The Scilly Isles: Not being silly about Covid-19 so we can have a seriously good time

We have written these blogs so they can be enjoyed independently or in sequence. If you want to start at the beginning, click here: https://www.havehusbandwilltravel.com/adventures-1/2020/8/3/a-week-in-the-isles-of-scilly

It doesn’t appear on the Ordnance Survey map we took with us to aid our explorations of the Isles of Scilly, but it’s marked on the detailed map widely available across the inhabited parts of the archipelago: 

Pest House (18th Century). 

It’s shown to be on the southern half of the small island of St Helen’s. St Helen’s is uninhabited now, except for rare species of birds. But a quick Google search when we got back to the hotel revealed the truth: the pest house (aka St Helen’s Isolation Hospital) was built in 1764 to quarantine plague cases from visiting ships.

Although we weren’t to be subjected to quite such stringent health and safety measures when visiting the Isles of Scilly from mainland Britain, I would not have blamed the authorities if they had. At the time of our visit (and at the time of writing this), the Scillies had not had one single diagnosed case of Covid-19 and everyone was doing what they could to keep it that way.

As the duty manager in our hotel pointed out, a single case could shut down the Scillies in a flash. With a population of only 2,200 people across the whole archipelago, the threshold for a local lockdown would not take long to reach. There must have been a minority of residents who thought it would be safer to stay closed for business and not admit tourists from the mainland. But when 63% of people are employed in the tourism industry, there really isn’t much of a choice.

For our part, we were only too happy to comply with the measures, which were no different to those on the mainland, but far more rigorously enforced. Without exception, shopkeepers insisted on all patrons masking-up upon entering and they weren’t afraid to turn away customers who didn’t have one. Masks were mandatory on all boats to the other islands. Reservations in restaurants were ‘strongly recommended’ and we were glad we booked ahead most evenings because of their reduced capacities. Signage was always clear and no nonsense. There was no opting-out here. This was not ‘guidance’ or ‘we strongly advise’. You either did it, or you didn’t eat or drink there, simple.

I doubt anyone is reading this thinking “this sounds like some totalitarian nightmare” (we credit our readers with more intelligence than that). The reality is we felt safer because we knew everyone else was having to abide by the same rules. Far from being a restriction of freedom, it was liberating, certainly compared with the anxiety-inducing ambiguity and lax application of wooly ‘advice’ we have experienced closer to home.

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