Five tiny UK islands filled with magic

The ordinary becomes strangely thrilling when bundled into a circular package and separated from the mainland by a strip of water. We are lucky to be surrounded not only by sea but by an abundance of this small-island magic. There are more than 6,200 small islands in the archipelago that is the British Isles. About 130 of these are permanently inhabited.

Some small islands have big reputations. The Isle of Wight was popularised by Queen Victoria. Lindisfarne and Iona are famed as places of pilgrimage. Brownsea island is the nation’s favourite nature reserve. Rather like celebrities, these islands become public property. Visitors feel like they own a piece of them.

But many of our islands are less heralded and full of hidden wonders.

Over the past two years I’ve travelled from “large” small islands to ever-smaller ones. In descending size, these are my favourites.   

1. Isle of Man

221 sq miles, population 85,000

The Isle of Man has many claims to fame. In Edwardian times, it was the go-to destination for virtually every holidaymaker in northern England. Now it’s the go-to destination for lovers of the TT, its terrifying motorcycle road race, and businesspeople seeking lower taxes.

Geographically, the island looks familiar. Glen Helen could be a valley in the Lake District; lanes banked with gorse and fuchsia resemble Ireland; Peel’s fine stone harbour echoes Scottish ports. And popping into view all around, always closer than expected, is the blue Irish Sea.

Culturally, Man is unique. Its Gaelic language, Manx, is still spoken, and the Tynwald, said to date from 979, is generally regarded as the world’s oldest parliament continually in use. 

Today, the island is a Crown dependency and islanders are proud of their relative independence. Man’s emblem, the three bent legs of the triskelion, is everywhere – on flags, lampposts and even milk cartons. It symbolises Manx resilience – which ever way they are thrown, they always land on their feet.

Man’s natural history is striking, too, from tailless Manx cats to four-horned Loaghtan sheep. The biggest surprise is found in the Curraghs, a maze of boggy meadows and stunted willow forest. Inside this internationally important wetland hop a hundred thriving wild wallabies. Marine creatures, from seals and porpoises to basking sharks, can be admired on boat trips and the Isle of Man is blessed with another scarce wild resource: a dark sky. It has 26 “dark sky discovery sites”. Local astronomer Glyn Marsh recommends the Sulby Reservoir Car Park, Ballaugh beach and Smeale. “You can see about eight street lights from my dark skies site and they are in Scotland. That’s my light pollution,” he says.

The Curraghs (manxwt.org.uk/reserves/close-sartfield); visitor information and stargazing sites (visitisleofman.com).

2. Mainland, Orkney

202 square miles; and South Ronaldsay, Orkney, 19 sq miles, population 19,000 

The peaceful, windswept isles of Orkney are renowned for their Neolithic remains. This northerly archipelago was once a major civilisation. Skara Brae is the star of Orkney, a village older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids, which was revealed by a storm in 1850. 

The village ruins resemble Hobbit holes. It’s popular but anodyne: my Neolithic favourite is a less-visited spot on South Ronaldsay where you can really touch the past – the Tomb of the Eagles. This chambered cairn – a subterranean stone building about half the size of a Tube carriage – was discovered in 1958 by local farmer Ronnie Simison. His daughters, Kathleen and Frieda, continue to run a brilliant museum that provides a genuinely hands-on experience. 

In the museum, you can hold an eagle’s talon. The tomb is reached by lying on “the pensioners’ skateboard”, a square trolley that runs through a low hole. Was the sea eagle a special totem for Neolithic islanders? Sea eagles may have picked off the flesh of the dead in a “sky burial”, carrying souls into a spirit realm. 

Neolithic Orkney is exciting because there’s still so much to discover. Summer visitors can witness the thrill of an archeological dig at the Ness of Brodgar, hailed as the most significant Neolithic find in the northern hemisphere. Situated between the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar (circles that make Stonehenge look rather underwhelming), the Ness of Brodgar is adding colour to our conception of Neolithic life. 

Tomb of the Eagles (tomboftheeagles.co.uk); Skara Brae (historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/skara-brae/); visitor information (visitorkney.com).

3. Barra

23 sq miles, population 1,300 

“Orkney is prose – the best of prose, with its variations of rhythm and sturdy utility –,” wrote the Scottish author Eric Linklater, “but Barra lives in perpetual music and breathes a magic air.” This Outer Hebridean island is famous for having the world’s only airport where scheduled flights (from Glasgow) land on a beach. Touching down on the white cockleshell beach of Tràigh Mhòr is a memorable – and surprisingly smooth – experience. The sheltered waters of its capital, Castlebay, once housed 600 herring boats in the late 1800s, when people came from all over Britain and beyond to chase “the silver darlings” – herring. There’s still fine local fish served in bars and restaurants with fabulous views, and the island’s history is wittily told in displays at its Heritage Centre.

