Holiday in the Scillies in list form

[shermarama]

Bits of the Scillies visited:

• St. Mary's (or Ennor, as it was originally)
• St. Agnes
• Gugh (which is connected to St. Agnes at low tide, but not at high)
• St. Martin's
• Western Rocks (no landing since they're notionally closed, but there's not really anything to land on anyway)
• Eastern Isles (only to the vicinity of again)
• Bishop Rock (which we were planning to dive but the swell was too big so we just went round it)

Pubs drunk in:

• The Atlantic Inn (busiest and best pub in Hugh Town)
• The Mermaid (also Hugh Town, all right, but nowt special)
• The Bishop and Wolf (also Hugh Town, apparently fine but always pretty much dead)
• The Dungeon Bar (really a dungeon, in the Star Castle above Hugh Town; tiny and a bit nuts)
• The Turk's Head (on St. Agnes, and officially the most southwesterly pub in Britain; they did a very nice ploughman's lunch)
• The Admiral Benbow (in Penzance, a crazy pub with every sort of nautical and farming knick-knack, and a juke-box where the songs are still in A and B side form)

Dive sites dived:

• Trenemene, in the Western Rocks, both sides of it
• Black Rock / Daisy, Western Rocks
• Hanjague, a big rock in Eastern Isles
• King Cadwallon, a wreck in the Eastern Isles
• The Italia, a wreck south of St. Agnes
• Hathor and Plympton, two wrecks in the same place south of St. Agnes

Notable species seen:

• Puffins! We came over a wave right into one on the way out to Bishop Rock on the first day and it went pittering off sidways on its takeoff run in a most amusing fashion.
• Seals! They were hanging around all the time on the Western Rocks dives, popping up to look at the boats, and present in at least some passing form underwater on all the dives there. For one dive on the Black Rock, in a wide open gully with good vis, there was a seal who kept coming round and looking at us, doing its acrobatic rolling thing and then flitting off again. Then on the second Trenemene dive, where every surface was covered in jewel anenomes and there were fish everywhere, another seal kept coming  and rolling around us, coming much closer. It didn't actually bite my fins but it was giving them a good inspection, which left me in the funny position of wanting to kick my feet to be able to move around, but not being able to because I didn't want to kick a seal. Seals, of course, seem much more like fellow independent beings than your average fish, even stuff like catsharks and cuttlefish; it feels like you should be able to communicate with them somehow, wave at them and have them wave back, or mime what they're doing and see if they copy you. They don't, because they have their own agenda and are having fun playing with you.
• Sun fish! This is a completely nuts sideways fish that you see floating around in open water rather than under it. It looks like a turtle that's been chopped in half longitudinally and has somehow scabbed over and managed to survive minus a couple of fins. It's a pallid, blubbery-looking fish that goes up to bask on the surface of the water, for reasons which aren't entirely known but are possibly to do with warming itself up and also to allow birds to land on it and eat its many parasites.
• Endless birds! All very tame - they don't seem to be wary of people at all, especially when there's anything resembling food in the area. Almost all our lunches were outdoors, and almost always accompanied by song thrushes and various small things that were probably warblers, all trying to nick whatever crumbs they could, even taking them out of hands if offered. There were also lots of seabirds out on the rocks; as well as the puffins, lots of varieties of gull and tern, guillemots, cormorants and shags, and I think some gannets too.
• Plants! It's very difficult to tell, in the Scillies, what's someone's carefully planted garden and what's a bunch of wild plants that have settled on some rocks and grown so enthusiastically and put out such a riot of flowers that the effect verges on the tacky. Really violently pink daisy-like things, and this odd cabbage-like succulent that puts out triffid-like stalks of yellow flowers, growing on any old bit of rock wall or roof corner it can get a foothold on.

Injuries / illnesses sustained:

• I started the week with a horrible cold which developed through Friday afternoon and evening on the train down. I spent most of Saturday half-conscious. By Sunday I wasn't well enough to dive but I went along in the boat and spent the afternoon wandering round St. Agnes, and on Monday I still wasn't right but well enough to dive. What with the diving and suchlike I've not actually fully recovered from that cold all week so I've still got it now. 
• While we were driving out to Trenemene on the last day, we came down rather too hard over a steep bit of chop and I came down arse-first on a metal rail. I've got an interestingly painful lump at the top of my thigh which hasn't yet turned into a lurid bruise but promises to.
• A bit of sunburn, in amusing patterns as dictated by the wearing of a drysuit
• A horribly split and chapped bottom lip due to all the sun and salt water

Other random entertaining features:

• Cycling in a drysuit - I'd left some bits of kit back in the house and had to borrow another diver's rented bike to get there and back quickly. That was quite odd. 
• The complete absence of crime on the islands - I did not see, at any point, a bike lock. If you have a bike, you ride it somewhere, and then you leave it there, and when you come back, it's still there.
• A bunch of blokes singing proper sea shanties in harmony in the pub. Not in a performance fashion, just sitting around a table all together, in the way a bunch of blokes in a pub somewhere else might play dominoes.
• Okay, so there's an airport, with small planes coming in from the mainland. It's on a headland on the south side of St. Mary's. There is also a coastal footpath that runs around that headland. How do you think they have arranged the interface of these two things? What they have done is, where the footpath crosses the end of the main runway, there is a light and a hooter, and when a plane is about to arrive or take off, the light flashes and the hooter sounds, and sign says you shouldn't cross the runway. When there is no plane coming, you are free to walk straight across the runway, although a big sign warns you not to loiter. And that's about it.

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

Sunfish -- that's amazing. I would love to see one.

Jewel anenomes are so great. The first time I saw them I really believed I was narked and it wasn't until I saw them again at 15 metres I realised they actually do look that vivid.

[shermarama]

I was thinking to myself while down there, never mind trying to catalogue all the species you see underwater, there's no way I'd even be able to catalogue all the colour combinations of jewel anenome that there were on Trenemene. Though it could be fun trying.

[steer.livejournal.com]

They are so lovely, bright as highlighter pens.

Oh -- cycling in a dry suit! That's particularly crazy. Go you!

Oh, and by the way, a friend and I both have examples of Farne seals "copying". I had a couple of minutes of "I tickle you under the chin for a bit then you bite at my wrist a bit" but it seemed to be "copying" within the limits of not having arms. A friend on a different dive had a similar experience where a seal seemed to be copying his swimming and waving. We both talked about it in terms of the seal copying us. They're wonderful creatures.

[tackline.livejournal.com]

"Crazy"? Sounds like some kind of kink to me.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Heh... well if it is, it's got to be one of the ones you really NEED internet search to find fellow aficionados.

[ironlord.livejournal.com]

This reminds me I have to make a trip to the Scilly Isles at some stage or I risk not getting a complete set of islands under my belt.

[bjh21.livejournal.com]

The Admiral Benbow also does (or did when I was last there) some very good food.