Sark

The ferry from Guernsey takes forty-five minutes, and the island that comes into view — steep cliffs, a plateau of green fields above, no visible buildings from the sea — looks less like an inhabited place than a geological argument. Sark has no cars, no traffic lights, no airport. It has tractors, which provide the taxis, and bicycles, which provide everything else. For nine centuries it operated as a feudal seigneury under a system that persisted, more or less intact, until 2008 when a democratic reform finally arrived. The inhabitants, of whom there are approximately six hundred, seem fairly unbothered by either arrangement.

What I remember most from my first evening is the silence. Not the silence of countryside, which is always interrupted by distant machines or aircraft, but something denser and more complete. Sark has been designated a Dark Sky Island, and when I walked the lane between my rental cottage and the pub after dinner, I could hear my own footsteps with a clarity that felt unfamiliar, and could see by starlight well enough to navigate without a torch. The Milky Way was not a faint suggestion but a structural feature of the sky, and the constellation Scorpius, which I rarely see at northern latitudes, hung above the southern horizon with its hook clearly visible. I stood in the lane for a long time.

Little Sark is connected to the main island by La Coupée, a narrow ridge path roughly three metres wide with drops of near-vertical cliff on both sides. It was only given handrails in 1945, when German prisoners of war — who had spent the occupation building fortifications across all the Channel Islands — built them as part of reconstruction work. The path is not frightening in good conditions, but in the autumn winds that were blowing when I crossed it, there was a quality of exposure that concentrates the mind. Little Sark is mostly farm and cliff on the far side, with silver mines from the 1830s whose shafts are now fenced off among the bracken, and a viewpoint at the southern tip where the sea extends unobstructed to the horizon in three directions.

The food on Sark is simpler than Guernsey or Jersey — a handful of restaurants, a pub, and the produce is largely what the island grows or catches. But the lobster, when it appears on the menu at the Stocks Hotel, is the real thing: pulled from the waters around the island, split and grilled, tasting of the specific cold Atlantic it came from rather than the generalised seafood-flavour of something transported and held. I ordered it two consecutive nights and the second time the waiter did not seem surprised.

When to go: May through September for ferries and full accommodation. Late summer evenings offer the best combination of warmth and dark sky viewing. The island closes down considerably in winter, with limited ferry services and most places shuttered.