Isles of Scilly Discovery Holidays

The Isles of Scilly in June are stunning, with clear blue seas and summer flowers, including the agapanthus, Hottentot fig, sea holly and bird’s foot trefoil (often with a Burnet moth on it). Remarkably tame thrushes and other birds accompany the walks. Daylight lingers longer than anywhere else in southern Britain.

As well as exploring the off-islands of St Agnes, St Martin’s, Tresco and Bryher, this holiday includes a unique opportunity to visit the uninhabited islands of Nornour or Tean, and St Helen’s , weather and tides permitting.

Nornour is a small island among the very beautiful Eastern Isles, a place of mystery and possible Arthurian connection. A previously unknown settlement site was exposed by a storm in the 1960s. Excavations have revealed a fascinating sequence of prehistoric and Romano-British houses, occupied from the 2nd millennium BC to the 4th century AD. One of the buildings seems to have been a shrine in the first few centuries AD, where offerings were made of brooches, rings, miniature pottery vessels or coins (these can now be seen in the Museum on St Mary’s).

A lunch break is taken on St Martin’s, and then a short boat ride to the island of St Helen’s. Here, thanks to incendiary bombs in the Second World War, the ruins of a remarkable Christian site were revealed, consisting of an 8th century chapel and ‘hermitage’, plus a larger medieval church maintained until the 15th century by monks from Tavistock Abbey as a popular place of pilgrimage to the shrine of St Elidius. The so-called ‘Pest House’ – actually an isolation hospital of the late 18th century – can also be visited.

Tean lies just west of St Martin’s and has beaches renowned for shells. It is famous as the site of the encampment of Parliamentary forces in April 1651, before they attacked Tresco. The island was the home of the Nance family, credited with starting the harvesting of kelp for the production of soda ash in the 17th century. Prehistoric features exist on the island but, in one small area, excavations have shown a sequence of occupation from Romano-British times to the 19th century. Most obvious are the ruins of farm buildings, but also visible are the remains of an 8th century chapel which contained the graves of men, women and children.