Visit the Isles of Scilly - for a world class holiday retreat

How I discovered the secret of the Scillies - and learned how to potter.

“Unfortunately you’ve arrived in the middle of rush hour,” explained the minibus driver as we drove from the airport. “Oh no!” I panicked. “I’m in a hurry to get a boat from the harbour. Do your best please…”

Ooops, too late I suddenly realised that local wise-guy Luke Paulger had caught me out. On the Isles of Scilly there is no rush hour. There’s hardly any roads, few cars and the concept of rushing would seem pretty alien to most locals. I was being a right Scilly Billy.

“Nevermind, we’ll battle on through the traffic,” grinned Luke, delighted that he’d exposed yet another fleece-and-boot-wearing arrivee as a city stress-victim in disguise. We turned into the main street of the Islands’ capital Hugh Town. There wasn’t another car in sight. All across the island of St Mary’s the only other vehicle we saw was a fisherman’s pick-up truck leaving the harbour. The two drivers exchanged great waves as if it was an unexpected joy to stumble on another motorised vehicle.

Bobbling boat

Luke’s joking continued with a false frown as he said: “I’ll try to find a space to park” while driving along the completely deserted waterfront to my ferry. We were both still laughing as he passed my bags down the stone steps to the bobbling boat. Before I’d set off I’d heard that a Cornish traffic warden had been sent to St Mary’s for a day. His mission was to crack down on illegal parkers but he didn’t manage to issue a single ticket. I bet he spent all day just trying to find some cars.

It’s little wonder that the Isle of Scilly have never been more popular. They may be just 28 miles off Lands End, but this little scattering of rocks are a blessed relief from the choking jams, parking fines, speed cameras and car crime of cities on the mainland. Bookings are booming, more hotels are opening through the winter and viewers of BBC’s Holiday programme have voted the Isles the third best place to visit in the whole of Britain. Only the Lake District and London beat them.

Even celebrities are joining the Scilly fan club. Eastenders Steve McFadden and Lucy Benjamin had a yachting holiday around St Agnes and film star Jude Law stayed on St Martins with his family. Other recent big name visitors include Tony Robinson, Anneka Rice and Jenny Agutter.

Dolphin or seal

Tellingly, part of this growing appeal is that Scilly has none of the attractions that we’ve come to think of as normal over the last few decades. There’s no theme park, no amusement arcades, no karaoke bar, no all-night discos, no take-aways, no jukeboxes and no hotel taller than a large house.

Instead the Scilly Isles have, well, a handful of pubs and hotels, a quirky museum, and some boat trips with an off-chance of spotting a dolphin or a seal.

The real attraction, of course, is just pottering round the islands themselves. As one newly converted sceptical visitor told me: “The pottering here is world class”.

For the secret of the Scillies is that you can ramble along deserted white sand beaches, walk right round an island in a day, wander aimlessly through sand dunes, climb tiny hills to see sea views in all directions, follow winding paths through tiny fields of spring bulbs, clamber over rocks and stop to throw a pebble in the sea.

Gentle potter

As you potter you can spot lighthouses (I saw five), birds, boats, and of course, islands. At the top of every slight rise there’s another amazing seascape dotted with them. You’ll never get lost, mugged, run-over or bored. Even on the tiniest island the pleasure of pottering seems to last forever.

Thanks to its frost-free climate there are wild flowers all year, with daffodils erupting in every hedgerow from December. The most popular attraction, the The Abbey Gardens on Tresco, is another gentle potter round stone ruins dotted with pretty subtropical plants, many of which wouldn’t survive on the mainland.

My boat trip from the biggest island, St Mary’s, across to Bryher where I was staying, was a gorgeous cruise across a calm sunny sea. Ferryman James pointed out the twin hills of the island of Samson, one of more than 300 which are uninhabited. James weaved between some of them, mere rocks that virtually disappear at high tide. He knows the water here so well he hardly had to look, yet these treacherous stretches have claimed hundreds of ships. I jumped ashore onto a stone jetty and climbed into a rickety old brown Land Rover to bump along rutted tracks to my hotel.

Rather brash

Bryher is just half a mile wide, the smallest of the inhabited Scillies. From here the 70 inhabitants look across to neighbouring island of Tresco and consider it rather brash because it has a concrete road. St Mary’s, at two-and-a-half-miles wide, with an airport, a cash-point machine and a population over 1,000, must seem like downtown New York from the Bryher’s bracken-covered hillocks.

Bryher is also the most westward isle, which means its far coast faces the full force of any Atlantic storms. Hence the name of my hotel: Hell Bay.

I was expecting some sort of fortress against 100ft breakers but instead Hell Bay Hotel turned out to be a newly revamped low-rise complex of small whitewashed buildings a few yards from a pretty sandy cove. It’s luxurious and stylish in a nice friendly seafaring way - the reception ‘desk’ is a huge chunk of local timber blown down in a storm, hot flasks are offered to guests going for a walk and after dark, you can borrow a torch.

Picture windows

Yet it’s stylish too, with wickerwork chairs, wooden floors and pastel paintwork. There’s modern art everywhere, including a Barbara Hepworth, but the images that command most attention are the views from the big picture windows.

My room, the top floor of a wooden ‘boathouse’, had long French doors looking right out into the Atlantic. Hotel manager Euan Roger has entered it into a competition for the best hotel room view in the UK.

One morning I woke at dawn as a gale roared in from the west smashing spray right against my windows. So I did something I’d never do at home. I got up early, totally voluntarily, dressed in all my coats and hats and marched out into the storm. Before breakfast! It was quite unlike me…

This time I wasn’t being a Scilly Billy at all… In fact, an hour later, as I finally sat down to a full scale fry-up feeling like I’d been sand-blasted all over, I reckoned I’d earned this breakfast like never before. And I might have just had one of the best potterings ever.

Read more of Simon Heptinstall's articles about Britain's best island escapes:

The Great British Isles - visit our most interesting off-shore islands

Visit Jersey for the best holiday in the Channel Islands

Why the Isle of Wight is Britain's most popular holiday island

Visit the Orkneys - the best Scottish island for things to see