![]() Nature-lovers linger among the dunes of Newborough Warren and seabird-bustling cliffs of South Stack ( /reserves-and-events/reserves-a-z/south-stack-cliffs). The grand Georgian mansion at Plas Newydd ( /visit/wales/plas-newydd-house-and-garden) is graced with a vast, fantastical mural by Rex Whistler, and the route is studded with medieval churches and Neolithic monuments galore. There’s history: hulking Beaumaris Castle ( /visit/places-to-visit/beaumaris-castle), constructed by Edward I after his late-13th-century Welsh conquest. This spectacular 140-mile (225km) circumnavigation ticks off most of the island’s greatest hits. But while the verdant, rolling interior continues to yield agricultural bounty, its shoreline – in turns dramatic and bucolic, most of it designated an AONB – is now blessed by the mother of all hiking trails: the Anglesey Coastal Path. For centuries the country’s breadbasket, today it’s a foodie hotspot renowned for its seafood, meat, cheese and reputedly the world’s finest sea salt – visit Halen Môn ( ) saltcote at Brynsiencyn for a tour and perhaps a wild seaweed bath. When 12th-century cleric Gerald of Wales bestowed Ynys Môn (Anglesey) with the sobriquet Mam Cymru – Mother of Wales – he was lauding the productivity of its soil and seas. Explore on a six-hour boat trip with Staffa Tours ( ). In summer, these host hundreds of nesting puffins, guillemots and razorbills, plus breeding common and harbour seals this is also the season to watch the fins of Brobdingnagian basking sharks slice through the brine. Somewhat smaller but no less charismatic are the otters and seabirds around Mull’s coast and offshore islands, particularly Staffa – famed for the extraordinary polygon basalt pipes of Fingal’s Cave – and the Treshnish Isles. Minke breach waves to the west, joined by bottlenose dolphins and harbour porpoises. Massive golden and white-tailed eagles, wingspans topping 2m, soar above glens grazed by magnificent red deer. Where things get truly epic, though, is in the wilds. There’s real local spirit here, though, not least the smoky, spicy whisky produced at venerable Tobermory Distillery ( ): take a tour and tasting, or savour a dram in the Mishnish ( .uk), the town’s legendary live-music pub. Also photogenic are the forbidding 14th-century keep of Duart Castle, gazing imperiously over arriving ferries from its rocky promontory, and the sweep of fudge-coloured sand at Calgary Bay, lapped by waters as turquoise as any Aegean cove – on sunny days, anyway. Tobermory – body double for television’s Balamory – is the kind of cutesy rainbow-hued harbour for which postcards were invented. Though less afflicted by coach-tour logjams than Skye, the second-largest of the Inner Hebrides boasts ample Instagram-inspired honeypots. As a taster, we’ve chosen 10 British islands that demand to be visited, whatever the hue of your own insular obsession. Bed down in a lighthouse or bell tent, boutique surf lodge or Scottish castle. ![]() Join in with gig-racing, seaweed-harvesting, munro-bagging or barrel-burning. Circle millennia-old stones or stroll a Victorian seafront prom. You might sink your toes into talc-soft sand on a remote Hebridean beach, or slurp oysters overlooking a traditional fishing harbour. Meanwhile, those 100-plus isles hosting human communities boast a rich and varied cultural heritage to match their diverse landscapes. True, many are uninhabited – by people, that is: instead, they’re thronged with seabirds and seals, and lapped by waves through which whales, porpoises and sharks cruise and breach. Those traits are variously true of the multifarious specks around Britain, numbering more than 6,000. Literary islands are by turns secret, wild, mysterious, small, home to treasures and castaways, dreams and dolphins. Our love affair with the offshore getaway has been endlessly and vividly evoked on page and screen. We are “islomaniacs”, claimed Lawrence Durrell – being on “a little world surrounded by the sea fills with an indescribable intoxication”. That may be true – but for most of us, the urge to be on one is nigh irresistible.
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