Recently, at the London office of Hotel News Now, a “pub quiz” was held in which one of the rounds was to name the countries with such humorously named towns as Jam (Iran), Gore (New Zealand) and Batman (Turkey), which I have been to—drawn, no doubt, by its name.
A point was won for each correct answer.
I was reminded of this on my vacation two weeks ago to the Isles of Scilly, 30 miles off the tip of Land’s End in Cornwall, England.
The Isles of Scilly—residents are bored with people incorrectly calling it the Scilly Isles—have five inhabited islands, and on one of them, Bryher, is the Hell Bay Hotel.
There are three places that have a place in them called Hell, and my quiz team got one point for saying one of them was the Cayman Islands. I have been fortunate to have been to its Hell. It is worthy of its name, a circular area of salty stalagmites that cannot be traversed.
The owner/proprietor of the 25-room Hell Bay Hotel, the most westerly hotel in England, is Robert Dorrien-Smith, who also owns the neighboring island of Tresco, which has a famed garden, with his wife Lucy through their business Tresco Estates.
Another business, the Duchy of Cornwall—aka Prince Charles, heir to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—owns huge parts of the Isles of Scilly, too.
On occasion, tempers flare between residents and what might be described as their feudal overlords, but this is most likely lost on the 100,000 tourists who arrive each spring and summer.
Tourism is the largest business by far, with the St Mary’s Boatmen’s Association taking holidaymakers on small boats to the other islands and on wildlife trips.
My own tourism consisted of trips to Tresco and St. Martin’s, walks around the main island of St Mary’s and two birding “pelagic” trips six miles out to sea that in August coincide with uncommon passing seabirds such as great skua, Manx shearwater and European storm petrel, and the rarer Cory’s shearwater, great shearwater and Wilson’s storm petrel, as well as harbor porpoise, blue shark, porbeagle shark and common dolphin.
The European storm petrel ballet dances across the sea searching for morsels to eat. (Photo: Terence Baker)
My hotel, with three rooms, was the Old Town Inn in Old Town, the smaller (and it is very small and wonderful) of St Mary’s two settlements—the other being the main port of Hugo Town, from which the Scillonian III ferry runs almost daily and is a link to the outside world, starting in the mainland town of Penzance.
The Old Town Inn is a pub, one of only five on the island and the only one outside of Hugo Town. Once a month, and coinciding with my stay in July, it is also the home of the Isles of Scilly Folk Club.
Two of the employees at the inn were from Brescia, Italy, here for the season and more evidence of the need for the U.K. hotel and hospitality to further embrace our European cousins in this age of Brexit.
The Isles of Scilly is a gorgeous place. There is no graffiti, very little litter, very clean water and welcoming cafés dotted in obscure places that benefit from the islands being so small people will inevitably find them. The gorgeous sandy beaches, along with much of the flora, have a definite Caribbean vibe, thanks to warm Gulf Stream currents.
The blues can be incredible.
Electric golf carts are the way to get around, and in the churchyard of Old Town is buried Harold Wilson, the two-time prime minister.
In October—maybe in September, too—the islands get a second season of tourism when birders flock to the islands for a chance of seeing rare birds blown over to the U.K. from Asia and the Americas when westerly winds pick up as the birds migrate to their winter homes.
On St. Martin’s, I particularly like that its three villages and hamlets are named Higher Town, Middle Town and Lower Town.
Lower Town has a very nice, 30-room hotel called Karma, part of the Karma Sanctum group, its lawn chairs overlooking a stone jetty. The hotel, I believe, is the only branded property on the islands.
Even the quay in Hugo Town is a simple affair. We’re not talking provision for 5,000-berth-plus superliners here.
Perhaps the best hotel on the islands is the 38-room Star Castle Hotel on a part of St Mary’s called The Garrison, which formerly was a fortified encampment dating to skirmishes between England and Spain at the time of Sir Francis Drake.
It has its own boat and boatman, too.
And going back to that pub quiz, one of those funny place names we had to come up with an answer for was Silly, in Belgium, so it all comes around, doesn’t it?
Email Terence Baker or find him on Twitter.
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