It's been a busy few weeks on the island with what feels like the start of summer. We have had a few glorious days of sunshine on St Mary's and the solar has been doing its thing.
The back end of this week has seen wall to wall sunshine and the islands really do look beautiful in full sun. We have had an exciting few days with a film crew in Reculver putting the finishing touches to a joint venture promotion we are launching in June. More on that in a couple of weeks but its going to be a cool promotion with some free stuff and a competition to win a free trip!
It was the scilly60 run yesterday and we are looking forward to seeing all the footage from that over the next few days. It's a 60KM jaunt around all the 5 inhabited islands with tripper boats in-between(of you are quick enough to meet them). Details are on their site at https://scilly60.co.uk. It was a really hot day yesterday which was very unkind to the runners but great for spectators!
The creative Scilly festival is running, it's 9 days of Scillonian inspired arts and culture taking place from 12th-20th May, including a weekend Festival of Nature in partnership with the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust. More details on this one are at Creative Scilly Festival.
Hot on the heels of Creative Scilly is the Scilly folk festival. This all kicks off on 25th May in the Scillonian club and is a long weekend of music, song and dance is in store, featuring some of the best folk music from Scilly and the South West. A full itinerary is here.
We are looking forward to bringing friends over towards the end of June to stay in Reculver and hopefully not break too many wine glasses!
With all of our experience of shipping all manner of items to Scilly during the renovation and constantly seeing the trials and tribulations of the most experienced locals getting the most mundane of items delivered it haas us thinking.....I am a bit of tech nerd and have been thinking what we can do to share the collective wisdom and knowledge of the locals. I am going to explore if it's possible to build some kind of database of retailers and their couriers so we can keep an up to date list when deciding where to buy from. It sounds trivial but the courier makes a massive difference from both a competence and cost perspective. I really envisage that as being a resource for locals.
We always seem to get asked the same questions as well so we will be putting up an FAQ shortly. The top question this season is currently, is it worth getting a Tesco order for when we arrive? The answer to that one I think is no, its quite the process getting the delivery setup and if there is any disruption to the travel then you end up with either no shopping, no frozen items or something else. Whilst there of course isn't a superstore or Waitrose on the island we have always found the Co-op ok, just make sure you get in before the pleasure boats come back and the Store is another good place to go and is generally less busy.
If you have any questions you would like to be part of the FAQ just put them in the comments.