Things to Do on St Mary’s
The Isles of Scilly are said to be the most isolated islands in Britain, which I have a hard time believing — in England maybe, but in Britain? It’s a total of 150 islands (five inhabited) but in line with my other destinations, I’m staying on the chunk of land with the airfield on it.
The Cornwall Wildlife Trust (www.cornwallwildlifetrust.org.uk) do some great PDF pamphlets including “An identification guild to the Carnivores of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly” which I immediately downloaded with excitement. “There are six species of Carnivore found in Cornwall,” is said in the introduction, continuing on to say “None of the Carnivore species are found on the Isles of Scilly.”
Ah well.
There are half a dozen small mammals though, including the “Scilly shrew” which apparently isn’t a reference to the women, and I have a recording form in case I should stumble across one (hopefully not in the hotel room). As far as I know, it’s too late to see puffins but I’d like to go seal watching and maybe even search for orcas. I’ve packed a bathing suit in hopes of experiencing the “sparkling white beaches” and St Mary’s has enough prehistoric sites to keep me occupied for months. And then there’s the intriguing mystery of Lyonesse.
I’m quite looking forward to this!
Good luck with your travels – I am going to follow them with interest.
I have just started a retrospective blog, transcribing the holiday diaries of Miss Jean Ritchie from the 1950s. Thei first diary is ‘To The West & The Isles of Scilly” and I have just posted their landing at St Marys! Interesting to wonder what the similarities are 50 years apart!
Oh, wow Beki, that’s wonderful! I know exactly the hotel they stayed and I also saw the ship they took to Tresco! It sounds like she didn’t have a good view of the runway as they came in … and good thing too! It’s short (and was even shorter then!) and “severely hump-backed”. My passengers were no where near as blase about it.
I love what you are doing, what a wonderful site.