Page 50 - Travel Leisure - USA (February 2020)

E X P E R I E N C E S

of 140 or so islands—only five of which are
SUNNY OLD ENGLAND
inhabited, by some 2,200 Scillonians—28 miles
The Isles of Scilly are home to aquamarine waters, subtropical west of the Cornish coast in the Atlantic Ocean.
gardens, and some of most glorious beaches in all of the Atlantic. Despite their location on nearly the same latitude
JANCEE DUNN visits and comes home smitten. as Newfoundland, the Isles are in the path of the
Gulf Stream, so are blessed with temperate
weather year-round, particularly when compared
with the rest of the U.K.
HEN I FIRST SAW Joanna Hogg’s 2010 Scilly is a remote spot, little known to even
W film Archipelago, about a dysfunctional well-traveled friends (“It’s in Australia, right?
upper-middle-class English family on No, Canada,” said one). Yet I felt hopelessly
holiday, I found I could barely concentrate on pulled toward it, and eventually scheduled an
Tom Hiddleston’s halting dialogue, so obsessed end-of-school-holidays jaunt with my husband
was I with the unnamed setting. What was this and our 10-year-old daughter. From Brooklyn,
bewitching subtropical paradise, with its stunning this took some doing: an overnight flight
botanical gardens, its car-free lanes that twisted to Heathrow; the Heathrow Express train to
past windswept sand dunes, its flower-bedecked Travelers can Paddington; a 5½-hour Great Western Railway
charter yachts
stone cottages? trip to Penzance; a cab to Land’s End Airport; a
for visits to Scilly’s TOM VANDERBILT
The place in question was the Isles of Scilly (it’s constellation of 20-minute flight to St. Mary’s (if you prefer, you
pronounced “silly”), a rugged, dramatic collection islands. can take a three-hour ferry); and, lastly, a short

46 T R AV E L + L E I S U R E | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0