Friday May 9th 2025

I had been looking forward to our day trip to Skomer Island since I’d found out Puffins would be on the island when we were in Wales. Skomer Island Day Trips leave from Martins Haven (just under an hours drive from St Davids). I booked our tickets in early March, luckily, because when G went on the website the night before our trip to check where to park, he was concerned that they were booked out until July, until I told him we had tickets. If you want to do this you need to book. We booked the first trip out at 10 am. All visitors remain on the island for five hours so our return trip was 3 pm. They recommend arriving an hour before the tour leaves so we left our accommodation at around 8 am, stopped in Haversford West at Costas to get a quick breakfast and pre-made sandwiches for our lunch. There is no food on the Island so you need to be prepared.

The guide on the boat was hilarious. Unfortunately I sat right near him and when he needed to demonstrate putting on a life jacket he handed me the microphone and had me continue the safety briefing by providing commentary as he put the life jacket on. This kind of thing is a bit of a nightmare for me, and of course I turned bright red. At the start of the day I had fingers crossed that I would get to see a puffin and I’m sure there were many others like me on the boat. The guide probably knows this and not far into our trip out to the island he excitedly exclaimed “Puffin on the right” and then quickly followed it up with “Puffin in the left, puffin and the right, and left and right!” His excitement was all pretty tongue in cheek because he knew what a treat we were in for. Pretty soon we were in amongst a whole flock of puffins scooting over the water or bobbing on the sea. I did not have to worry about seeing a puffin on this trip. This year they had over 40,000 puffins nesting on the island.

Once docked on the island we climbed the stairs where the guides gave a briefing on the rules—stay on the path etc. After that some people left to explore but we stayed for the second longer informational talk. There is a path that goes most of the way around the island, and we chose to go anticlockwise because the tide was out and we wanted to try to see the seals that sun bake on the rocks near the Garland Stone. The island is stunningly beautiful and was carpeted with massive fields of wild flowers when we were there. The smell as you walk along is beautiful, although not great for allergies. The day was absolutely stunning. The weather was something I worried about with this trip because it needed to be booked so far in advance and five hours spent outdoors in windy, rainy weather would not have been fun. With the weather we had, the time flew by, but we had plenty of time to explore all over the island. I took so many photos this day and ticked off one instance of “Go on an outing to photograph birds/wildlife” on my 101 Things list.

We arrived back at our accommodation late afternoon and had a rest before heading out to Blas Restaurant, the restaurant at our accommodation’s associated hotel. The food was good. I had an asparagus dish for entree, followed by lamb for my main.

Steps: 21,021