Wingletang Down, with lighthouse left of centre. The rather rude rock is, with considerable delicacy, known as the Devil's Punchbowl!



July 12 On Wingletang Down

I rather think that the Isles of Scilly is my favourite place in all the world. I love my home in Somerset, of course; the Blackdown Hills has a very special place in my heart; Dartmoor moves me as nowhere else; and I have a great fondness for the blue sea and golden beaches of the south west corner of Portugal. But I guess that if you were to invite me to choose a place in which to spend a final holiday before the great umpire in the sky draws stumps, the Isles of Scilly it would have to be.

For islands so beautiful, it is quite remarkable how unspoilt they have remained. The air is pure and clean, the sea is clearer than a mountain stream, the sky on a clear night is a wonder to behold. And within every island, there are the most remarkable contrasts between the sub-tropical calm of the lagoon-facing coasts, and the wildness of the cliffs and heaths battered by the open sea.

I would visit all of the inhabited islands in the course of my final holiday (and Samson as well), for they are all beautiful in their different ways: cosmopolitan St. Mary’s; the slightly rough diamond that is Bryher; the white sands and crystal waters of St. Martins; even time-share Tresco has its charms, quite apart from the Abbey Gardens. But the island on which I would base myself would be St. Agnes. It is the smallest of the main islands, the most southerly, the most Celtic and, to my mind, the most characteristically Scillonian..

You can walk its coastline in a morning, as I did yesterday. Starting at the smart new quay, with its formal gardens, I walked anti-clockwise, to the cricket ground, on which I would so love to play, and on to Periglis, with its perfect crescent of white sand, little church, lifeboat station and whitewashed cottages. Troytown Farm is next, with its campsite, its farm shop and the new house for the coming generation of Hicks’ (almost everyone who lives on St. Agnes is a Hicks), as featured on “An Island Parish” on the BBC during the winter.

Then it is out onto Wingletang Down, with its fantastical rock formations, springy turf, ancient sites and the ever-restless sea. I paused at the 400 year old Troytown Maze and threw a coin into St. Warna’s well, into which – according to what I’m sure is as baseless a story as it is scurrilous – the locals used to throw pins and pray for shipwrecks. There is a little beach in the south west corner of Wingletang called Porth Askin.

Porth Askin


The last time we were there, Claire found herself pursued by an amorous seal (well, it was an easy mistake for him to make!). This time, I swam on my own, and there were no seals. The water was cold, but not breathtakingly so.

I made a point of visiting Horse Point, which I’m pretty sure is the most southerly point in the British Isles, before turning north past Beady Pool, to the sandbar which joins St. Agnes to Gugh (off which most of the sand has been washed by last winter’s storms) and finally, the Turk’s Head, which is Claire’s favourite pub, and where I ate a whole Scilly crab, so fresh that it was still warm from the boiler. The sun was out by now, and I dozed the afternoon away on Gugh. It was a day made in heaven.

From the Turk's Head, looking past the new quay towards Tresco

After all of that, my visit to Land’s End this morning was a bit of a come-down. It is by no means the most spectacular headland in Cornwall and any sense of being at the end of the world has been entirely destroyed, not just by the hotel, but by the spectacularly tacky “shopping village” and sundry other “amusements”, which have been allowed to grow up alongside. The contrast with the smart and sophisticated visitor centre at the Cliffs of Moher, or the way in which the French have sought to protect the wildness of the Pointe du Raz by keeping the tourist facilities at a discreet distance is by no means to Cornwall’s advantage.

Just reverting to the Scillies for a moment, it is a mistake to think of them as offering Cornishness in its purest, most distilled form, in the way that the Aran Islands do with Irishness. They do have a strongly Celtic core, of course, but it has been seasoned and enriched over the centuries by the myriad of people who have washed up on Scilly’s shores – often quite literally – and have chosen to remain. They do say that one of the reasons why the islands are so different from each other is the influence of shipwreck. The inhabitants of St. Agnes tend to be short and dark, on account, so the theory goes, of the Spanish ship that was wrecked there in the sixteenth century. The people of St. Martins, by contrast, are tall and blue-eyed, by courtesy of the men who made it to shore when a Norwegian ship went down, many moons ago.

While I was waiting at Lands End airport to board the little aeroplane that would carry me to Scilly, a Cornish lady came up to me and said “you must be a Scillonian”. I had to confess that I wasn’t. But given that Scillonians have a well-deserved reputation for being handsome, unfailingly courteous and well-spoken, I took it as a considerable compliment.

A final word about the campsite – Trevedra Farm. It is the best of the 25 I’ve stayed at so far, bar none. The fields are level, the views are superb ( I can actually see the Scillies in the distance out of Carmen’s windows as I write), the farm shop sells all sorts of local goodies, including excellent pasties, the showers and loos are clean and smart and there is a lovely sandy surfing beach just half a mile away down the cliff.

It’s also only a couple of miles from the little town which really does offer the essence of Cornwall, and that is St. Just. It has two really good pubs (the Star and the King’s Head), the best pasty shop in the Duchy (Warrens) and an excellent fish and chip restaurant, which is where I’m headed on my bicycle to buy my supper. I might just have a pint as well, while I’m there!


St. Martin's