The view from one of our favourite restaurants called "The Beach" - a posh cafe in a hut on the beach
We returned on the Skybus to Land's End and will spend a couple of days in Mousehole, Cornwall before heading home so it is time to summarise our thoughts on the islands after a very enjoyable fortnight.
The Isles of Scilly are very busy at the moment, a combination of staycations and covid but presumably they are deserted in winter. The restaurants are understandably quite expensive as they have to import everything, have difficulty getting staff and have to make enough in the six month season to cover their costs which include the cost of purchasing the premises, property prices in the Isles of Scilly are horrendous, the cafe shown opposite is on the market for £1.2m.
Bring your own dinner on the green
By far the best value for money dinner is to buy either fish and chips from the chippy or a Thai take away plus a bottle of wine from the Co-op and eat on the green overlooking the harbour. We did this on two nights and even took a table cloth and napkins.
Despite the high property prices there seems to have been little attempt to ensure buildings are in keeping with the local vernacular styles, there are some horrid 1960’s buildings around the bay in St Mary’s which should be an iconic view. Harold Wilson’s bungalow (pictured) just outside the town is as ugly as ugly can be but there are many more just like it. It was sold a few years ago for £400k, it is not in a particularly good position nor does not have nice views.
As land is so expensive so why not use a bit more imagination in the house design?
Gill told me off for being grumpy when we visited the local museum as I was moaning to one of the volunteers about the lack of planning control but he agreed saying it was due to the difficulty getting materials and labour. I don’t believe that as a horrid house takes as much material and labour as a nice one. In fact the old museum building which was built in the 1960’s is now condemned as it is unsafe, it is soon to be pulled down. The owners of Tresco have shown how to make new houses compliment the old so it can and should be done.
The picture shows a navigation mast built right next to a bronze age standing stone which could easily have been sited 20 feet either side but it is slap bang next to the ancient monument!
That’s got my grumpy moan out of the way. Despite that we enjoyed the Isles of Scilly, they remind us of the Hebrides but with a little less wind, about 10 degrees warmer and better food.
We, like most tourists, based ourselves in St Mary’s and then did day trips out to the other islands.
It would be risky basing yourself on one of the smaller islands as the food options would be very limited, the one and only shop will not have much choice if you want to self cater and whilst the pubs we visited on St Martin's and St Agnes were very good they might change hands or lose their cook leaving you in the lurch.
On the other hand the posh persons holiday camp on Tresco is very nice so long as you just want to relax and the services (the shop, cafe and restaurants) are top quality. It reminds me of our enjoyable holidays in Mandy and Chris's beach hut. We might be back to Tresco.
The Isles of Scilly coastline, bays and beaches are fantastic, there is a little bit of character in the villages although there is definitly a "them and us" barrier between locals and tourists but with so many tourists I suppose that is understandable.
We are now back in Cornwall and returned to the Geevor Tin Mine museum to finish off the tour we had to rush two weeks ago.
We scrambled along the cliffs and climbed over the ruins of several mines along the coast, all good fun especially when we found a nice pub next to Botallack mine.
Visit completed we drove round the coast with a short excursion to see all the pink bodies crammed onto the beach at Sennen Cove before arriving in Mousehole where we are staying in a nice inn overlooking the harbour. If the weather stays fair tomorrow we will probably walk to Penzance and back, a full report will be posted in due course.