I is for Islands
Is it any wonder we have an island mentality when they’re like this?
A CCORDING TO THE Ordnance Survey, the British Isles includes 6289 islands. But just as Katie Melua got in bother for claiming it was a ‘fact’ that there are nine million bicycles in Beijing, I’m not putting too much stock in that figure.
After all, what’s an island? How large does a rock in the sea have to be before you call it one? How many hours must it spend unsubmerged per day?
The admirable Dixe Wills, writer and friend of CW, addressed this in his book Tiny Islands. After considering all the criteria by which a pedant might judge an island, his conclusion was: “Frankly, who cares? Life is, after all, brief.”
What we tend to do instead is to judge by experience. A walker knows when she or he is on an island. It doesn’t matter if they’ve walked to it or arrived by boat: the experience of setting foot on land that is not visibly attached to mainland Britain is odd, thrilling and special.
Some islands lie mere metres away from the coastline – like Scolt Head off Norfolk or Cei Ballast near Porthmadog. But they still feel like strange, new worlds – and thus they make you feel like an away team from the USS Enterprise when you get there.
Hilbre isn’t a few mere metres from the coast. It’s a walk to get to it, and a walk when you’re on it. And that’s why it’s the poster-boy for our thoughts on islands.
Hilbre sits in the estuary of the River Dee; Wales to its left and England to its right. It’s off the north-western tip of the Wirral, the premolar-shaped peninsula which separates the Dee from the Mersey. From the marina at West Kirby, you can look out and see Hilbre calling to you. And when the tide is fully and safely a long way out, you can go answer it.
It’s made up of three islets: Little Eye, Middle Eye and Hilbre, the largest. They’re made of the same bunter sandstone that you can follow all the way down through Cheshire on the Sandstone Way. But here the stone is uniquely sculpted by tide and wind. It’s crimped, crumpled and curvy. And red. Very, very red. Especially at sunrise and sunset.
As with most walks to tidal islands, there is but one safe route. Crossing directly to the main island is out of the question: deep channels lie hidden along the way. They retain deep water even at low tide – and when the tide comes in they will swell and overtop at lightning speed.
Instead, Tom and I head out from West Kirby marina to Little Eye: a safe half-mile, provided you check the tide times carefully. From there you can cross the smaller islets, and finally join the track that leads onto the big one – which is the only one where human occupation is in evidence.
I find it in the shape of ranger Matt Thomas. He has been here for 17 years. Not consistently; he goes home at the end of most of his shifts. But for someone who has been dedicated to this island and its unique needs for so long, ‘home’ is something of a dual concept.
“If it wasn’t for the fact that the only electrical power comes from a generator and there’s only a compost toilet, I might be tempted to stay here all the time,” he notes.
“But then again, so would a lot of other people, I guess. It’s the lack of amenities that make it so wild and empty and… [ pause, big smile] fantastic.”
Matt loves Hilbre because it’s an outpost of wilderness in one of the most urbanised areas of the country.
“There’s about a million people within a ten-mile radius of us right now,” he says. “Liverpool city centre is 30 minutes that way. And yet… look at this. When I stay on the island after the tide comes in, I feel like I’m alone at the end of the Earth.”
Matt’s job is to maintain the islands and manage access so that people can enjoy them (for many locals, a low-tide haunt to Hilbre is as natural as a trip to Morrisons) while caring for the wildlife that lives here, or passes by. And there’s a lot of that.
Atlantic grey seals are the big draw in summer: up to 700 of them can be spotted ‘hauling out’ (“basically, chilling”, says Matt) on the sandbanks of Hilbre, before they head off to North Wales or the Isle of Man in November to pup.
Then there are the winged wonders: rarities like nightjars, red-flanked bluetails, oystercatchers, peregrines, sandwich terns, dunlin – and every kind of gull imaginable. Throughout the year, the islands live and breathe with birdlife.
Liverpool city centre is 30 minutes that way. And yet… when I stay on the island after the tide comes in, I feel like I’m alone at the end of the Earth.”
