It’s a shame so few Argentinians, bar hundreds of uninvited soldiers in 1982, have visited West Falkland. If they did, they’d renounce their stupid sovereignty claim and finally understand that the Falklands are as hardy, unyielding and British as the crown jewels, Stonehenge and Hadrian’s Wall put together.

I’ve travelled to the Islands a few times, but always to East Falkland, mainly Stanley. The stars never aligned for a trip to the wild, remote West. But last weekend changed that. I hopped on board an eight-seater aircraft, flew low, westwards, over barren rocky hills, then over Falkland Sound, before landing at the tiny hamlet of Port Howard.

I can only imagine what it must have been like for the original British settlers in 1866. Because this is as isolated as it gets. The hamlet comprises 20 or so whitewashed houses dotted over a hillside, and continues to make its living from sheep farming, producing what was described to me by farm owner, Myles, as the finest wool available.

Myles’ farm is a staggering 300-square miles, with 40,000 sheep on its rugged terrain. You see a mountain in the distance, and then learn that it’s all part of his land. The scale is mind-boggling, and the view south, down an inlet off Falkland Sound, is majestic. The air is so fresh it feels like you’re drinking pure iced water. The only sound is the wind whistling off the Atlantic.

This is life in the raw, and the older inhabitants look like they’ve been hewn from Falklands rock. Bill, who’s been resident for his entire adult life, having grown up on nearby Saunders Island, took me on a tour in his four-by-four. Roads? Forget it. Not even tracks. You have to know what you’re about, and Bill does.

We carved our way up the mountain side, meandering past endless boulders and ditches, to the remote spot where the Argentinians shot dead Captain Gavin Hamilton in ’82, then down towards the desolate beach where the British, under Captain John Strong, became the first people ever to set foot in the Falklands in 1690. Back in the hamlet, we saw the community hall where hundreds of freezing Argentina soldiers, desperate to escape the incessant wind and cold, huddled together during their brief, ill-fated invasion.

Next day, we drove on a little-used road 50 miles southwards towards Fox Bay, passing not one other vehicle. Half way along we stopped to inspect the wing of an Argentinian aircraft, speared into the ground like a knife sticking out of a loaf of stale bread – a fitting emblem of that failed attempt to subjugate the Islanders by force. We were as far away from other human beings as I’ve ever been, with the bleak, windswept terrain stretching out in all directions.

Fox Bay Village, too, is tiny, yet demonstrates how Britishness is ingrained into the fabric of these Islands, and how absurd any Argentine claim is. Captain Robert Christopher Packe arrived in the mid-19^th century and, with his brother Edward, took out a lease, later forming Packe Brothers & Co and introducing the sheep farming that remains to this day. They built the basics of a woolshed, pens, carpenter’s shop, cowsheds, hen runs and gardens. All are still there.

As I sat in the community hall with the locals last Saturday night, sipping beer and taking part in the most British of pub quizzes, I reflected on how hopeless Argentina’s cause is. For all their bullying and whining, West Falkland, like its eastern neighbour, has only ever been British. It is we who first landed there, only we who have ever lived there, and only we who have developed the vast farms on which the Islands have prospered. West Falkland is the best of rugged, earthy grit – a tough British outpost in the wilds of the South Atlantic.

My visit gave me utter certainty about the future of the Islands. And I can say this to Argentina: there is more chance of your soldiers marching up Whitehall than your absurd sovereignty claims being realised. Give up. The Falklands, East and West, always have been, are and always will be, British.