I spend the next two days moving at Herm pace. Six nature trail boards have recently been erected around the coast, a granite quarry has been reinvented as a zen garden, and all glass bottles are now crushed to provide hardcore for the shaggy-hedged lanes that thread the island. While there is more to be done to reduce the island’s footprint, he is proud of what has been achieved. “We’re on a bit of a journey,” says Craig. Solar panels are at campsite washblocks, and a tender is out for a solar energy farm in one of the more isolated meadows. The Isle of Herm ferry service from Guernsey runs on biofuel – hydrotreated vegetable oil – and 60% of the boilers on the island have been converted to do the same, with the rest to follow. Herm has been making strides to become more eco-friendly over the last couple of years. It’s also somewhere that is trying to do things the right way.
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The island knows how to draw a crowd in summer (among its various events, Utah Saints played a gig here in 2022, with DJ-producer Sasha doing the same this September), but in the shoulder season it feels like a seaborne secret. As well as the White House hotel, which has sea views and serves classy evening meals, visitors can stay in self-catering cottages or at one of two campsites. If that sounds contradictory, welcome to Herm. There’s simultaneously lots to do – eat, drink, swim, walk, kayak, birdwatch, jog, mooch, poke your nose into the millennium-old chapel, stargaze, sleep – and little in the way of diversion. “Herm’s part of the British Isles, it’s part of the Channel Islands, but more than anything it’s just Herm,” he says. He is tailed by his dog, Harvey, who has the run of the island and is possibly the world’s happiest sproodle. The current tenants are former Guernsey residents John and Julia Singer, who had their first date on Herm in the mid-90s and took on the lease in 2008.) Craig is a gregarious Rotherham United fan, here since 2019 with his wife and children. (Yes, an island with a CEO: Herm is owned by the States of Guernsey, which leases it for use as a visitor destination. “I always say the scenery is a mix between the Caribbean, the North York Moors and the Pembrokeshire coastline,” says the island’s CEO Craig Senior. The island’s name sounds like a hesitation, but its pretty hills, woods and beaches demand to be savoured in the here and now I’m here for a short visit, partly to find out more about Herm’s drive to become less carbon-reliant.
When the storm passes and the sun returns the island feels washed clean, the sands flowing white into a turquoise sea. It gives me the chance to do an inventory of the harbourside buildings – one hotel, two pubs, a handful of stone cottages, an old prison big enough for one – and to watch the waves being whipped into a dark fury. Shortly after my arrival on the 15-minute boat crossing from Guernsey, a spring downpour brings gale-force winds and horizontal rain. The island’s name sounds like a hesitation, but its pretty hills, woods and beaches demand to be savoured in the here and now. You’ll find no cars, or even bikes, and the primary school has four pupils. Puffins breed on its southern cliffs rabbits nibble in its flower meadows migrant warblers cluster in its pine groves. The island has a permanent population of 65 and a history that yawns back to the Neolithic era. The tiny, comma-shaped Channel Island – stretching just under 1.5 miles from top to bottom, and less than half a mile across – feels like a place cut adrift.
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Hours later, sipping coffee while overlooking another deserted beach, my skin is still zinging and my mood is irritatingly smug.Ī dunking in the bay is an apt way to start the day on Herm. Immediately, the cove is filled with terrible swearwords: I force myself to stay in the water, spluttering and cursing but growing less cold with each swimming stroke. The only sounds are the murmur of the waves and the piping of oystercatchers. The sand is soft, the sky is pink, Normandy lines the horizon. A t 6.30am, I walk to the empty beach at Belvoir Bay.
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