Today, the sole occupant lives off a couple of cows and herbs, yet looks well enough to provoke admiring gazes from female passengers, perhaps dreaming of their own castaway experience.
Alternatively, you can relax in the backpacker town of El Chaltén, admiring the views, the condors and the craft beers – La Vineria has a great stock of ales and Patagonian wines.
Sir John Major said: "It was impossible to know Garret FitzGerald without liking him, and impossible to like him without admiring him.
But they forgive these smaller issues for the bigger picture; as I greet them they are thumbing through the Wetherspoon magazine, admiring the opulence of Harrogate Wetherspoon, the Winter Gardens, housed in a former Royal Bath building.
Arguably Colombia's most beautiful city, Cartagena combines striking colonial architecture and a vibrant cultural life without sacrificing reality: streets are still buzzing with locals and you can find yourself spending longer than expected people-watching in a coffee shop or just sitting in a square admiring the orange and yellow houses.
"It's not often as a manager you can be detached but at 3-0 it was a case of standing on the touchline, admiring my team and enjoying it".
After admiring the pool table where Jackie Gleason rehearsed his role as Minnesota Fats in The Hustler, we had "one for the road" in The Billy Crystal bar.
Despite the concerns on Grange farm, Andrew Pitts is admiring the quality of this year's wheat: "See the flintiness of that grain – the opaqueness – that means the grain has high-protein, which will make good bread".
An hour in Carlisle had been spent admiring some of the curviest architecture outside of Barcelona and an international art exhibition on tour from the V&A in London.
Tellingly, his characters break off from admiring the masterpieces in order to knock dead bluebottles out of the canopy overhead.
"Wow, look at those awesome jeans," I mused, admiring a pair of loose-but-cool jeans on disembodied mannequin's legs.
