Not a ranking of the best — nobody makes that list honestly. This is ten islands ordered by how far we would personally travel to reach them again, with what each one is actually like once the boat pulls in and the day trippers have gone.
Every island list online claims to be objective and none of them are. Ours is not either. What we can do is say exactly what we weighted, so you can disagree with it properly rather than vaguely.
The only question that ranks anything here. An island that was pleasant once but that we have no particular urge to return to did not make the list, however well it photographs.
Somewhere rebuilt comprehensively around visitors is easier to enjoy and a great deal less interesting. We leaned towards islands where ordinary daily life still sets the pace.
Several of these are genuinely awkward to reach. That is part of why they remain worth reaching — but it does mean a short trip will not survive the transit.
“The islands that stayed with us were rarely the ones that photographed best. They were the ones where, by the third morning, somebody at the harbour recognised us.”
Islands amplify everything. In peak weeks a small place feels several times busier than the visitor numbers suggest, because there is one road, one harbour and one good beach. A few weeks either side changes the experience far more than it changes the weather.
Off-season timetables thin out and some routes stop entirely. On the smaller islands here that is the difference between a day trip and an overnight, so check the current schedule rather than last year's blog post.
Family-run places shut for weeks at a time out of season, sometimes without notice. Usually a fair trade for having the coast path to yourself, but plan on fewer options rather than none.
On most of these, wind decides whether a day is pleasant, not the number on the forecast. An exposed north coast in a stiff breeze is cold in any month of the year.
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No, and we would not trust anyone who claimed theirs was. It is ordered by how far we would travel to return, which is a personal measure by definition. The method section sets out what pushed an island up or down so you can adjust it to your own taste.
Almost certainly because we have not been, or have only been once. We do not write anywhere up from research alone, which keeps the list short and occasionally leaves out somewhere obvious. Tell us and it goes on the list of places we might get to.
Impressions last as long as impressions do. The practical details — ferries, seasons, what is open — go stale fastest, so treat anything time-sensitive here as a prompt to check rather than an answer, and check it against an official source.
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Islands of Note is a small independent travel feature site. We publish a handful of long pieces a year, all written after visiting, and we run no advertising or affiliate links of any kind. Nothing on this page earns us anything.
We are not journalists and this is not reporting. It is a record of places we liked enough to describe carefully, offered on the assumption that you will make up your own mind.
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