And smell of it, too. The little cove on the eastern edge of the main island is known as Niffy Bay, partly due to the way the rising sun cooks the seaweed on its rocks, but mainly due to the quite incredible quantity of guano that’s generated as the waders retreat to the shoreline when the tide comes in.
There’s plenty of human history here, too. In fact, permanent residency on Hilbre only ended in 2011.
In the Middle Ages, it served as a forward outpost for the port of Chester.
“Geographically, Chester was much more of a natural port than where Liverpool is,” says Matt.
“It had a much better position in its estuary, and the river was much larger than it now is in the city, so Hilbre was part of the port system. But over the centuries the Dee silted up and Chester became unworkable, so Liverpool developed instead.”
For some 500 years, a group of Benedictine monks from Chester Abbey had a chapel on the island, which became a place of pilgrimage. The modern name Hilbre is derived from St Hildeburgh, the chapel’s patron saint.
And as the shipping industry developed, Hilbre became an important signaling station. As they passed the Isle of Anglesey, ships bound for Liverpool would signal their cargoes to the shore. The manifest would then be telegraphed down a line of stations – including Hilbre – to the harbourmasters in Liverpool. By the time the ship arrived in dock, its entire cargo would have been auctioned off and its new owners would be standing ready to collect.
In the Second World War, Hilbre was a decoy: a light was placed on Middle Eye to convince enemy bombers they were over Liverpool, and drop their payloads early. “The fact it’s still here suggests it never fooled anyone,” suggests Matt.
Today you’ll find a diverse cluster of little buildings on the main island. There’s the bird observatory, which includes three Heligoland traps (funneled cages which lure birds in for tagging and releasing). It was originally a hut for the navvies who worked on the Manchester Ship Canal – and was imported here by barge.
Then you pass the former telegraph house and buoymaster’s house ( given to the chap whose job was to maintain all the navigational buoys in the estuary), and a workshop in which you can find everything from an 18th century cockle-boiler to the wicket from an inter-estuary cricket match.
Between the 1790s and 1830s, Hilbre even had a pub, the Seagull. A small shack is all that’s left of it. As Dixe Wills points out, it is remarkable how many of our tiniest, most remote islands have had pubs on them for some reason. You can still find them on Piel Island off Cumbria and Burgh Island off Devon.
And at the farthest northern tip of Hilbre is a former lifeboat station with slipway. From this lonesome point you can stare across to North Wales (the Clwydian Hills are clear, with Snowdonia more distant), or up the Lancashire coast (chance of a Lakeland peak or two) – or just far, far out to sea.
Alternatively, look directly east across the Wirral and you’ll hit the unmistakeable skyline of Liverpool. Its Anglican and Catholic cathedrals are obvious, as are the immense new stands of Anfield, home of Liverpool FC.
A legend of said club, former manager Rafael Benítez, might be even closer. Check out the fine house on the skyline of West Kirby: Rafa bought it while he was the gaffer at Liverpool and has kept it throughout his subsequent career at Inter Milan, Chelsea, Napoli, Real Madrid and latterly Newcastle United. He must like the view over Hilbre quite a bit.
Finally, Matt takes me to an eight-foot column at the top of the island. “The Hilbre lighthouse,” he says proudly. “The light is smaller than the solar panel that powers it. But it’s managed by Trinity House and is thus an official lighthouse. So we get a lot of enthusiasts who’ve travelled the world collecting lighthouses coming all the way out here to get the stamp for this tiny thing. I love that.”
With that sentence, I think Matt has summed up the strange wonder of islands. Odd things happen on them. You are not at home. You’ve moved beyond the barrier of everyday land. You are walking in the sea. Between worlds. And the best news is, there are several thousand other Hilbres out there (note, Ms Melua, how I didn’t specify exactly how many). They all have oddities of their own. It might be a nautical story, a technological breakthrough, or simply the bloodyminded determination to put a pub in the middle of the sea. But it will be something wonderful. I is for islands. And I always will be. How about U?