This was a fantastic day out for us overall - our AirBnB had provided us with use of a car for the duration of our stay which made it incredibly easy for us to travel over to the island and drive up to the top of the island where the trail starts.

You’ll have to arrive at the ferry across around 1-1 and a half hours before its departure times if you’re taking a car across though as the ferry has limited capacity and if you don’t have a reservation then it’s first come, first served.

The drive to the top of the island doesn’t take too long, and you’ll have to go through a number of single-track tunnels with passing places cut into the tunnels should you encounter anyone coming the opposite way.

Once you get to the small village where the trail starts, you can park up and walk to the hike’s starting point - there is typically someone waiting there to take payment for the trail. These trails aren’t free as they cross over a local farmer’s land and they obviously have to deal with the after-effects of folks wandering through their fields.

The path to the lighthouse is a little steep and fairly boggy which can make it difficult for those who don’t have much experience hiking - expect mud. We saw a family who turned around fairly quickly when they realized their expensive dress boots were going to get a little muddier than they expected.

The paths across the face of the hill once you get up to elevation, can potentially be a little rough on your ankles if you aren’t wearing boots with appropriate support.

Once you get over the brow of the hill, you should be treated to your first views of the lighthouse and it’s fairly straightforward from there - head up to the lighthouse and then pick your poison as to what photos you want to get first.

We ended up heading down behind the lighthouse first so that I could try and capture that iconic image of the lighthouse and the cliff stacks in one wide-angle shot.

We ended up exploring and taking photos for a good hour or so at various points around the lighthouse before heading up to James Bond’s grave and then making our way back to the car.

At this point, I’d then recommend trying to make your way to the next village along the road and hopefully, the cafe will be open for you to grab a warm drink and get some shelter from the rain…

If not, the village has the famous statue by the sea and there is also a good opportunity for some impressive shots of the cliffs and waterfall if you venture down the stairs far enough.

After that, we ended up heading back to the ferry queue and starting our journey homeward.

I highly recommend trying to get a reservation for the earliest return ferry in the afternoon though, we got caught out and ended up having a nap in the car for a few hours in the queue to get on the next available ferry after that.

On returning from the island, a fair few of us on the ferry ended up going to the local fish and chip shop. We ended up getting some food to go and driving back to the cabin so that we could get the fire on and get cozy for the night.

Photography Gear Recommendations

• Bring a good wide-angle lens - you’ll want to capture the lighthouse and the cliff wall in one grandiose shot. I brought my Tamron 17-28mm which was just about wide enough, although I do wish I had just a little more reach in some of my photos.

• Bring a super-telephoto lens if you want to capture friends/family on the ridge behind the lighthouse - Potentially a 100-400 with crop-sensor mode might provide enough reach, a 200-600 would absolutely nail this without losing pixels.

• Bring a tripod - if you want those super crisp shots then be sure to bring a tripod to steady your camera.