Bryher

Like a bag of coloured sweets in which you'll always find a favourite, even though they all taste the same; like a horse race where you can't help but pick out filly even though you have no interest at all; or like an obscure foreign football league where, for some inexplicable reason, you support a particular team - the islands of the Scillonian archipelago can present the regular visitor with a pleasantly taxing conundrum.

For some unfathomable reason, each and every one of the rocky outcrops demands a ranking in a sort of inter-island popularity stakes.

Talk to anyone about the Scillies and the odds are that people who have been there will immediately say: "Oh so-and-so is our favourite," or "x is nice but y is the one we always go back to."

Bryher takes a lot of beating. Even the island's soft and beautiful name is enough to make you want to return as soon as possible.

Bryher. Neither the largest or the smallest, not the wildest or the loneliest, not the rockiest or the greenest and by no means the best well-equipped or the easiest to get to. But Bryher: arguably most quintessential, most inviting and perhaps most axiomatic and characteristic of all of the Isles of Scilly.

This walk simply follows the footpath which circumnavigates the island. Just up the hill from the main landing quay you will see All Saints Church, and there is a path which turns sharp left.

This quickly dips down into one of the most strange and beautiful corners to be found anywhere in Scilly. As you pass Veronica Farm and enter the area known as Southward, Bryher takes on an altogether Caribbean air. At Green Bay, fat juicy succulent plants cover just about everything, except for the men who come and go down narrow paths leading from the shore to sheds where boats, particularly catamarans, seem to be in the making.

Note that all maps on this site are only indicative. You should never set out without the correct OS map.

Walking: easy going, about five miles.

Camp-site on Bryher tel: 01720 422886

Video: Round Bryher Footage from the Second Annual Isles of Scilly Walks Festival. Watch.

Bryher Christmas It’s the last place in England to see the sun each morning – and it’s the last place to celebrate Christmas each year. Read on...

Then, suddenly, you're out of the St Lucia look-a-like zone and onto The flanks of Samson Hill heading for Works Point where you can see the remains of miniature fields which have perhaps adorned these south-eastern slopes for a millennium or more. Who built the banks and tended the crops I have no idea, except for some romantic notion of hardy islanders toiling away in a salty idyll of self-sufficiency.

Around the corner there is a beach and - horror-upon-horrors - it's crowded! At least, in summer it is. Which is unusual in the Scillies, but then the white sands of Rushy Bay are among the most popular in the archipelago.

However, the hiker soon loses the whiff of suntan-lotion as he or she Heads off in the direction of Droppy Nose Point. This section of the path takes you around Bryher's south-west peninsula known as Heathy Hill and from the top of the aptly named mound fabulous views of the Norrard Rocks, mystical,uninhabited Samson and distant Bishops Rock Lighthouse can be enjoyed.

Now the way heads north around a large bay called Great Porth, past a Few houses and an art gallery. This is situated in a converted pilot gig hut and it probably has the best views of any gallery in the UK.

Still heading north, the hiker passes the newly revamped and fabulous Hell Bay Hotel which is oddly named as it is some distance from the inlet which gives it the name. But then, you wouldn't expect this splendid hostelry to take its appellation from nearby Stinking Porth.

Next come the reed-beds of the island's own lake, Great Pool, which - in the right season - offers fruitful opportunities for birdwatchers. Here you have a choice of proceeding onwards up the island or detouring left around Gweal Hill.

Next comes Great Popplestones Bay and you're out on the high rocky cliffs of the island's north-west corner. Up here a cooling breeze always seems to be wafting off the sea and you can enjoy the wilder side of Scilly.

Someone told me that the sea never rests in Hell Bay, and they were right. Even on the hottest and calmest of summer days the ocean stirred uneasily and made white water on the rocks under Badplace Hill. These places were obviously named with gruesome accuracy. I have been here in mid-winter and seen vast 40-foot waves crashing upon the rocks.

But the grim hill soon brings the walker a satisfying reward as the Next stretch offers some of the most pleasant hiking in Scilly. As you head back down south toward The Town (which, by-the-way, is the most exaggerated place-name you’ll ever come across as it boasts a mere half-a-dozen dwellings) the path runs high along the side of the Tresco Channel which is the deep and awesome fjord between the two islands.

Just a few hundred yards across this dramatic sound Cromwell's Castle Sits solid and cylindrical on Tresco's rocky shore and you get the feeling that this favoured anchorage was once a bad place to be if you happened to be Dutch. They were the blighters with whom the authorities wanted no truck back in 1651 when the castle was built, though in today's somewhat happier times yachts from The Lowlands and many other countries overnight peacefully under the ramparts.

As you reach the southern edge of Shipmanhead Down, so the great vista of the central Scillonian archipelago opens up before you and this splendid apparition alone is enough to earn Bryher a bag full of brownie points in the inter-island popularity game.

And wandering down through The Town back to Church Quay you can mull Over which of the Fortunate Isles you prefer.

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