It’s fair to say that my recent adventures have favoured breadth over depth, as I racked up the country count or raced across Europe. This trip, then, would be a change of pace: five nights on a remote island of barely five square kilometres. I would be travelling with my girlfriend, Scarlett, who had previously spent an entire summer at our destination: Sark, one of the Channel Islands.
We timed our holiday to coincide with La Beltane, a modern take on the ancient Celtic celebration of spring. This festival – familiar to me from my years in Scotland – has recently been revived on Sark by a friend of ours, with a daytime May fayre followed by an evening of musical entertainments.
Visiting the island is not entirely straightforward: I’ve written a guide to some of the idiosyncrasies which arise from its car-free status. With access to Sark only by sea, to safely connect between flights and sailings we had to book-end our trip with nights on Guernsey. Our journey there was a rare novelty in that the airline, the aircraft type, and both airports were all new for me. On the return, meanwhile, I was able to squeeze in a detour to an even more obscure location: Herm.
The majority of our time was spent happily exploring Sark’s coastal scenery by foot or bike. I’ve put together a tour of sorts of the various attractions we encountered; and you can find photographic highlights (from all 3 islands) in this gallery. There are also logs on polarsteps, although these are less detailed than usual as Scarlett was with me on the trip rather than following along at home!
Six months later, I also penned a trip report for flyertalk, which goes into more detail on the flights.
