Escape life’s everyday stresses and experience incredible wildlife on these invigorating island escapes, chosen.
The top 10 island getaways in the UK
1. Burgh Island, Devon
It’s no small thing to be the island that not only inspired one of the best-selling novels of all time, but to be the place where it was written, too. Agatha Christie loved staying at Burgh Island Hotel, where a beach house was built especially for her as a writing retreat. It was there that the ‘Queen of Crime’ wrote the 100-million-plus-seller And Then There Were None, published in 1939 and set on an island very much like Burgh.
For good measure she also penned the Hercule Poirot mystery Evil Under the Sun on Burgh, and made another killing. Christie’s beach house is part of the Art Deco hotel and, if money is no object, you can stay there yourself. The 10.5-hectare tidal island, just off Bigbury-on-Sea on the south Devon coast, has another claim to fame.
When the sea rolls in and cuts it off from the mainland, visitors can ride there and back on a hydraulic sea-tractor, a unique metal beast specially built in 1969 at huge expense. Affectionately known as Trundle, it runs on demand from about 8am to late (fare £2 single).
Once on Burgh, you can roam the grassy slopes of the island’s one hill to the ancient Huer’s Hut, from where a look-out – or huer – would watch for the silver shoals of pilchards offshore. Upon spotting a shoal, they would should “Hevva, Hevva!” (“Here they are!”) to alert local fishermen, then use hand signals or wave branches to direct boats to the catch. And do visit Burgh’s pub, the 14th-century Pilchard Inn which oozes character and is said to be haunted by a truculent ghost called Tom.
2. Round Island, Poole, Dorset
Think of Poole Harbour and probably the first thing that springs to mind is Brownsea Island, famous as the place where the scout and guide movements were born. However, there is a scattering of other smaller islands in the estuary. Of these, only Round Island is permanently inhabited, and is the only one offering accommodation to visitors.
The name ‘Round Island’ is a curiosity. A glance at a map is enough to see that the 14-hectare isle is not circular at all but more triangular in shape. The moniker may simply have originated as a comparison with its finger-shaped neighbour Long Island, a literal step away. Round Island played a small role in the Second World War when it was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and became part of HMS Turtle, a Combined Operations assault gunnery school that trained troops for the D-Day landings.
It was a popular place to be posted, st with one coxswain calling it, “A wonderful location… the main house had a magnificent view of Poole and Sandbanks.” Three of the six dwellings on the pine-clad island are holiday cottages, so visitors can enjoy not only the magnificent views but also the peace and quiet.
3. Holy Island, Northumberland
Also known as Lindisfarne, Holy Island has been a place of pilgrimage since 635 CE when it was chosen by St Aidan as the site for his monastery. It’s perhaps unsurprising then that both St Cuthbert’s Way and St Oswald’s Way end there. The raid by Norsemen on the priory in 793 CE is widely viewed by historians as the event that kicked off the Viking Age.
However, today, the isle’s most recognisable landmark is its 16th-century castle sitting atop a knoll in the isle’s south-east corner. In 1901, the Tudor fortress was converted by renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens into a holiday home for a wealthy publisher and sports a bijou walled garden established by horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll.
Two hotels and plenty of B&Bs and holiday lets give visitors a taste of island life alongside the 180-odd locals who live in a compact village next to the ruins of a priory. There’s also a good selection of cafés, two pubs and a small winery producing Lindisfarne mead.
The island is part of the huge Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve; its dunes, saltmarsh and mudflats provide habitats for overwintering pink-footed geese, wigeon and rare light-bellied Brent geese which breed up in Svalbard. Incoming tides cover the causeway between the island and the mainland with startling rapidity so adhere to the safe crossing times, or jump on the 477 Glen Valley bus.
4. St Agnes, Isles of Scilly, Cornwall
Measuring roughly a mile across, with a population of around 80, St Agnes is Britain’s most southerly inhabited island. A little over 20 miles from the Cornish mainland, it’s a place of quiet little farms, fields of flowers, heather moorland, piratical coves, sandy shell-strewn beaches, the odd holiday cottage and a sense that it’s not quite entered the 21st century yet (mains electricity didn’t arrive until the 1980s).
