White Washed Islands - From the Lost Blog

There is something most sacred about a pale grey day in the summer. The sort where the air seemingly has no temperature; it’s neither cool nor warm. The sky is a subdued, muted white and it emanates an ethereal glow that creates the impression of being caught in a dream.

After the back to back endless hot days we’ve been having and what with being 24 weeks pregnant, I was grateful for a white-wash sort of day. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been loving the sunshine and I’ll take this over a summer of perpetual drizzle any day but when you have little control over your body temperature, you’re carrying 3 stone more than you’re used to (yes that’s right, I’ve gained 3 whole stone this pregnancy) and you’ve got a lot less lung space, you find that a pale day is exactly what you need.

 

Back in July, it was my birthday so Jon & I thought it would be fun to hop over to the nearby archipelago just off the coast of Landsend. I adore islands and had been to the Scillies a couple of years back with my dad but Jon hadn’t been since he was a child and had no real memory of it and for someone who lives in Penzance, well that’s just disappointing.

I had been craving the empty beaches of autumn and spring for a while. When I lived on the Lizard peninsula on the Southern side of Cornwall there were so many hidden beaches you could hole up on during the busy months and so summer barely reached us there unless I ventured to the rest of civilisation. I do often miss living on the Lizard; the scenery, the community and the teeny, tiny nooks and crannies hidden away but I do also adore living in Penzance. West Cornwall has a charm of its own and the novelty of being able to walk right into the hubbub of a busy sea side town and buy fresh bread from the bakery, juicy Cornish strawberries from the grocers and eat a pasty while bathing in the shade of the botanical gardens just hasn’t worn off yet. Unlike many of my favourite South Cornwall haunts, West Cornwall gets incredibly busy in the summer with draws such as the Minnack theatre, good public transport links and idyllic St Ives (a number one avoid spot for me in the summer months.) With instagram and blogging popularising even the most remote and hidden spots around West Cornwall, what were once quiet, serene, secret nudist beaches are now tourist hot-spots no matter how steep the climb but I’ll do my best not to be a salty local about the whole affair; after all, if it weren’t for tourism we’d have little industry down here. There would be far less jobs and services and we’d probably still be living off an old Cornish diet of pilchards and potatoes, no fancy imports and avocados to be seen.

In the midst of this everlasting summer of cloudless blue skies and sky high temperatures (even with our cooling sea breeze) I was so grateful that our planned adventure day yielded the palest of dreamy skies, a cool temperature and a selection of tucked away, empty beaches. It was exactly what was needed for a little break from the chaos. Now that I’m fully freelance, I’ve been doing my best to learn to juggle my time and battling that guilt of ‘I always have work to do.’ Being able to just tune out entirely and escape from that mindset is necessary sometimes otherwise I find that my work brain takes over and all of my creative hobbies, thoughts or ability to just observe the world quietly gets locked away until the winter comes.

There are a few ways to reach the islands; by boat (I’ve heard this is a treacherous journey, especially if you’re fragile of stomach) by weeny airplane or by helicopter. Penzance is the main connecting port for the islands so we woke up bright and early and strolled down to the train station to catch the bus that goes to Landsend airport (airport being a generous term here, you have to remember – it’s a small island plane and only carries about 8 people or so.)

The quickest way is by plane, especially if you’re just going for the day. It allows you to go to the ‘off-islands.’ No offence St Mary’s (which is the main island where the boats and planes will drop you) but you’re too much like Penzance or St Ives only a compact, island version. What we sought was that tiny, quiet island vibe so we took a boat from St Mary’s harbour to Tresco because I remembered from my last visit that the beaches were dreamy, the sands soft and I knew Jon would enjoy the abbey gardens.

It’s a beautiful walk across the island, we loved following questionable paths and encountering entirely empty, white sandy beaches with views of the other nearby islands. We wanted to just sit and enjoy the stillness but I was desperate to photograph everything because the light was so perfect and we were also extremely excited to go swimming. Jon & I are kinda nuts about swimming in the ocean and the whimsy of swimming in a little bay surrounding by islands was far too appealing. We knew we had to get the boat back to St Mary’s at 2 to get the big boat back to the mainland at 4 which didn’t leave us the time that we really wanted to just embrace the island atmosphere and float on the water.

We strolled around the gardens and met these bold, photogenic fellows. They were quite happy to get really close (this was a 50mm lens, no zoom here) and would happily pose for photographs. We still have no idea what the heck they are.

This flower looks like it’s a bird with a funky hair do  It’s so jazzy!

