The Isles of Scilly – south-west of England

I’d learnt that the Orkney Islands is the correct term for those north Scotland Islands and I soon learnt that it’s the Isles of Scilly – not the Scilly Islands or the Scillies. After a brief stop in Penzance our group – Maureen and me and seven friends – took the Scillonian III ferry to St Mary’s, the major island in the group. Of the 140-odd islands in the group just five – St Mary’s, Tresco, St Martin’s, Bryher, and St Agnes are inhabited with a total population of about 2,200. The islands are only 50km west from Land’s End, the south-western end of the British Isles.

▲ St Mary’s Harbour – When the sun’s shining the harbour at Hugh Town, the ‘capital’ of the isles and the main settlement on St Mary’s, can be picture perfect.

▲ Star Castle Hotel, St Mary’s – we stayed in the hotel built into the town’s defensive castle, which results in some decidedly awkwardly shaped rooms. But the hotel’s two restaurants are terrific at dinner time.

◄ Garrison Wall, St Mary’s – the garrison walls surround the castle and it makes a fine hour-long circuit.

▲ Scilly Cart, Hugh Town, St Mary’s – the island is small enough to virtually walk around on foot, but the ideal transport is to hire a ‘cart,’ rather like an electric golf cart and available in two, four or six-seater versions.

▲  Cart on the road (Jane Hobbs) – They’re definitely not very fast, but there isn’t far to go so that is absolutely no problem. What is a problem is that they’re strictly available for UK residents. If you don’t have a British driving license you’re ineligible to rent one. Which pretty much fits the mood of the Isles of Scilly, this is a strictly British tourist destination and preferably elderly Brits, young people are in a distinct minority. The other thing the islands are short of is signposting, you don’t get much help finding your way around.

▲ Nick & sparrows at Carn Vean Cafe, St Mary’s – birds, however, are in the majority. Perhaps it’s the lack of cats, but wherever we went the birds would turn up. Sparrows may be in decline elsewhere in Britain, they’re certainly not in the Isles of Scilly and if you’re eating they’re likely to turn up looking for their share. There are lots of other birds as well, in particular thrushes who always seemed to be hopping about, vigorously smashing snail shells on any hard surface to extract a snack.

▲ Innsidgen Upper chamber grave, St Mary’s – there’s lots of evidence of early settlement on the islands including a number of chamber graves, I thought Bant’s Carn on St Mary’s was the best of the bunch and just below it is the fairly extensive Halangy Down village ruins, which reminded me of Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands.

▲ A selfie with Harold Wilson’s holiday home, Hugh Town, St Mary’s – Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1964-1970, 1974-1976) retired to St Mary’s and died on the island, you can find his grave at St Mary’s Old Church in Old Town. You can also find his retirement home in Hugh Town and as you can see it’s a distinctly modest place.

▲ ferries, Isles of Scilly – ferries shuttle in and out of the Hugh Town Harbour, to and from the other islands of the group. Yes, they are almost all open to the elements, but in the winter months, when sitting outside could be distinctly unpleasant, they shut down and getting from one island to another is not easy.

◄ Neptune bust, Tresco Abbey Gardens – we crossed over to Tresco where the garden is the big attraction, thanks to Augustus Smith who built the Abbey house on the site of a former Benedictine abbey between 1835 and 1861. He established the beautiful garden although it was considerably extended by Arthur Dorrien-Smith in the early 1900s. The gardens also feature the Valhalla Museum with a collection of ships’ figureheads and other maritime memorabilia. Augustus Smith fell out so badly with the authorities on the islands that he’s buried on the mainland, although we had encountered a memorial to him at St Mary’s Old Church.

◄ Red squirrel, Tresco Abbey Gardens – British red squirrels are in retreat, pushed north into Scotland by the bigger, bulkier, pushier grey squirrels which arrived from North America in the 1800s. Today there are hardly any red squirrels left in England. The Abbey Gardens’ red squirrels were flown in – 20 of them – in 2013 and with no grey competitors are doing fine.

▲ Nick & Jane, pizza, Ruin Beach Cafe, Old Grimsby, Tresco – it’s a pleasant walk across the island from New Grimsby or from the Abbey Gardens to the very pleasant Ruin Beach Café, renowned for its fine pizzas.

◄ Ferry at Carn Near Quay, Tresco – when we departed Tresco the tide was too low to use the New Grimsby Quay where we arrived, we had to make the trek to this quay at the other end of the island.

◄ St Agnes Lighthouse – another ferry took us across to St Agnes where the lighthouse is sited smack in the middle of the island. There are plenty of lighthouses and daymarks around the islands.

▲ Troytown Maze, St Agnes – a pleasant island stroll makes a circuit of the island, including a stop to puzzle out the maze and then a stop for an ice cream at the Troytown Farm.

▲ St Agnes Church, St Agnes – and a stop at the church with its interesting gravestones and decidedly seafaring stained-glass window: a lighthouse on one side of the church, seamen pulling on their oars on the other.

▲ Fergus, Tony & Nick hold up The Old Man of Gugh, Gugh Island (Jane Hobbs) – apart from at high tide a sand spar connects St Agnes with Gugh Island where you can find the Obadiah’s Barrow chamber grave and the Old Man of Gugh standing stone.

▲ cormorants drying their wings, Eastern Islands – we chartered a boat to take us on an island tour, looping out from St Mary’s through the uninhabited Eastern Islands, then north of St Martin’s and past the lighthouse on Round Island and north of uninhabited St Helen’s. Then we squeezed between Tresco and Bryher, noting King Charles’s Castle and Cromwell’s Castle on Tresco and Hangman’s Island just offshore from Bryher Island. Finally we headed east, passing north of Samson Island, to check Mincarlo, noted for its bird population including those popular puffin, they whisk by so rapidly, tiny wings flapping like crazy, that they’re hard to spot. We can see Annet, another larger uninhabited island west of St Agnes, and the solitary Bishop Rock lighthouse way off at the north-west extremity of the group. It’s perched on a small rock, hardly bigger than the base of the tower.

▲ HMS Somerset and a solstice sunset from the Star Castle Hotel, St Mary’s

◄ Skybus Land’s End test flight – we’d arrived in the islands on the ferry (two hours 45 minutes) but returned on a Twin Otter from Skybus Airlines (15 minutes). That is to say we returned once our flight had arrived. We waited through repeated delays while they sorted out some sort of technical problem at Land’s End Airport on the mainland. I was keeping watch on the FlightRadar24 tracking app and eventually our aircraft took off from Land’s End and flew this complicated series of circuits before they eventually decided it was OK and flew it out to collect us.