By Nigel Heath
Double sailing days to the magical Isles of Scilly, the UKs smallest officially designated area of outstanding natural beauty always mean a very early start.
Those departing from Penzance to the island capital of St Mary’s on the first of two daily round trips by the passenger and supply ship, MV Scillonian III, need to board between 5.30am and 6.15am for a departure at 6.45am.
Hardy souls head for the open decks in search of sheltered spots in which to spend the next two and a half hours sailing down the coast to Land’s End and beyond some 28 miles across the open ocean to make landfall amid a myriad of semi sub-tropical islands.
For the five inhabited islands of St Mary’s, St Martins, Tresco, St Agnes and Bryher all have officially designated Heritage Coasts, dazzling white sand bars and are surrounded by azure seas.
“Look dolphins,” cries a young boy and all the nearby passengers rush to the railings in answer to his pied piper call.
Making landfall in St Marys, the ship’s crane quickly deposited small containers full of luggage onto the quay with our cases now being swiftly transferred to the launch bound for St Martin’s, our island home for the next ten days.
Now cutting through the white-foamed waves away from our mother ship under fast clearing blue skies with seabirds skimming across the water and their cries ringing in our ears, we began to feel that our holiday had truly begun.
MV Scillonian had sailed in through the islands and over The Crow (sand) Bar on high water and not around the back of St Mary’s, past The Garrison headland and the centuries-old Star Castle, which meant that we would be making landfall at Higher Town on St Martins and disappointingly not at Lower Town.
For had it been the latter then our sturdy launch, the Sapphire, loaded with our luggage and that for the island camp site, together with the first party of eager day trippers, would have deposited us on the quay right outside the Idyllic Karma St Martin’s Hotel, stone-built to resemble a row of fisherman’s cottages overlooking a dazzling beach of pure white sand.
As it was, we stepped ashore at Higher Town, right on the top of the tide when the Lower Town jetty would have been almost totally submerged.
“OK, folks, we’ll be picking you up at Lower Town at 4pm and 4.45pm,” called out Joe Pender, our highly experienced skipper and chairman of The St Mary’s Boatmen’s Association, to the visitors, mostly dressed for a day’s wandering around a more or less deserted holiday island amid a myriad of wild flowers.
One of their rambling destinations was sure to be the sheltered and almost always empty Little Bay and linking Great Bay sandy beaches, arguably the best in in the whole of the archipelago.
It is of course inevitable that island life is governed by the weather and the tides and that day trippers from St Mary’s to an off island are landed at one quay and picked up from another.
And there are also times when the tide between the islands of Tresco and neighbouring Bryher are so low that it is possible to walk from one island to the other and becomes the excuse for a mid-island pop-up festival.
Now while all the day visitors on our launch wandered off, my wife, Jenny, and I loaded our cases into the back of a waiting car for our ride along the island’s only single-track road through the tiny, picturesque and sheltered hamlet of Middle Town and on to The Karma St Martin’s Hotel.
As our room would not be ready until after lunch, we headed out onto the still quite high tidal strand with the cool soft white sand sinking beneath our feet and a gentle breeze blowing, and around the nearby headland to reveal the wide sweep of a completely deserted sandy bay looking across to St Marys.
With some giant granite boulders as back rests, we settled down for a snooze under a clear blue sky as recompense for our early start. But before I even had time to close my eyes, a young couple, dressed in T-shirts and shorts with a four-year-old boy in a sun hat, emerged from a path between nearby sand dunes and walked slowly down the beach some distance in front of me towards a small inflatable dinghy – the ends of its oars just visible.
Now wide awake I watched fascinated as the dad dragged the dinghy to the water’s edge, floated it, climbed deftly in and began rowing away. Standing knee deep in the water and now hand in hand and seemingly unperturbed, mother and child watched him go. Then I spotted the small launch with an outboard motor attached to a line about 100 yards from the shore.
In just a few minutes the dad had climbed aboard, attached the dinghy, started the motor with one swift action and was heading back to collect his young family.
Now closing slowly on the shore, he nosed his way in while the mum lifted the lad aboard before climbing in herself and then they were gone.
I marvelled at just how easy this young family made the whole operation look and it occurred to me that they were probably islanders, who had done it many times before.
Dragging my gaze away from the launch as it receded into the distance, I spotted a couple coming slowly towards us and as they drew near, they looked to be a mother with a daughter in her early twenties.
“Aren’t we lucky to have this whole entire fabulous beach to ourselves,” I called out by way of a greeting. “Yes, but it seems to be closed off at the very far end,” the mum responded and then the penny dropped with a memory from our previous year’s holiday on St Martin’s. “Ah, that’s because there are ground-nesting ringed plovers in the area,” I replied.
“Let’s go for a stroll ourselves,” Jenny suggested, as she was keen to see if she could spot any minute cowri shells that might have been washed ashore along the tide line and are meant to bring good luck to the finder.
But with another nine and a half days remaining of our holiday in the Isles of Scilly and visits by launch to the neighbouring islands of Treco and Bryher and a trip out with islands ornithologist Will Wagstaff already planned, I felt that we already had our fair share from Lady Luck.
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Those tempted to visit the islands can have their experience enhanced by St Martin’s-based Jo William’s Seaquest glass bottom boat trips, plus trips out run by Boatmen’s Association and private operators to see the seals, puffins and a variety of other seabirds or one can even participate in a Scilly Rockpool Safari.
