After a welcome breakfast, we were visited by a young Adam in a big black rib… he knocked on the hull as he came alongside. He was the Tresco Harbour Master and collected £20 for a one night stay on a mooring buoy … cheerful and business like, he went on his way to the other boats in New Grimsby Sound.
Funny how many times the name Grimsby crops up in the Scilly Isles… not Liverpool, nor Chelsea or Manchester United… but League Two Grimsby Town… the Mariners!!! Hull City does not get a mention… but in the Scillies you find… a New Grimsby Sound, an Old Grimsby Sound, a New Grimsby Quay, an Old Grimsby Quay, the New Inn at New Grimsby and the Ruin Beach Cafe at old Grimsby…. and so on!
So ashore in the dinghy with Mike on the helm ( on the outboard motor ) … landed at the slipway, chained the dinghy and engine to a solid iron mooring ring… and went for coffee at the Bistro next to the Tresco Spa, shop, Post Office and Bike hire garage. No wet bums as the sea was calm and Mike expertly kept the breaking waves out of the boat. Very warm and sunny at this stage … to the point where sun cream had to be purchased from the island shop.
Tresco is a truly beautiful island … lying to the north of Saint Mary’s, and east of Bryher. So so neat and tidy, stunning gardens with radiant displays of flowers we don’t always see on the mainland… and so many buzzy bees populating brilliant yellows and pinks. Beaches of brilliant white, fine sand in great arcing bays… and so quiet and peaceful… you could certainly ‘chill out’ here as Mike put it. Tresco has the Abbey Gardens … world famous we are told… sub-tropical plants plus a collection of ship’s figureheads.
We headed along the coastal path to the popular New Inn pub… today a pub visit would be different. The New Inn provided hot showers and clean fluffy white towels for the princely sum of £2.50…. mainly for sailors…. beautifully clean and well presented … including various flavours of shower gel and shampoo. The pub food is to be recommended too … for starters… crispy whitebait and chilli pork bites and for mains, mackerel fillets and salad, a big crab sandwich on whole meal and a coronation chicken sani on white bloomer.
So… only thing to do next was to walk off all that food! We set out climbing the hill behind the New Inn … everywhere beautifully neat and tidy, no litter, no graffiti, all hedgerows immaculate and precisely trimmed.. was difficult to spot weeds in flower and shrub beds. Big multi coloured dustbins outside houses presented a puzzle… there were none to be seen. On the mainland we have become so used to seeing lots of huge waste bins of all colours literally littering our roads, streets avenues and cul de sacs. The street landscape has been changed forever… but not on Tresco. Every dustbin is housed in a small, unobtrusive wooden shelter where you have to open a slatted door to your rubbish in.
We walked up and over the spne of the island to St Nicholas’ Church… a beautiful building set in verdant green countryside … with a real dairy herd in the background. Mike discovered a family who had lost five sons in the Second World War… two sailors were also buried in the church graveyard. From the church we wandered slowly Back to the sea on the east side of the island… to Old Grimsby Quay.. built seawards from a serene and pure white sandy crescent of a beach.
At the fair end, we took tea and a coffee as refreshment and fed the resident robin on scraps from our shortbread. This cafe was known as the Ruin Beach Cafe… beautifully laid out along the seafront in gardens of a more southerly latitude. Our exercise after lunch, ended with a hill climb nearly up to the Old Blockhouse ( of World War Two vintage ) and then inland past the lake, woods and in the distance Trescorning Abbey, before returning to the slipway where we had left our dinghy and outboard engine all chained up to an old rusty mooring ring. Back to Poli Poli … our day ended with some serious discussion as to the pretty dreadful inshore waters forecast for the morrow… Storm Hector had arrived.
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Toby's sailing boat Poli Poli 