This year Shirley and I took a trip to Lundy Island to celebrate our Anniversary. We stayed in the wonderful Castle Cottage which has a picture window that overlooks the harbour.
I have always been fascinated with Puffins and was hoping to catch a glimpse of some and cross another item of the Bucket List. Unfortunately that was not to be but there was plenty to see and do and the trip was a great success. All except the boat journey across to the island which was pretty rough. Most of the passengers seemed to be hanging over the edge, me included, or have their face thrust into a paper bag…
One bonus was that I managed to spot a couple of dolphins while hanging over the side of the boat. Not sure what they were though. They seemed to be spotted dolphins rather than common dolphins but not sure if you actually get them in our waters?
The journey back was quite smooth though which was a relief. Anyway here is a collection of some photos we took while on the island.
Lundy Accommodation
We stayed in Castle Cottage which overlooks the harbour.
This is the view from Castle Cottage.
Shirley sat in the picture window.
Castle cottage is the lean-to part of this structure. There are other places to stay in the rest of the building.
This is the most remote accommodation on the island. Tibbetts. It doesn’t even have any electricity…
Lundy Island
We walked all around the island from one end to the other. After 5 minutes you can really feel that there is no-one else around…
This was one of the busier paths on the island 🙂
This is the lighthouse on the northern tip of the island. This is at other end to where we were staying as we had a view of the southern lighthouse from our cottage.
On the way down to the lighthouse.
A view back up the steps. I really like this photo for some reason…
This side of the island boasts a no-take zone where fishing of any kind is strictly prohibited and the wildlife is thriving because of it.
We had hoped to go snorkelling but the weather prevented us from getting out into the water…
Wildlife
There is a wide variety of wildlife on the island. We didn’t manage to see any of the sika deer but we did manage to see a lot of other mammals.
There are quite a few ponies scattered around.
These soay sheep are extremely hardy. And they taste nice too… I tried a Lundy Casserole from the pub on the island that included Soay Sheep and Goat amongst other things.
Lundy has a high percentage of black rabbits among the many wild rabbits on the island.
The goats wander everywhere and are not afraid of heights as they are so sure-footed.
Not to be outdone the soay sheep don’t seem to mind hanging on the edge of a cliff either.
This is about as close of we got to the seabirds. There were supposed to be some puffins in residence but the day we went looking it was so windy it was hard to stand still enough to look through the binoculars. They are a lot further away than I was hoping anyway but still interesting…
There were a lot of different gulls nesting around the island. The common gull can be quite a pest at home but seeing them in their natural environment seemed much better.
We were lucky enough to see a seal pop up out of the water while we were waiting for the boat home.
Then as we were leaving we saw a group of seals hauled out on the rocks.
The perfect end to a wonderful trip. I would recommend it anyone.
As usual you can view these photos of Lundy Island on Flickr.
Just in case you are interested I have decided to return to posting on a Friday as it just seems to work better for me. So see you next Friday or whenever you next visit…
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Photo’s are great as usual lovely pics well done.