On our bucket list for Wales we wanted to go and see puffins on Skomer Island. Finally we achieved our aim!
Throughout May we‘d kept an eye on their Twitter feed as to when the puffins had arrived and towards the end of the month news came in that they were there in sufficient numbers to make it worthwhile getting the boat over.
We drove about 1.5 hours to St. Martin’s Haven near Marloes and parked up. The 10am boat was fully booked but we were able to catch the 10.30am one. It is literally a ten minute boat ride across (£10 for the island, £11 for the boat trip), run by Dale Sailing and that was bearable for me. Even as you walk up the steps onto the island you are treated to puffins flying around, razorbills, guillemots and kittiwakes.
The abundance of wild flowers including bluebells, red campion and sea thrift gave the impression of a carpet covering great swathes of the island. The time allowed for your return journey is around five hours and we were convinced we’d be kicking our heels looking for something to do. How wrong were we?! At the end of the day we were practically jogging back to the boat and we’d not seen all of the island.
We spent ages watching porpoises off the coast and puffins are even more of a time waster than chickens. They are the funniest little creatures, especially when flying back onto land and they just appear from below with their big orange feet splayed out coming in to land.
They waddle around like Charlie Chaplin and with their colourful beaks at this time of year, they really are the clowns of the bird world! It was such an amazing day and we were lucky enough to get talking to a lovely lady who used to volunteer on the island, who gave us lots of information that really added to our stay.
One day we’ll go back again and spend the night there as then you can watch all the birds coming back at dusk, along with the Manx Shearwaters.
During May we also walked the coastline between Whitesands Bay and St. Justinians. The wildflowers again were out in massive numbers and the day was just fabulous. At St. Justinians you are able to board a boat to take you out around Ramsey Island, another nature reserve and it is also where St. David’s RNLI Lifeboat is based.
We visited the new lifeboat station being built, then walked back into St. Davids’s for a bear and the bus back to site.
