Isles of Scilly Holidays and Escorted Tours
The Isles of Scilly sit some 28 miles beyond Land's End, and the difference in the air when you step off the boat at Hugh Town is immediate. No traffic to speak of, sand the colour of oatmeal, and hedges of pittosporum sheltering fields that grow daffodils in January.
We travel here because the islands reward the way we like to organise a holiday: one hotel, a local guide who knows which boat goes where, and days built around the tide rather than the clock. Our tours take the coach to Penzance and the ferry across, then use the inter-island launches to reach Tresco, St Martin's and St Agnes.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Isles of Scilly Tours
By coach to Penzance and then by ferry across to St Mary's. Coaches cannot cross to the Isles of Scilly, so the vehicle stays on the mainland and everything on the islands is done on foot or by boat. Return ferry travel is included, as are the inter-island boat tickets on our island-hopping tours. Ask us for the departure points and timings on the date you are considering.
It can be. The route crosses open Atlantic water for the best part of three hours and there is no shelter once you are past Land's End, so a swell is normal and a lively passage is possible. Many people are entirely comfortable; others take tablets beforehand as a precaution. Fresh air on deck helps more than sitting below. If sea travel worries you, talk to us before booking.
More than on a typical coach holiday, because there are no coaches on the islands. Expect gentle walks of a few miles on some days, on sandy tracks, field paths and short granite climbs such as Peninnis Head or the Garrison walls. Nothing is steep for long. You also need to be steady enough to get on and off small open boats at quays and beaches. Ask us about the pace of a specific departure.
Broadly: return coach travel to Penzance, the return ferry crossing with hold luggage, accommodation on the islands, breakfast and an evening meal each day, boat tickets to the other islands, and the listed visits such as Tresco Abbey Garden and St Martin's Vineyard. A local guide accompanies much of the week. Inclusions differ between the five-day and six-day versions, so check the individual tour page.
Yes. Our Open Group departures are designed for individuals joining a scheduled tour, and solo travellers are a normal part of most groups. Single rooms are usually available and a supplement generally applies, as it does with any operator. Availability of single rooms on the islands is limited, so it is worth asking early. Contact us for the single supplement on the departure you have in mind.
We have offered a Fred Olsen sailing from Southampton that runs along England's south coast and calls at Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, with cabin accommodation and meals on board. It is a different kind of holiday — you see the islands as part of a cruise rather than staying on them, and shore excursions are not included in the fare. Ask us what is currently on sale.
The five inhabited islands
Only five of the islands are lived on, and each has a distinct character. St Mary's is the largest and the busiest, with Hugh Town wedged on a sand bar between two beaches, a scattering of shops, and the granite ramparts of the Garrison above the harbour. Most visitors stay here.
Tresco is privately leased and immaculately kept, with the Abbey Garden at its heart and a wilder, boulder-strewn north end. St Martin's is a long ridge of a place with the best beaches of the lot and a small vineyard near the middle. St Agnes, across a shallow sound, feels the most remote, and its Troytown Maze is a spiral of beach stones on the shore whose origins nobody has ever satisfactorily explained. Bryher, smallest of the five, takes the full weight of the Atlantic at Hell Bay.
Tresco Abbey Garden
Augustus Smith took on the lease of the islands in 1834 and began planting a garden in the shelter of a ruined Benedictine priory. His first task was windbreaks: belts of Monterey pine and cypress that made everything else possible.
What grows inside them still surprises people. Because frost is almost unknown here, the terraces hold plants from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and the Canary Islands that would not last a Yorkshire winter outdoors — proteas, aloes, tree ferns, banks of aeonium, echiums standing head high in early summer. There is colour in every month of the year, which is a claim very few British gardens can make.
Also on the site is Valhalla, Smith's collection of painted figureheads salvaged from ships wrecked on the surrounding reefs. Tresco Abbey Garden is visited on our island-hopping tours.
Island hopping by boat
There is no road between the islands, so travel is by open launch from St Mary's Quay. The boatmen chalk up the day's sailings each morning and the timings shift with the tide, which is part of the character of the place rather than an inconvenience.
Crossings are short — usually fifteen to thirty minutes — and often lively enough to feel like an excursion in themselves, with gannets working the water and grey seals hauled out on the rocks off the Eastern Isles. At some landings you step onto a stone quay; at others, onto a beach.
Our tours include the boat tickets and a local guide for much of the week, so you are not left working out sailings and stands on your own. The walking on the islands is gentle, but paths are sandy or rough underfoot in places.
Wildlife, flowers and beaches
Scilly is a serious wildlife destination without ever feeling like hard work. Atlantic grey seals breed on the outer rocks and are easily seen from the boats. The uninhabited island of Annet holds puffins, razorbills and Manx shearwaters, and Scilly is one of the few British places where storm petrels nest.
The flora is unusual too, thanks to the mild, salt-laden climate. Agapanthus grows in the verges. Whitewashed cottage walls carry mesembryanthemum, and the bulb fields around St Mary's and St Martin's still produce narcissi for the mainland market in mid-winter.
The beaches are the other draw, and they are genuinely empty for most of the year. Pentle Bay on Tresco, Great Bay on St Martin's and Porthcressa in Hugh Town are all pale sand and clear water, though the Atlantic never gets more than bracing.