There were wild agapanthus growing all over the island which was very beautiful – I’m used to seeing them littering the gardens of seaside cottages around Penzance, Newlyn and Mousehole but Scilly does flora on a whole other level. Like many pockets of Cornwall, it enjoys its own micro-climate and the plants do exceptionally well here. Living on both the Lizard Peninsula and Penwith Peninsula taught me that the weather forecast is somewhat redundant because both of these places have a micro-climate which means although it’s raining in Redruth, Foggy in Hayle and snowing in Falmouth, we’re probably enjoying blazing sunshine in Penzance and Coverack. You just have to learn to weather watch and judge the weather based on what kind of cirrus is floating about in the sky, what the visibility is like off the coast or whether you had a red sky last night. Luckily our local indie bookshop is well stocked with these kinds of books!

If we’re connected on instagram then this is pretty old news, but Jon and I are getting married. Rather than a fancy and romantic proposal, we opted for a very adult discussion on where our future was headed (wow, is this what it feels like to be in your mid-late twenties?!) With our little baby girl growing away, something we’re both incredibly excited, about we talked thoroughly about what we wanted from our life together. Both from small families, we craved a close, nurturing and loving family of our own for our daughter and knew that in each other we had found more than just lovers but an altruistic and gentle love and a profound friendship. I can hand on my heart say that I’ve never in all my life experienced such a gentle and kind romantic love before and Jon inspires me endlessly to be better, kinder, stronger but never ever pushes me to be anyone other than who I am. Marriage in today’s day and age isn’t always necessary, you don’t need it to validate your love but well, secretly we are romantics at heart. So we went and chose a ring together from the amazing Hannah Batstone, the very talented jewellery maker who works out of her studio in Penryn. I adore this ring so much – it’s the exact colour of the Sea at Pedn Vounder on a summer’s day and I love the combinations of the cool aquamarine with the warm gold.

Our plans are to have a very casual and low-key trip to the registry office on an unspecified date to do the legal documents followed by a much bigger, family & friends orientated ceremony in spring 2020. That is all I’m saying for now…

I wish we had more than just a few precious hours here… we both want to come back for a longer stay. Maybe camping one day with friends (and a toddler – not sure if this is recommended?) but we had to drag ourselves away from this beach to explore more of the island before our time here came to an end.

 

We don’t really have any pictures together that aren’t taken on a phone camera so we awkwardly tried to set up the self timer… not sure if this is the best way to be honest, cue a million out of focus pictures and a lot of running back and forth. Also our height difference here is ridiculous – why am I such a hobbit?! Also to be fair, his hair adds like a few more unnecessary inches of height… that’s just greedy 

We eventually heaved our reluctant selves away from the quiet, enormous white sandy beach whose name I can’t remember and headed to the New Grimsby part of the island so we were nearer to where we needed to get the boat back to the St. Mary’s. This meant we could enjoy every precious moment of being in the sea and make a mad dash to the quay when we needed to. Again, we enjoyed this beach all to ourselves. Where was everyone?! (Not that I’m complaining) This beach was so good for finding seaglass too… we filled our pockets and brought so much back with us. We were practically tripping over it! I love seaglass, finding it is like finding little bits of treasure from the ocean 

Hashtag ‘seaglass in the wild’ 

Jon managed to pluck this out of the water… the sea was so clear, like glass almost. And also very cold.

Before we knew it, we had 5 minutes to get back to the quay and could see the boat approaching the island across the bay so we grabbed our bits and ‘speed walked/waddled’ over to the quay.

We had an hour or so on St Mary’s which wasn’t enough to explore so we headed to Porth Cressa beach, ate our picnic, found a ton more seaglass and daydreamed before getting the boat back to Penzance. In all my life living in Cornwall I’ve never seen Dolphins but as I was idly staring over the side of the boat, lost in a dream a pod began leaping out, racing along side the boat. It took a moment to really sink in what I was seeing and managed to stammer out ‘look, dolphins!’ before the entire boat load of passengers started stampeding and crowding our side of the boat with oohs and ahhs. It was rather magical, the sun had come out too and the light was all soft and golden. I always love the part where we spot all of our favourite spots and beaches from the sea and spy all of these crazy sea caves in the cliffs that we would never usually get to see.

One day we’ll go back and stay longer, spend all day swimming in that crystal clear ocean and wading out to sandbars and watch the sunset from the islands. For now, back to reality and a busy summer of work and cramming in adventures in all of the gaps whilst trying to grow a small human.