Scilly Isles

There isn't a Scilly Isles Way, but there could be, in much way as there is a Channel Island Way, combining routes around each of the islands. A selection of routes is published in Paddy Dillon's Cicerone guide to "Walking in the Isles of Scilly". The guide describes three walking routes on St Mary's, two on Tresco, and one on each of the other inhabited islands, St Martin's, Bryher and St Agnes, plus Gugh (which has two houses and is linked to St Agnes by a tidal bar) and Samson (which was inhabited until 1855).

The Isles of Scilly provide very manageable walking; each island could be walked around in one day and the length of the walks in the Cicerone Guide varies between 1.5 miles and 10 miles. The coastal walking is surprisingly varied, from glorious beaches to (low) cliffs, and of course they have interiors too, with two nature reserves on St Mary's plus a vineyard, and the famous Abbey Garden on Tresco. The Scillies used to be famous for flower growing (with an advantage over the mainland as a result of the mild climate) and some of the flower growers remain. Looking rather further back into history, there are lots of interesting archaeological remains, from ancient tombs to standing stones.

We visited the Scilly Isles in May 2018. We only had four days on the islands (plus travelling time) and we had one wet morning (when we visited the fascinating Isles of Scilly Museum), but we managed to explore St Mary's, Tresco and St Martin's reasonably thoroughly and also to visit St Agnes and Gugh on an evening boat trip which gave us two and a half hours to explore. Another couple of days would have enabled us to visit Bryher and Samson and to explore St Mary's more thoroughly.

We stayed at the Wingletang Guest House, in Hugh Town on St Mary's. We'd particularly recommend the food (breakfast and evening meals on weekday evenings) at Wingletang, and it has a lovely central location. We flew to St Mary's Airport from Land's End Airport, which we'd reached after travelling to Penzance by train and staying overnight at the Lombard House Hotel (also recommended). We flew in both directions on one of their bigger planes; a Twin Otter with all of 12 people on board! On the way back, we were moved to an earlier flight than we'd booked because fog was forecast, so we had time to walk to Marizion for a fish and chip supper eaten looking out to St Michael's Mount, before returning to Penzance for the sleeper to London. The sleeper was an interesting experience, though not great for sleep...

Part of the fun of the holiday was the boat trips to the "off islands". The Isles of Scilly were very busy when we were there and, with the exception of the evening trip to St Agnes and Gugh, the boats were packed. However, when walking, we quickly managed to get away from other people (as the photographs show). Overall, it was a very enjoyable holiday.

The photographs on this page show White Island from St Martin's; Great Bay and Little Bay, St Martin's; the Nag's Head, St Agnes; Piper's Hole, Tresco; Bryher and Cromwell's Castle from King Charles' Castle, Treso. It was difficult to select such a small number of photographs to represent my memory of the Scilly Isles; the rest are here.