The Birdman of Bryher

Barefoot in a black cape with a kittiwake on his shoulder is how we first meet the Birdman in Michael Morpurgo’s beloved children’s book, Why the Whales Came. ‘He was more like an owl, a flitting creature of the dark… wherever he went he would be surrounded by a flock of screaming seagulls that circled and floated above him... almost as if they were protecting him.’ We won’t spoil the tale but we will reveal it is rooted entirely on Bryher and the neighbouring island of Samson, with places like Rushy Bay, Samson Hill and Popplestone Bay all there on the map – and there for you to walk.

Perhaps best known for his Devon-inspired story, War Horse, Morpurgo has written many tales of Bryher, including The Wreck of the Zanzibar and The Sleeping Sword. The island inspired him from the day he first visited with his wife and children in the 1980s and ‘discovered a place where every rock and wreck had a story to tell’.

‘As you approach the Scillies they look a little like dumplings in the ocean – they’re very lowlying – but the seas around them are a shade of blue like nowhere else in the British Isles,’ he once wrote. ‘The funny thing is you can walk around Bryher in an hour but we never tire of this lovely little spot.’

‘Some people prefer Tresco or St Agnes or St Martin’s or St Mary’s. They are all wrong! Bryher is best. For me it has become my Narnia.’