St Agnes’ location on the south-western edge of the Isles of Scilly means that it holds a good many ‘Britain’s most southerly’ records. Two are of particular interest. The nation’s most southerly pub is the atmospheric Turk’s Head, which once served as the coastguard and customs boatshed. And in Troytown Farm, St Agnes lays claim not only to Britain’s most southerly campsite but also to one of its most picturesque.
At low tide, visitors can cross one of Britain’s few tombolos – a naturally formed sand bar – to the smaller island of Gugh, home to a 3m-tall Bronze Age standing stone and quantities of lesser black-backed gulls. With its own dedicated boat service (stagnesboating.co.uk), more adventurous island-hopping between St Agnes and Scilly’s other main isles is easily arranged. Or simply join the weekly ‘wildlife safari’ around the islands with an Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust guide. It’s possible to fly to Scilly but for the true island experience, take the Scillonian III ferry from Penzance.
5. Bardsey Island, Gwynedd
Lying almost two miles off the tip of the Llŷn Peninsula in north Wales, Bardsey is both a National Nature Reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. For good reason too: the isle is home to around 200 Atlantic grey seals and a healthy variety of birds, including puffins, guillemots, fulmars, razorbills, shags, choughs, meadow pipits and wheatears. For hundreds of years, monks called it home too.
The abbey Saint Cadfan founded in the 6th century also made the island an important pilgrimage site. Roughly 1.5 miles long and half a mile wide at its widest point, Bardsey has a population of just three and is dominated by its single hill, Mynydd Enlli (167m). Pockmarked by the burrows of Manx shearwater, it offers those who climb it some sensational views over the sea and back towards the mainland.
Bardsey’s Welsh name, Ynys Enlli, means ‘The Island of the Currents’ and there are certainly one or two of them to be enjoyed, or perhaps endured, on the voyage from Porth Meudwy. Indeed, the weather can often make the sea too rough for boats to sail. Visitors can rest their heads at the comfy hostel run by Bardsey Bird and Field Observatory.
6. Great Blasket Island, Kerry, Ireland
A little over a mile off the Kerry coast, a group of islands called the Blaskets hunkers down and bravely weathers whatever the Atlantic might throw at it. As recently as 1954, the largest of them, Great Blasket, was inhabited by a small Irish-speaking fishing community. When the population left that year, it ended one of the many attempts at occupation of the island since the late 1500s.
So you can expect a pretty wild time on the four-mile-long isle, enjoying the breeze in your hair as you climb up from the ruined settlement to the summit of An Cró Mór (346m) to take in views of the other Blaskets, all of which are likewise uninhabited. And keep an eye on the sea for common, bottlenose and Risso dolphins, humpback and minke whales and basking sharks, who feed in these waters.
Northern gannets dine on fish here too. Guillemots and puffins can be seen over the spring and summer, and grey seals haul out on Great Blasket’s Tra Ban (White Strand). Four restored historic cottages on the island provide holiday accommodation, though in keeping with the spartan conditions faced by Great Blasket’s former inhabitants, there’s no electricity or hot water. However, you can warm up after your cold shower in the island’s little coffee shop. Day visitors can take a (weather-dependent) boat from Dingle Marina while those staying on the island are ferried over from the closer Dunquin Pier.
7. Davaar Island, Kintyre, Scotland
On 20 August 1887, the Campbeltown Courier reported that a yachtsman landing on Davaar had sauntered into one of its seven small caves, struck a match to light his pipe, and was surprised to see Jesus gazing down upon him. The sudden appearance of the painting caused a ballyhoo in the town, especially when no one came forward to claim responsibility for it.
Some folk even believed the mural had been painted by God himself. It was only many years later that local art teacher Archibald MacKinnon confessed to being the perpetrator, inspired by a dream he had had. Today the painting has become a minor pilgrimage destination. Lying towards the foot of the Kintyre Peninsula on Scotland’s west coast, Davaar is a 57-hectare tidal island reached by a shingle dog-leg causeway, called the Dhorlin, that takes the best part of 20 minutes to walk.
