I suspect most people had never heard of Altnaharra until the big freeze last week. The tiny village in the Scottish Highlands recorded a teeth-tingling low temperature of minus 22.3C on Thursday night. But that was positively tropical compared with the minus 27.2C it endured in 1995: Britain’s lowest ever recorded low, matched only by Braemar the previous decade.

I have fond memories of the place. I cycled through it in June 2002 on my Land’s End to John O’Groats bike ride, near the end of a 1,060 mile odyssey. I was stunned by the hauntingly stark beauty of the region. We had stopped for lunch at the Crask Inn, a rather basic pub in the middle of nowhere on a narrow road north towards the north coast. The weather had been surprisingly good, though the sky threatened a deluge. I would have loved a photo of me cycling along the lonely valley road to Altnaharra, a mere spot on the landscape.

Even on a bike, it’s possible to pass through Altnaharra without even noticing it. But I did reflect from my Raleigh Randonneur that was a rather nice village, but extraordinarily isolated. At the village crossroads, I turned right to the even quieter lane that led to Loch Naver, Syre and Bettyhill. The weather closed in as I passed the loch, and was very wet as I climbed the hill to the Bettyhill hotel.

Before you dismiss Altnaharra as an ice station, the village was actually the warmest place in Britain in March 2009 at a heady 18.5C.