Unspoilt for choice

The Isles of Scilly, October 2019

The day before we left I received a text message (and email and phone call) from Isles of Scilly Travel: due to adverse weather conditions, the Scillonian III would now be leaving at 6:30am instead of 9:15am on Friday. Meaning we would have to get up at 4am.

It was raining and windy when we arrived at the port in Penzance but the journey started off okay, until we were both rudely awoken from our brief naps by the swinging back and forth of the boat. There were only 78 people on board – compared to the usual 450 (full capacity). Well, it was late October.

We arrived on St Mary’s at 9am (instead of 12pm), checked into our hotel overlooking the harbour, had breakfast, and went to bed. Well I did, M was taking photos of the birds seen from our hotel room window – a perfect view of harbour and sea and islands in the distance. By now it was raining hard with large waves lashing against the harbour walls.

Still, we weren’t going to let a bit of rain and wind spoil our holiday. M forced me out of bed and we ventured out and did a coastal walk around St Mary’s. Actually not that bad, the weather. Bracing for sure, and dramatic, with the waves crashing against the huge rocks around the coastline. Most annoying was a distinct hole in the sole of my Merrell’s walking shoes, bought the day before I went to Peru; actually for a year they'd had a hole but it had now reached catastrophic proportions. To M’s delight, there would be a constant stream of her dad's wet socks on the radiator in our hotel room.

We saw a strange-looking jellyfish on one of the beautiful, empty, white sand beaches. M immediately knew it was a... umm... Chinese man of war? Japanese man of war? Something like that. Actually, once her mother texted her back, a Portuguese man o’ war, of course, so named for its resemblance to the 18th century Portuguese warship (in full sail) of the same name. We would see a few of the creatures over the next few days, mostly dead on the beach but one in the water alive, actually not a jellyfish but technically a siphonophore, a collective of animals rather than an individual, and about 30 foot long with its tentacles extended. Deadly to fish but not humans, it can still give quite a sting.

Portuguese man o’ war

The most exciting thing about the Isles of Scilly is island hopping, but with the weather as it was, local boats weren’t going to other islands. We checked the harbour blackboard often to see when the first boat was going. Finally, a boat was slated in for the next morning – to Bryher, one of the smaller inhabitable islands of the archipelago.

During the day Hugh Town on St. Mary’s, the main, that is, only, town on the Scillies, was empty, with most of its few shops and cafes shut for winter. At night, it was a ghost town from a horror film, with few eating opportunities, the daughter being anti-pubs, of which there were two. Amazingly, we did find a fairly hip pizza joint, where the waiter stumbled and dropped a freshly baked pizza flat down on the floor soon after we entered, exclaiming “I’ve never done that before!”

Next morning it seemed every tourist on St Mary’s (probably about twenty) was on the boat to Bryher. I inwardly scoffed at their geeky attire, waterproof jackets and trousers. It was hardly raining now; M and I were in jeans and jackets. The other tourists were all in the boat before us, for some reason all huddled up against the cockpit. We spread out on the benches. Then the fun started. Although it was hardly raining, the water was still a bit choppy. Waves poured into the boat like buckets of water. Within minutes it was like we’d been swimming with our clothes on. Our jeans stuck to our legs. The smug, sensible tourists were doubly dry: in their waterproofs huddled in the cockpit.

We’d got a cold (and wet) shoulder from fellow English tourists, engaging in awkward small talk with them, but warmed instantly to an elderly American couple, who we seemed to bump into everywhere we went and would be almost the only friendly people we’d meet on the islands – the other being a Canadian woman who worked at our hotel.

Emerging onto Bryher, soaked through several hundred times, with the rain and wind picking up again, wasn’t our idea of fun, and we headed straight into the first sheltered place we could find – Bryher Shop and Post Office, where I bought coffee and chocolate and we attempted to huddle by a heater. I would have stayed there all day but the shop was closing in a few minutes, and we were chucked out.

M was far from happy at this point, and we walked on until we came to Hell Bay Hotel, the highest rated hotel and restaurant on the Isles of Scilly, on the wild western shores of the island. Well, we deserved some comfort. The American couple were already enjoying their comfort when we arrived, sitting in comfy armchairs and tucking into bowls of moules mariniére with a bottle of white wine.

We ordered hot chocolates and lunch and chatted with the Americans as we stood against the radiators and tried to dry out. The staff let us use their small, heated laundry room for drying out our jumpers, shoes and socks (and we closed ourselves in the dark enclosure for several minutes to get that sauna-like experience). When we came back the American woman insisted on M changing into her spare, dry and clean trousers whilst M dried out hers on a radiator. We got chatting to a middle-aged northerner, a bit of a curmudgeon, who’d spent a fortnight on Bryher bird spotting, but only seen one rare one so far.

We were finally dried and relaxed. Then we realised the time. The local boats only sail once a day, usually taking tourists in the morning and picking them up in the afternoon. We had about an hour left to explore the island, which was fine, considering the small size of Bryher. We had a good stomp around the rugged rocks, only getting lost once, and only bumping into the Americans and the northerner once.

