We're Back.

Photo from the web.

We're finally back after an amazing 6 days on the Scilly Isles. Unlike the mainland we were fortunate enough to have good weather, breezy and sunny with hardly any rain apart from an hour one afternoon where the gentle rain turned into a brief but violent thunderstorm which cleared as suddenly as it started.

The highlights of the holiday were; seeing the islands rising gently from the sea almost floating on the sea mist so unlike Lundy with its majestic 400 ft cliffs, the gardens of Tresco, watching some of the gig races from a crowded and enthusiastic spectator boat, seeing puffins, coming across a 7 day old reindeer calf & its parents, sunbathing on an empty beach of sparkling white sand and the singing of sea shanties by all 40 club members at the club meal in The Bishop & Wolf pub.

The low points were, and I had to think hard about this, walking an increasingly treacherous coast path in the rain on Tresco, walking yet again with sore feet from one beach in the town to another to try and link up Peter during the races (he had no phone signal so we couldn't keep in touch that way) and trying to boil a kettle on a camping stove that kept setting fire to the gas canister!

As we did so much and I took 458 photos I plan to blog about one aspect of our trip at a time.

The Magical Islands.

We were stunned by the magical look of the islands sloping down into the sea fringed with beaches of almost white sand. 1500 years ago the 140 islands and islets were all one larger island with shallow valleys between them. The sea gradually covered the valleys and it is thought that this is the origin of the legend of the drowned land of Lyonesse.

On Saturday morning I was up at 6.00 walking around the coast path listening to the many birds and the sea lapping against the shore.

When the sun shone the sea took on shades of turquoise and emerald.

My eyes were always drawn to the many small islets that looked so mysterious. On Tuesday we took a boat trip around Annet, a group of islets that are home to many sea birds.

Would we go again? Definitely, but possibly not camping. Even with the good weather there were times when the prospect of a bed in a warm room seemed ever so appealing. If we do camp again we would need to get a tent that you can stand up in as Peter found crouching & kneeling very difficult. Also I would make sure we had a tent where the sides of the tent went right down to the ground. Most of the tents on the site had a gap all around the bottom of the outer cover which was not helpful when the wind was blowing in and shaking everything. I did note the names of some of the tents which had flaps all along the bottom which pegged right down and presumably stopped any wind from getting in.

We arrived back in Penzance at 7.30 yesterday getting home at 10.30 and already it all seems a world away. Today I have been back at school for a staff meeting and an afternoon of teaching so everything is back to normal with rain, rain and more rain.