The one hill that makes up most of the island is grazed by wild goats and North Ronaldsay sheep. There’s also a lighthouse on its northern corner. Davaar has two holiday cottages – one was a wartime signal station – and two glamping pods. Reach Campbeltown via a four-hour bus ride from Glasgow.
8. Lihou, off Guernsey, Channel Islands
While many tidal isles achieve island status only at high tide, Lihou’s causeway is accessible for just a few hours a day and then for only two weeks out of every four. The remainder of the time it’s truly cut off from neighbouring Guernsey – there’s no boat service either. The 14.5-hectare isle has a population of just one (the warden of Lihou House) but evidence of habitation goes back to the Middle Stone Age.
A Benedictine priory was established there in the 12th century – its ruins are still visible – and medieval graves have also been unearthed. Come the late 1800s and Lihou became an important producer of iodine derived from the island’s abundant seaweed, known locally as vraic. Today, the island forms part of a protected Ramsar site – an internationally important wetland – since its rocks, shingle and grassland have created a habitat brimming with wildlife.
Migratory birds rest there, rare wildflowers flourish, invertebrates scurry about in its rock pools and seagrass beds, while a plethora of seaweeds wave about at the tide’s edge. Go in summer or early autumn and you may be lucky enough to see a rare Balearic shearwater. Lihou House, the island’s sole property, is run by the Lihou Charitable Trust and primarily serves groups of children and young people. However, adult gatherings can also be booked.
9. Easdale, Argyle and Bute
In its mid-19th century heyday, Easdale could boast that it produced ‘the slate that roofed the world’. Back then, some 450 people lived cheek by jowl on the island, much of its scant 10 hectares taken up by slate quarries. Astonishingly, they produced up to 19 million roofing slates a year, bound for Canada, the US, New Zealand, Australia and the West Indies.
Today the population is nearer 60, mostly living in the former slate-miners’ cottages. The car-free island sports the Easdale Museum, a seasonal bar and restaurant called The Puffer, and an extraordinary-looking pyramidal community hall that hosts an impressive range of cultural events. Today, Easdale is famous for its World Stone Skimming Champs, held in September each year.
Open to all comers, the competition takes place in one of the flooded quarries, kicking off with a party in the community hall the night before. Though staged for fun, there are proper rules and a trophy for the winner of each category. The best skimmers achieve distances of over 60 metres. It’s just a two-minute boat ride to the island from Ellenabeich on Seil Island, which is connected to the mainland by a bridge.
10. Papa Westray, Orkney
As claims to fame go, Papa Westray’s is pretty impressive. The 3.5-square-mile island in the far north of the Orkney archipelago is the possessor of northern Europe’s oldest standing stone building. The 5,000-year-old Knap of Howar is one of the best-preserved Neolithic villages on the planet and is really quite thrilling to behold.
For a remote island of not quite 100 souls, there’s a surprising amount to see there. Near the Knap of Howar stands St Boniface Kirk, complete with an ancient Norse hog-back gravestone; the remains of St Tredwell’s Chapel, a pilgrimage site on a mound on its own wee loch; and the RSPB’s North Hill nature reserve, home to Arctic terns and Arctic skuas.
Just off the shore lies the Holm of Papay, a tiny isle with a population of eiders and greylag geese and an impressive Neolithic burial chamber. Papa Westray also has a small community shop and, every Saturday night, the island hostel becomes a pop-up pub.
To get there, take the twice-weekly direct ferry from Kirkwall on Orkney Mainland, or a far more frequent service changing ferry at Westray. The world’s shortest scheduled flight (about 90 seconds) connects the two Westrays but the ferry is more in keeping with small-isle life. Stay at the Beltane House Hostel, a community-run affair housed in a terrace of 19th-century cottages. There is also a campsite and a holiday cottage.
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