the call of the Scottish isles proved strong. Three years later the couple moved to Sanday, which they have called home since 1984.

Drawing closer to Fair Isle, the emotion is palpable on Sylvia's face. There's a wonderful reunion at the airport as the pair are swept into bear hugs by a raft of old acquaintances.

Boarding the return flight to Kirkwall is Dave Wheeler, 74, who has lived on Fair Isle since 1972. We chat while the aircraft is being loaded up.

"I was drawn here by island life," he says. "Back in the late 1950s when I left school I went into the Met Office for a few years, then lived on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia for five or six years."

Fair Isle is renowned for its rich bird life and attracts ornithologists from around the world. Although this wasn't the lure for Wheeler. "I thought that we were interested in birds when we arrived, but quickly realised we weren't. It was more about the community life and remoteness."

He reels off his long list of jobs. "Photographer, meteorologist, crofter, registrar for births, deaths and marriages, airport manager and radio operator. I've never got time to retire."

Fair Isle is home to 10,000 puffins and more than 1,000 sheep. The human population is around 60. Two years ago a major drive was launched to boost the number of people living here.

Wheeler has witnessed first-hand the ebb and flow of life on Fair Isle over the past 45 years. "There has been a big swing from back in the early days where the majority of people worked on the land and were crofters," he says.

"Nowadays, with one or two exceptions, most people have two or three jobs and earn their income that way. Everything from teleworking to art, crafts, painting and knitting."

A few years ago, I spent time in Shetland with author Ann Cleeves ahead of the BBC drama series based on her crime novels being aired.

Cleeves spoke fondly of her time working as an assistant cook at the Fair Isle Bird Observatory and the people she met during that time. Wheeler makes a cameo in her books, dispatching weather reports to the fictional main protagonist Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez.

"Ann and her now husband Tim would come down quite frequently to help on our croft," recalls Wheeler, smiling at the memory. "It was on one occasion where they were travelling on the back on the hay cart together that Tim proposed to Ann."

I'm still thinking about this sweet story as we take off from Fair Isle. Our pilot Captain Colin McAllister, 52, also has plenty of interesting tales to tell. He has flown with Loganair for 14 years and is a gregarious walking – or should that be flying? – advert for the inter-island service.

His path to becoming a pilot was far from conventional. After getting itchy feet, McAllister gave up his job as an engineer at 28 and went travelling. "I ended up in Nepal and saw the Twin Otters landing in the foothills of the Himalayas," he says. "That was my lightbulb moment."

Glasgow-born McAllister did his training in New Zealand and from there moved to Botswana where he flew for four years in the Okavango Delta. He returned to Scotland in 2003 and applied for jobs in the Falklands and Channel Islands, but Orkney was always his first choice.

That particular seed was planted decades earlier when McAllister was an aviation-obsessed youngster growing up under the flight path in Milngavie.

"As a child I would go to the airport, press my nose up against the fence and look at the Loganair planes at the hangar," he recalls. "It is funny how it took me going to Nepal all those years later to remember that was what I had wanted to do."

While Fair Isle attracts bird watchers, McAllister is used to seeing ornithologists flock to North Ronaldsay. Last week a Siberian blue robin arrived, believed to be the first adult male of the breed in the UK.

"Suddenly birders from everywhere wanted to fly to North Ronaldsay," he says. "There was another bird last year that a fellow flew from Sierra Leone to see.

"When he landed in Kirkwall we weren't flying because of fog. He chartered a boat to take him out to North Ronaldsay and the next day I took him back to Kirkwall to begin his exodus home."

Did the chap see the bird in question? "He did," confirms McAllister. "But there have been people who have come all that way only to land in North Ronaldsay and find the bird has flown."

Rarely a day goes by without some standout moment. "I never wake-up thinking: 'Oh, I wish I didn't have to go to work today,'" he says. "I'm happy and a lot of that is to do with finding a job I love.

"What I do here isn't rocket science. It isn't pushing the boundaries. But it is a nice little niche I have found and enjoy. Not a lot of pilots are looking to do this kind of flying. They want to hop onto jets to go faster and further. There are very few who just want to pootle around at low level on an Islander."

McAllister describes the flights around Orkney as being "part of the DNA" of island life. "I like the fact that I'm in the same little compartment as my passengers so I share their emotions, their joy and, at times, fear," he says.

"I'm not frightened but sometimes when it has been a bumpy day with low cloud, it does get very quiet in the cabin behind me. Then suddenly, when you are on the ground again, everyone starts chattering away because the tension has been broken.

"You don't see that when you are at the sharp end of a big plane. I love being able to share that aspect and have a bit of banter with the regulars."

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McAllister equally draws pleasure from seeing it through the eyes of visitors experiencing Orkney from the skies for the first-time. "Having flown these routes thousands of times, I can sometimes forget how beautiful the islands look from air," he says.

"But then, when I see it on their faces and hear them talk about it once we've landed, that reminds me what a special place this is and also what a special thing we do here for the community."

GETTING THERE

Loganair flights to Westray, Papa Westray and North Ronaldsay from Kirkwall cost £18 each-way. Flights to Kirkwall from Glasgow and Edinburgh start from £82 return. Visit loganair.co.uk

WHERE TO STAY

Avalon Guest House, St Ola, Kirkwall, offers B&B from £80 per night. Call 01856 876665 or visit avalon-house.co.uk

USEFUL INFORMATION

Orkney is celebrating Scotland's Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology 2017. For details, visit visitscotland.com