Obviously, I live on an island: Great Britain, generally reckoned to be the ninth-largest in the world. However, though I’d heard various references to our 'island nation', Shakespeare’s 'precious stone set in the silver sea', and so on, I didn’t really grow up with a personal sense of being an island-dweller.
I suspect my first real exposure to any kind of concept of island-ness would be thanks to Enid Blyton, though whether it was The Island of Adventure or Five Go To Kirrin Island I can’t recall. And it seems my memory’s played me false with this one, as it appears it’s actually called Five on a Treasure Island. Well, it was a long time ago.
Whatever we think of Blyton now, she indubitably played a big part in introducing me and millions of other children to reading. However, it’s another writer (and vastly superior craftsman), Arthur Ransome, who had a lasting impact. I’ve already related the story of my first encounter with Swallows and Amazons, and the impression it made, so I’ll just say that the idea of the island, where the young protagonists camp unsupervised, was a potent one.
So it meant a lot to me when, over forty years after that first reading, I finally set foot on Peel Island in Coniston Water, which is at least a partial model for Wild Cat Island in the books. With my friend and kayaking mentor Jonathan Westaway we paddled across on a choppy day and into the 'secret harbour' which is so pivotal in Swallows and Amazons. Chilly, too, as I’d capsized on the way; good thing I’d got the camera in a waterproof case.
Peel/Wild Cat Island is uninhabited (camping now being discouraged) and it takes just a few minutes to walk from end to end. This clearly puts it at the lower end of the size range for proper islands. So what makes a 'proper' island? This is highly subjective and personal, of course. Geographers recognise islands up to the 2 million+ square kilometres of Greenland (three times the size of Texas), but if I’m looking for islands that really feel like islands, I want something much smaller; places where a view of the sea or lake is likely to appear round any corner. Great Britain doesn’t qualify: according to the Ordnance Survey, its furthest point from the sea is Church Flatts Farm, near Coton in the Elms in Derbyshire, 113km (70 miles) from the nearest coast. For me, the nearest point of the coast, near Pilling, is about 11km by road (plus a final short walk).
I’m looking for islands where a reasonably fit person can conceivably cycle end to end in a day, or follow the entire coastline by mountain bike in a week (examples of both to follow). And maybe ideally they’re places where the arrival of the daily (or less frequent) ferry is a key event in island life.
My real education in island life began in 2000 and 2001, while working on The Magic of the Scottish Islands for David and Charles. I was invited to do the photographs by Terry Marsh, with whom I’d previously worked on a Lake District book. In fact, Terry originally pitched D&C with a plan covering the islands of the whole UK. This would have upped the ante, but Scotland does have the lion’s share. England and Wales are distinctly short of archipelagoes; Scotland has at least four by any sensible definition.
In a series of journeys over those two years I visited over 50 islands, made nearly a hundred ferry crossings, nearly twenty local flights, and miscellaneous other boat trips. I explored individual islands by car, by bike, and on foot. In areas like the Outer Hebrides where 'wild’ camping wasn’t seen as the problem it sometimes is now, I’d often spend three or four nights in a tent, lulled to sleep by the sea, followed by one night in a decent hotel or pub where I could get properly clean. I saw minke whales, porpoises, and deer, and had particularly memorable encounters with sea eagles and an otter.
I learned how the rhythm of life revolves around the schedules of flights and ferries, and I saw how tiny populations created close-knit communities—and how they weren’t always quite as harmonious as they might be portrayed. I was told, for instance, how the GP on one island was also the local minister, in a strict Presbyterian sect, and how any youngsters there seeking contraceptive advice had to make a protracted journey by ferry and bus to the mainland. Which wouldn’t go unnoticed.
The Magic of the Scottish Islands is real, but reality has more layers than magic.
I’ve explored many other islands since. Some have captivated me; others, like Jersey, didn’t really do it for me. Still, every island seems to have something distinctive to offer.
Another significant trip was to the Turku Archipelago in Finland. I’d been to the country a couple of times, tagging along when my partner was at conferences, so I was quick to snap up the chance of an expenses-paid cycling tour in the Archipelago. The riding was easy, but sometimes we had to pick up the pace, at the mercy of ferry timetables. It was my first professional visit, but it led, eventually, to writing a guidebook to the country for Thomas Cook; this went through four editions before the company ceased its publishing operations. This later work also brought me to the Åland Islands. On a map these look like a westward extension of the Turku Archipelago but they are an autonomous region, status originally set by the League of Nations, where the only official language is Swedish.
Another outstanding bike trip was a circuit of Menorca by the Cami de Cavalls, a mostly off-road route which contrasts the rugged and relatively sparsely populated north coast with gentler scenery and more frequent habitation on the south. I’d learned about this route during a previous trip when we’d been doing day walks; Menorca is great for both but there was something close to perfect about doing a full circumnavigation inside a week (if you’re hard-core, you can do it in two days and I dare say it’s been done in one).
The Isle of Man was familiar to me long before I ever set foot there; on a clear day it’s easily visible from many Lake District hills, from my local summit on Clougha Pike in the Forest of Bowland, and even from high points around my home town of Lancaster. As it happened, my first visit owed a great deal to the aforementioned Terry Marsh, who’d helped establish a walking festival there, but I made several subsequent trips off my own bat, including riding the End-to-End Mountain Bike Challenge, a 75km route from Point of Ayre to Port Erin which underlined what my eyes had told me years before: the Isle of Man is a hilly place.
Terry Marsh, and another walking festival, were also responsible for my two visits to Madeira. However, my most 'island' memory here arose one day when walking duty was done and I was wandering round the marina in Funchal. I noticed the messages and emblems painted along a stretch of the quayside. For many cruising yachts, Madeira is the jumping off point for the Atlantic crossing; something that my partner’s sister and her partner had done fifteen years before. I hunted for the name of their yacht, Mijbil, but no doubt it had been painted over several times. Still, the image stayed with me and I borrowed it for a scene in The Sundering Wall.
Rodal’s time under sail in this book also takes him to 'The Archipelago'. My mental image of this land- and sea-scape owed something to the Turku Archipelago but even more to the Hebrides. And it’s also a tribute to the greatest archipelago in fiction: Earthsea.
"After I'd gotten over the panic, and a big story about a young wizard began to sketch itself out in my head, the first thing I did was sit down and draw a map. I saw and named Earthsea and all its islands. I knew almost nothing about them, but I knew their names. In the name is the magic."
Ursula K Le Guin, The Books of Earthsea, Introduction.
And if Le Guin’s initial map had not been an archipelago, A Wizard of Earthsea and its successors would surely have been very different books. And maybe I myself would have been a little less sensitised to the special qualities of islands.
My most memorable visit to an island was like a maritime version of Russian dolls - an island, off an island, off an island etc. It was the Holm of Papay, a small uninhabited isle off Papa Westray, which lies off Westray, north of Orkney Mainland, north of mainland Scotland. I’d cadged a ride with a group I’d met doing a meditation retreat who’d arranged for a local boatman to take them out. We climbed into an impressive chambered cairn you can enter via a hatch at the top. This was where Neolithic people interred their dead, 5000 years ago https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/holm-of-papa-westray-chambered-cairn/
Stunning photos and if you had to say which project I'm most envious of it would be the research for The Magic of the Scottish Islands!