Isles of scilly

'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.

First-time visitors to the Isles of Scilly are hard to find. Once you discover this spell-bindingly beautiful archipelago twenty eight miles off the Cornish coast you quickly become part of its fiercely loyal legion of fans. Indeed, it’s almost impossible to resist the urge for a return visit. It came as no surprise, then, to learn that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge decided to holiday on the island of Tresco in the heart of the Scillies twice in close succession this year.