It was an alarmingly wet and windy forecast for the week of our family holiday to the Isles of Scilly. This was definitely not what we had been hoping for, but in the end the weather was much better than predicted and we only got wet on one day. The wind, however, meant that the seal snorkelling we had booked was cancelled and we were unable to take any wildlife boat trips.

Some of us caught the small plane over to the Scillies from Newquay, but most of us either drove or caught the sleeper train down to Penzance and travelled over on the Scillonian:

It was indeed a very rough crossing out but at least we got to enjoy Lizzie’s seasickness glasses:

We were staying on Tresco, an island where twenty red squirrels were reintroduced in 2013 and have since thrived with the population now growing to more than a hundred:

The Gulf Stream creates a mild, generally frost-free climate on the Islands, allowing a wonderful variety of succulents to grow:

And Echiums were everywhere:

I did, however, notice that there weren’t the numbers and variety of invertebrates around that we would be seeing at home at this time of year. We were pleased to see this very large and hairy grass eggar moth caterpillar on Bryher though:

It was also nice to see black oil beetles, Meloe proscarabaeus, both on Bryher and on Tresco:

Green tiger beetles were also seen in the heathy area to the north of Tresco:

On 9th January this year, Storm Goretti hit the islands hard, with wind speeds of 99mph recorded at St Mary’s airport. The resulting damage from the storm was still very much in evidence:

We were keeping a group bird list and together we saw 37 species over the course of the week, although no doubt we would have done much better had we been able to go on some wildlife boat trips. There were certainly many more song thrush, blackbirds and house sparrows about than we would normally see:

And wherever the habitat got heathy, there were plenty of stonechat:

Tresco also has feral populations of both Lady Amherst’s and Golden pheasants:

Dave has always loved to poke around in rock pools and his children consequently knew how to sex a crab and other such matters from a very early age:

This week he had the opportunity to start again with the next generation:

I hadn’t seen a swimming crab before. The fifth pair of legs in these crabs from the Portunidae family are flattened into paddles allowing them to swim:

A shanny, Blennius pholis, is a fish of the rocks and stones of the lower shore:

Epitonium clathrus, the common wentletrap:

Tresco is separated from the neighbouring island of Bryher by a narrow strait of water:

But on one day of the holiday the tide was low enough to allow us to walk across to Bryher:

However, the tide was not quite low enough for us to keep our feet completely dry all the way across:

On a previous visit to the islands there was a super-low tide, allowing us to walk from Tresco across to the uninhabited island of Samson which was very memorable indeed.

Staying on Tresco worked very well with our large family group of sixteen since, as well as the long sandy beaches, it has swimming pools, a spa, a well-stocked supermarket, bike hire and several cafes and restaurants. It also had the subtropical Abbey Gardens to admire:

Scilly’s rocky shores have long been treacherous and over the years there have been hundreds of wrecks. The Abbey Gardens has a collection of 19th century figureheads that once belonged to merchant sailing ships or early steam vessels that were lost on the rocks around the Isles of Scilly.

The daymark on St Martin’s Head is a 36ft high granite pillar that has stood there since 1683 and is used for navigation. On a good day it can be seen from the Cornish coast.

In 1830 the Hope was wrecked on St Martin’s Head when the captain mistook the daymark, which was painted entirely white at the time, for the white lighthouse on the island of St Agnes. An unknown West African boy was drowned and is buried in the graveyard on St Martins.

As a result of the wrecking of the Hope, red stripes were painted onto the daymark to distinguish it from the white St Agnes lighthouse.

The Scilly Islands are not so very far off the coast of Britain but are set in rough seas. From early November until mid-March, when the Scillonian and all the scheduled inter-island boats stop running, things must feel very different there. One of our group was talking to an islander who said that, at one point last winter, no freight reached the islands for five weeks and this included delivery of fresh food into the supermarkets.

All around are signs of isolated island life:

I finish with a photo of the magnificent flower arrangement in Tresco church, all cut from plants growing wild on the island:

This was our third visit to the Scillies, the previous two being in October when the islands are packed with birdwatchers twitching for unusual migrating birds. That was quite exciting, but it was also so lovely to see the islands in flower in May. We are already pretty certain that we will be visiting again someday soon.