Walking on the Isles of Scilly - A Guide to Exploring the Isles

Nestling off the coast of Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly are a joy to explore. Guide includes walks on the larger islands of St Mary’s, Gugh, St Agnes, Samson, Bryher, Tresco and St Martin’s, and details of boat trips to the smaller islands. Nature trails, town trails and coastal walks.

The Isles of Scilly could be explored easily enough without using maps, as the total land area is only 16 sq km (6¼ square miles), but mapless visitors would miss a great deal along the way. Detailed maps reveal alternative routes and other options to the walks in this book. Dozens of near and distant features can be identified in view, and access to all the relevant placenames is literally at your fingertips. The following maps of the islands are available in a variety of scales and styles. Ordnance Survey grid references indicate the starting point of each walk throughout this guidebook.

Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer 101 – Isles of Scilly. This map gives the most accurate depiction of the Isles of Scilly on one large sheet, including all the rocks and reefs that make up this complex group, along with a wealth of interesting and amazing placenames.

Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger 203 – Land’s End, The Lizard & Isles of Scilly. This map shows the Isles of Scilly as an inset. The map offers little detail of the islands and is not particularly recommended detailed exploration, though it is a useful general map and worth having if you are also considering walking around neighbouring Land’s End and The Lizard in Cornwall.

A Precious Heritage – Visitors Companion Maps to the Five Inhabited Islands, published by the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust. These maps show virtually all the roads, tracks and walking paths. The unfarmed wilderness land managed by the Trust is distinguished from other tenanted land. This is a most useful series of maps, but best used alongside the Ordnance Survey Explorer map.

Free leaflets containing maps of all or some of the islands can be collected from the Tourist Information Centre or picked up from other locations. Some will prove useful, others less useful, and many of them exist to highlight a variety of services and attractions around the islands. Marine navigation charts are for those who sail as well as walk, or for serious marine studies.

The maps in this guidebook are extracted from the Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 map and an overlay shows the walking routes. A few of the maps aren’t of walking routes, but show groups of small islands and rocks that can be visited on boat trips and are covered by short descriptive chapters. There are also a few small-scale plans, showing greater detail of Hugh Town, The Garrison and the amazing Tresco Abbey Garden.