In the 1930s, Barra became “the Bloomsbury of the Hebrides” and home to novelist Compton Mackenzie. When a ship laden with whisky bound for the West Indies ran aground to the north of Barra, canny islanders’ liberation of its liquid gold gave Mackenzie the plot for his bestselling Whisky Galore. Mackenzie wrote of how Hebridean gales are followed by “days of such surpassing loveliness and clarity that the islands seem to float suspended between earth and heaven in a crystal globe”. When just such an interlude arrived, I hired a bike and cycled around the island to a soundtrack of larks, cuckoos and corncrakes, a furtive bird that makes a spectacular “crek-crekking” noise while hidden in long grass. 

Mackenzie rather hyperbolically claimed that waters around Barra could turn “a richer ultramarine than any stretch of water on this side of the Mediterranean” but I discover that he’s right. It was one of the best bike rides of my life, past working crofts, flowery machair grassland and beaches the colour of champagne.

Visitor information (isleofbarra.com)  

4. Rathlin, Northern Ireland

5.4 sq miles, population 130 

Rathlin, Northern Ireland’s only inhabited island, is reached by a little ferry from Ballycastle on the majestic Antrim coast. The island presents a cheerful face to the world, thanks to its two-tone geology. Stony beaches are bright white, and walls and houses are decorated with bright white stones, too. This is because the dark layers of basalt that bequeath such dramatic character to the Antrim coast are deposited, on Rathlin, over white limestone. Small wind-blasted rocks off Britain lack rich soils or climates conducive to rearing large livestock. Historically, their human populations have depended on fish to survive. They’ve also depended on birds. Rathlin escaped the ravages of Ireland’s potato famine because islanders’ diets were supplemented by seabirds and their eggs. Huge quantities of birds still cluster in screaming clans on its epic cliffs – 135,000 guillemots and 21,000 razorbills, the biggest colony in Europe, plus puffins and kittiwakes.

Unusually, these breeding colonies can be easily viewed from the land, thanks to another quirk of Rathlin: its upside-down lighthouse. The bizarre-looking West Light was built in 1919 with the light placed at the bottom – halfway down the cliff – because at the top it would have been too high to help mariners. The steps down to it have turned out to be a brilliant birdwatching platform.

The lighthouse is open to the public and part of a trail that takes in Ireland’s finest old lighthouses. Most people visit Rathlin during the spring, when the seabirds amass in their thousands, but I had a lovely time in November. Every small island is welcoming, but Rathlin’s residents made me feel like a native within a few days.

Visitor information (rathlincommunity.org); (greatlighthouses.com/lighthouses/rathlin-west-light); (rspb.org.uk).

5. Osea Island

380 acres, permanent population 0

The Blackwater, a salty estuary carved into the low coast of Essex, is a generous creator of small islands. Mersea is the biggest, Northey has more geese than people, and then there is Osea, a satisfying oval 5m above sea level, with grassy fields, a small village and a private causeway over which the tide draws back like a deferential butler to permit visitors for four hours in every 12.

Ninety minutes from London, or less via a small plane, Osea is a perfectly positioned object of desire for city-dwelling islophiles. One such previous owner was Frederick Charrington, the repentant heir to a brewer’s fortune, who turned Osea into a temperance resort. As one visitor put it: “He must be an odd sort of crank not to allow any drinks here. Still, his own private air is like champagne – it certainly is marvellous!”

Osea’s current owner is Nigel Frieda, the brother of celebrity hairdresser John. He’s created a boutique holiday destination, a New England-ish place of beach houses, white wooden recliners and free bikes. Paparazzi lenses cannot penetrate this secluded kingdom, so bright young things such as Poppy Delevingne and Jaime Winstone have partied here and musicians from George Ezra to Jessie J have made music in the island’s recording studio. People hire it for weddings, but it’s possible to enjoy a quieter break here.

When I visited in the autumn, there was almost no one else around. I swished through fields of waist-high grass and white campion, and explored miniature woodlands of oak and blackberry. Beyond Osea’s sea banks is an expanse of salt marsh, one of southern England’s wildest landscapes. The only sound was a curlew’s lonely call. 

How can we not be enchanted when finding ourselves on a ring of dry ground surrounded by saltwater, mud, seabirds, the sun setting, a crescent moon rising – the alchemy of a small island. 

Visitor information (oseaisland.co.uk).

Patrick Barkham’s new book, Islander, is published this weekend (Granta, £20). To order your copy for £16.99 plus p&p call 0844 8711514 or see books.telegraph.co.uk