The waves going the other way, on the return journey none of us got wet. Back in Hugh Town, I’m determined to buy some new walking shoes, so we check out the one shop selling outdoor clothes and shoes. Unfortunately, the Isles of Scilly have the same acronym as the iPhone’s operating system, iOS. There is an Isles of Scilly clothing company, called 49 Degrees, who sell T-shirts and hoodies with IOS plastered on them in uncool fonts, looking like fake, foreign Apple iOS attire. Anyway, the shoes I tried on didn’t fit.

Finally on Sunday morning the rain clouds have passed and it’s a beautiful bright morning without rain or wind, after almost two days of it. From our room, clear views of the sea and harbour and hundreds of birds in the morning, floating past the windows.

This being the case we, along with every other tourist on St. Mary’s, were off to sub-tropical Tresco, the most manicured (and the only privately-owned) but arguably the most beautiful of the islands, due to Abbey Garden, a ‘horticultural paradise’ housing more than 20,000 exotic plants. There are also impossibly-exotic golden pheasants and red squirrels wandering around the place.

A brief sunny interlude

M had been keen on photographing birds on the island, and indeed had done so with gusto ever since we’d arrived. They’d been cormorants, hanging their wings out to dry, turnstones, oyster catchers flitting along the beach, gannets, starlings, thrushes, a curlew always one beach ahead of us, some spoonbills perched on a rock we’d seen from the boat, and “intimidating sparrows” (M's words).

Once so common, now apparently in decline, there were dozens of them outside on the Abbey Garden cafe tables and chairs. Like a scene from The Birds, they wouldn’t leave us – or rather our food – alone, so we had to retreat inside.

Sunday evening, our last night, I thought we’d try some local fish and chips. A small, down a dingy corridor kind of place called The Scillonian Club says it’s a Fish Bar until it turns into Charlie’s Bar, a 1970s-looking pub, and on Sundays it’s Carvery only.

M said kids at a nearby table were laughing at me, I couldn’t care less, I was too confused trying to figure things out. The Scillonian Club? Fish Bar? Charlie’s Bar? Carvery? What? Then I’m told we have to order in another room, but find a table in the room we’re in, which is full. The carpet was from a 1970s sitcom and the youth were drunk and shouting. The American couple were there looking like fish out of water, but at least they had a table and a roast. We left.

We ended up in The Mermaid, a dodgy-looking pub (all pubs are dodgy according to M; she’s probably right) serving average, over-priced food. At least it was quiet – until we’d ordered that is, then the drunken youth from Charlie’s Bar rocked up, including one paralytic young man who is the breakfast waiter at our hotel. He staggers to the bathroom halfway through our meal, and never returns.

Over breakfast the next morning, in a whisper, M asks me how our waiter isn’t hungover. Well, he probably is, but he’s young, he can take it. With only a few hours before our ferry leaves, we do some local beachcombing, bumping into the American couple, who already have a whole bag of smooth glass they’d found and were going to take back home, to Maine or New England somewhere. They’d been all over the place in the last few weeks: Europe, Scotland, London, Cornwall.

I’d been quizzing the friendly Canadian receptionist at our hotel about living on the Isles of Scilly – it had been M’s dream for years. Well, she said, it’s great if you're into the outdoors but there’s a massive problem with drink and drugs. Always problems in paradise.

The weather had steadily been getting worse and by the time our boat left, it was decidedly stormy. The last time I vomited must have been some fifteen years ago* – and I suddenly remembered why it was so long ago – I hate being sick: I sound like I’m starring in The Exorcist, I’m sweating, loudly coughing, ghoulish, sounding as if I’m puking up my inner body parts.

And this is how it was for me for about an hour in the toilets until I was rescued by two stewards, who escorted me out; I emerged as if I’d been lost in the jungle for two weeks, exclaiming as I stumbled out, vomit on the walls and floors, down my chin and on my jeans, ‘I have a daughter! I have to tell her where I am!’ They called her name over the tanoy, obvs so embarrassing for M. She’d actually done the classic and vomited out on deck into the wind. Even after reaching dry land, we went from car to train to bus to train, then me back to work, so I was still feeling dizzy for the next day or so.

Anyway, M had wanted to live on the Isles of Scilly for years; this holiday had irrevocably shattered that dream. At least it had been a memorable holiday, quality time with father and daughter. Luckily M’s a great traveller and fine company (must run in the family).

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*It was after a party I’d attended with a South Korean colleague called Ken. We’d had one too many strawberry daiquiris with Louise in a bar before the party. On the train home after the party, I’d left Ken unconscious on the train at Vauxhall whilst I ran off the train to puke up all over the platform. Somehow I got home and crashed into bed, my then-partner staying up half the night vigilantly by my side, afraid I would choke on my own vomit, Jimi Hendrix-style.

Previously on Barnflakes
Tesco on Tresco