The island baggers!
Meet the woman who’s made it her mission to visit as many of Britain’s quirky and captivating islands as she can, as part of a new trend
There are no crowds, no cars, just the sound of birds singing and the waves lapping as Denise McLellan and her husband Richard step onto their next island adventure. Around them are wild landscapes, scampering wildlife, astonishing views and above all, the most amazing sense of peace and quiet.
Denise and Richard are part of a growing movement known as ‘island bagging’ which involves visiting – or ‘bagging’– as many of Britain’s 706 islands as possible, and climbing to their summits. From Oronsay, one of Britain’s smallest, to
Lewis and Harris, the largest (apart from Great Britain itself), along with all the unusual, curious places in between, it’s now become Denise and Richard’s passion to tick off island by island.
It all started because of Denise’s lifelong love of hillwalking, having always enjoyed lacing up her walking boots ever since her teenage days in the Guides. Growing up, she challenged herself to take on bigger and tougher climbs. Over time Denise, now joined by her equally outdoorsy husband, realised that to take on the most challenging hills, they would need to explore the islands, which boast a whole range of daring ascents.
But they soon found it was more than just the hills they loved about the islands and so when Denise took semiretirement from the NHS, they threw themselves into doing a grand island tour, joining the growing number of so-called ‘island baggers’.
While every island is totally unique, some are far more difficult to get to than others. That’s why for some trips Denise and Richard take a ferry or ask a local skipper to take a boat to the island, but for others they have to make their own way, which means an often-risky kayak ride.
“We have to work with the weather and check the tides carefully because we want to use the tide to push us there,”
“There’s this fantastic sense of freedom and it’s fascinating to see places where people used to live ’
says Denise (54), who is no stranger to being tossed out of a kayak when the waves get too ferocious. Then there’s the challenge once they arrive, of working out how to get on to land and how to reach the summit – which might be a climb, a fight with dense brambles or crossing a muddy marsh.
“There’s often no information available about what we might find when we land,” says Denise.
One of the most difficult but rewarding ‘baggings’ for Denise was on the
St Kilda islands, 40 miles northwest of the Outer Hebrides, where they had to scale 300ft tall sea stacks to get the summit, something no one had done for decades. It’s all worth it, though, for the feeling Denise gets once they’ve successfully stepped on land.
“There’s this fantastic sense of freedom,”she says. “It’s also fascinating to see places where people used to live many generations ago, which must have been a remote and unique way of life, but that have since become deserted.”
Wildlife is another gem these islands have to offer and Denise and Richard have become familiar with saying hello to seals, seabirds and
otters along their travels.
As they sometimes choose to camp on these islands overnight – to wait for the tide to help push them back – they also enjoy waking up surrounded by birdsong. To date, Denise and Richard have ‘bagged’ 144 islands, with highlights including Caldey Island near Ilfracombe which is home to a working monastery and Handa, off the west coast of Scotland, which is a paradise for puffins. But with the record for island bagging standing at 527, there’s still plenty more for them to explore. “We think Britain is crowded but it’s so easy to escape all that and find remote places on the islands,” she says. “I’ve travelled all
‘It’s so easy to escape all the crowds and find remote places on the islands’
over the world, but there’s something incredibly special about the lush British countryside you find on the islands and there’s just so many things to see I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”