TEN YEARS ON A REMOTE ISLAND
When Rosanne Alexander moved to remote Skomer in 1976, she enjoyed the sparkling summers but came to love the windswept winters even more
Rosanne Alexander came to love the harsh winters on Skomer even more than its glistening summers.
After 10 years on Skomer, our last Christmas on the island was always going to be touched with sadness. Winter mornings meant seal pups – going out at first light to see if any of these fragile, white-coated creatures had been born during the night – and even on that special day there was nothing else I preferred to do.
As we crossed the isthmus I felt the sea breeze against my face, not just the sensation on my skin, but the smell and taste of it. The fact that I had loved these mornings so much became in itself a source of pain, and I wondered how I could possibly enjoy Christmas, knowing that it was my last here.
I glanced down into South Haven, and there among the stones was a newly moulted seal pup, dappled silver-grey, perhaps six weeks old. It was perfect but for the fact that the top half of its body appeared to have been dipped in green paint. We quickly realised the colour came from layers of fine fishing net meshed tightly round its head and flippers. Seconds later we were scrabbling down the steep track to the beach, intent on a rescue. My partner Mike threw his coat over the seal’s head and, using all his weight to pin the animal down, began cutting away the loops of net that bit deeply into its skin. Seals are powerful animals and their bites are notorious for becoming infected, causing permanent paralysis of the
“Storms crushed the vegetation of our treeless landscape to a dessicated shell of reddish ochre”
fingers, so each time it surfaced furiously from under the coat I felt a fresh wave of terror. By the time the liberated seal propelled itself into the water I was laughing with relief, so happy to have saved its life, and I knew it was going to be a good Christmas after all.
AN IDYLLIC FIRST SUMMER
Mike and I first came to Skomer in the spring of 1976 as wardens of this National Nature Reserve, with its nationally and globally important populations of seabirds. The diamond-shaped island, barely two miles long, lies off the south-western tip of Wales, part of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.
We arrived on the brink of a sun-drenched, record-breaking summer. For months the wind hardly breathed, and the glass-smooth sea brushed against the shore with a barely perceptible whisper of bubbles. It was a deceptively unrealistic beginning, and the storm that brought the summer to an end in early September was so violent and unexpected that the old lifeboat used for ferrying visitors to the island sank at its moorings in nearby Martin’s Haven. That was my introduction to winter; from then on, Mike and I were alone and dependent on our little open boat, with an engine that had barely more power than the tide races running like rivers around the island. Although the boat journey is less than two miles, we could be cut off for a month or more at a time.
In subsequent years, I came to realise that winter always began in early September when the last passenger boat of the year slid out of North Haven and the island was ours again. I tried to tell myself there might be the dregs of summer still to come, but the island invariably changed dramatically at about this time. Soon, the birdsound was stripped away to be replaced by the roar of the weather, and storms crushed the vegetation of our treeless landscape to a desiccated shell of reddish ochre.
The last of the seabirds to desert us were the Manx shearwaters. The nocturnal calling from hundreds of thousands of these burrownesting birds enveloped the house in a fog of noise all summer, but by early October the chicks had fledged, and would already be
skimming south to the seas off South America. I felt it as one of the saddest losses of the year.
We had no electricity or telephone, and our only contact with outside was an emergency radio link to the Coastguard. Lack of food was an abiding preoccupation, and we once ran so short of supplies that, for weeks, I had to sift maggots out of the flour before I could make bread. In a house without heating or insulation, I ached with cold almost permanently. Our only warmth came in the evening from burning driftwood in the little living-room grate.
DARK AND DESOLATE WINTER NIGHTS
The long hours of darkness seemed oppressive until I grew accustomed to the rhythms the island imposed on us. There was something comforting about sitting by the draughty, spitting fire by gaslight, losing myself in the classic books that were cheap to buy and slow to read, and listening to the seals howling and skirmishing on the beach below our window. Sometimes it was hard to imagine another reality of electric light, televisions and cars. My only knowledge of the world beyond our enclosed existence came from the radio, and Radio 4 became a precious part of my life.Our days, in contrast, were incessantly busy, making use of every scarce moment of daylight. Following my daily check of the pups at dawn, I spent as much time as possible studying the seals at Castle Bay, where almost 200 adults might be hauled out on the stones. Very little was known about them then, and I made systematic drawings of distinctive markings on their coats, gradually building a record that allowed me to identify individuals from year to year and gain a better understanding of their movements and breeding behaviour.
To share so much time with these animals, on the fringes of their world, was mesmerising. Unfortunately, there was also the physical work, and every winter Mike instigated some major building project that there was no time for in summer, such as rebuilding the visitor accommodation at the old farm. This involved dispiriting amounts of concrete-mixing on my part, but Mike loved the whole process, as a step towards achieving his vision for the island.
We felt very vulnerable to the gales that were an almost permanent feature of some winters, as our wooden, clifftop house shifted and sighed in the wind, and yet I took a perverse pleasure in the wild weather. I longed for the snow I could see on the Preseli Hills most years, but we only experienced one really impressive
fall. It swept across Britain, from east to west, pushing a tide of small birds in front of it, whispering and chattering in a dark cloud overhead. It was wonderful to wake to a landscape completely transformed – white and smooth and sculpted – almost unrecognisable.
Christmas alone had a profound simplicity. Our substitute Christmas dinner of the emergency tin of ham was never needed as the weather was always benign enough to allow us to cross to the mainland in time to buy the ingredients. My favourite present was the wooden, hand-carved snail Mike made for me, although he did spoil the surprise by gashing himself so badly in the process that he probably needed stitches, which were not an option.
For me, winter always ended at a precise moment in March, when the first puffin returned to Skomer after a long exile at sea. This tiny bird, glisteningly fresh in its new plumage, was a highlight of the year, but I was never in any hurry to leave the solitude of winter behind, because I had slowly come to realise it was my favourite time on the island. • Visit Skomer yourself this year. Boats depart from Martin’s Haven at 10am, 11am and 12 noon, Tues–Sun between 1 April and 30 September. pembrokeshire-islands.co.uk