Sully Island

Visiting Sully Island,

When I lived in Penarth I used to take a walk along the beach on a Saturday to Lavernock Point from which Marconi made his famous first radio transmission across water. If I was feeling fit, I would go on to St Mary's Well bay but my visits to Sully Island were usually when the family went by van to the bay. (Being a lazy individual , walking from my home all the way to the island was an unattractive prospect) . I walked at low tide several times across the red Triassic sandstone inclined strata to the deserted island (it had no sigs of habitation then one day on turning around to get back to the rest of the family on the mainland beach I saw that the tide was already gushing over what I recognised as the uppermost Triassic stratum of the footpath but I did not want to spend the night on the island with no tent or food and water. so I started to cross. Then I came across a little girl who being so small I thought would stand little chance against the tide. I had quickly to make up my mind whether to carry her across relying on memory of the position of the rocks under turbid water conscious that I could not swim, or taking her back to the island and comforting her while we waited for hours for her to be re-united with her family.. In the heat of the moment I took the former choice, probably the less wise. I remember her weight on my shoulders as I tried to find my footing.

We got across through the increasingly vigorous tide and walked up the beach,

She got down and rushed to her family who had been watching all this; I walked back to mine as people whispered as I passed. I am still unsure about whether they were condemning me as a fool or a hero.

Sully Island (Welsh: Ynys Sili) is a small tidal island and Site of Special Scientific Interest at the hamlet of Swanbridge, Vale of Glamorgan, 400 yards off the northern coast of the Bristol Channel, midway between the towns of Penarth and Barry and 7 miles (11 kilometres) south of the Welsh capital city of Cardiff. Access to the island is on foot at low tide from the car park of the Captain's Wife public house. It is 14 and a half acres in extent and is one of 43 (unbridged) tidal islands which can be reached on foot from the mainland of England, Wales or Scotland.

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Wikipedia