July 19 2021

Summer of rage

Place

The Isles of Scilly, a botanist’s paradise

'You can get away from everything,’ said Harold Wilson of the Isles of Scilly, ‘not only in distance but also in time’. During the parliamentary recess, Wilson would frequently catch the sleeper from Paddington to Penzance before making the notoriously choppy crossing to Britain’s most westerly archipelago. There he would unwind in his cottage on St Mary’s. This family of five islands 28 miles off the nose of Land’s End has always enjoyed a somewhat secretive coterie of admirers — Jude Law and Michael Morpurgo to name but two. Deserted beaches with a Caribbean palette are surely part of the draw, as are hedgerows festooned with wild garlic, pink bells and exotic aeoniums.

James Jeffrey

Down Santiago way

Hiking toward the Spanish border on my second day after setting off from Bayonne, I set down my backpack on a grassy patch beside a beach. It was bloody hot — August in the southwest of France — and the sight of beachgoers taking a shower had a cooling appeal. I stripped to my underwear and enjoyed the bracing shower burst. Then I looked down. Water was cascading over what looked like leprosy, breaking out over the right side of my chest. Feeling self-conscious, I got dressed and plodded on. Twenty-five miles later, at the sparkling city of San Sebastián, the pain proved too much. I lifted my shirt to two Portuguese pharmacists — and they pointed me toward the nearest hospital. I had herpes zoster, commonly known as shingles.