The beach on Walney Island, looking out to the west

I’d been wanting to visit Piel Island for at least two years, ever since I’d glimpsed the stark, imposing ruin of its castle from the shores of nearby Walney. I remember going on about a two hour wild goose chase at the time, frantically trying to locate this eerily romantic half-structure so that I could photograph it at close quarters in the near-perfect light, before I finally abandoned my inherent maleness and sheepishly resorted to the road atlas in the boot. Oh, so all I had to do was drive round to Rampside and proceed along the causeway at Roa Island, and Piel was just a hop, skip and a jump away by ferry. Easy peasy! Except the ferry wasn’t running, and nobody really had a clue as to when it might be.

From that moment, I knew that one day I just had to visit the island itself and explore those curiously inviting shores. It was a trip that proved to be more elusive than I would’ve liked, but I finally had my reason to visit when it was agreed I would do a feature on the place for this magazine.

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