St Mary's, Isles of Scilly

Hugh Town, the only real town in the Isles of Scilly, sits on a narrow neck of land between two beaches, with the harbour on one side and the Garrison headland behind it. Star Castle, an eight-pointed fort built in 1593 on Elizabeth I’s orders, stands at the top of the Garrison and is now a hotel. The walls and gun batteries added around it over the next two centuries are free to walk. On the far side of Hugh Town, Harry’s Walls is an earlier fort that was never finished. Work started in 1551 and stopped once the Garrison was chosen as the island’s main defence instead. In the island’s north-west corner, a Bronze Age tomb called Bant’s Carn stands on the hill above the stone footings of an Iron Age village at Halangy Down, lower down the slope. The wetlands at Higher Moors and Porth Hellick Pool and the rocky ground of Peninnis Head are both good for birdwatching. St Mary’s is the hub for the rest of the Isles of Scilly. The ferry and the planes land here, and small boats to the other islands leave from the quay in Hugh Town.