The best-known stretches of the British coast fill up fast in summer. Car parks overflow, beaches turn into a patchwork of windbreaks, and the quiet you came for never quite arrives. The good news is that the UK has more than a thousand islands, and the vast majority see only a trickle of visitors. The nine below trade easy access for something rarer: space, silence, and a coastline that feels like your own.
1. Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland
Rathlin is the only inhabited offshore island in Northern Ireland, lying about six miles off Ballycastle on the Antrim coast. The ferry crossing often comes with dolphins, gannets, and gulls alongside the boat, setting the tone before you even land. The island’s centrepiece is the RSPB West Light Seabird Centre, set beside a distinctive upside-down lighthouse where the lamp sits at the base of the cliff rather than the top.
From late spring to midsummer the cliffs here host Northern Ireland’s largest seabird colony, and the RSPB’s Rathlin Island reserve is the place to watch thousands of guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, and fulmars raising their chicks at close quarters. Puffins, the main draw for most visitors, are usually present between May and July. Beyond the seabird season, Rathlin is simply a very quiet place to walk, with grassland, small lakes, and the steady rhythm of island life. A scenic four-and-a-half-mile route, on foot, by bike, or by the island bus, connects the harbour to the centre.
2. Barra, Outer Hebrides
Barra sits near the southern tip of the Outer Hebrides, and is best known for one extraordinary feature: its airport. Scheduled flights land directly on the firm sands of Traigh Mhรฒr, making it the only place in the world where commercial services use a tidal beach as a runway. Loganair has flown the Glasgow route since 1936, and because the runways disappear under the sea at high water, the timetable shifts with the tides. The beach doubles as a stretch of white sand and cockle ground when no aircraft are due, with public access closed only when the windsock is flying and a flight is expected.
Most visitors reach Barra on that scheduled flight or the CalMac ferry from Oban, but the island’s remoteness means a small number look into chartering a flight instead. For anyone weighing that option, the cost of private jet charter is more variable than people expect, shaped by aircraft size, route length, and repositioning fees rather than a fixed per-seat fare. Away from the airfield, the island rewards slow exploration: machair grassland thick with summer wildflowers, the medieval Kisimul Castle in Castlebay harbour, and quiet single-track roads that loop the whole island in under an hour.
3. Foula, Shetland
Lying roughly 20 miles west of the Shetland Mainland, Foula is one of the most remote inhabited islands in Britain, with a resident population you can count in the dozens. That isolation is the whole appeal. There is no bustle to escape because there was never any to begin with, just open moorland, a working crofting community, and a coastline shaped entirely by the Atlantic.
The west side of the island climbs to a wall of sea cliffs rising to over 350 metres, among the highest in the country, and in early summer, they fill with breeding seabirds. Great skuas, known locally as bonxies, patrol the high ground, while puffins, guillemots, and fulmars crowd the ledges below. Anyone drawn to the dramatic scenery of Foula’s seabird cliffs should plan around the weather rather than the calendar. Access is by small ferry or a tiny aircraft from the Shetland Mainland, and both are cancelled the moment conditions turn, which they often do. Build in spare days and treat any delay as part of the experience.
4. Lundy, Bristol Channel
Twelve miles off the North Devon coast, Lundy is a granite outcrop about three miles long and half a mile wide, and it is entirely car-free. The name comes from the Old Norse for “puffin island,” and although only a handful of breeding pairs remain today, the surrounding cliffs still hold grey seals, guillemots, razorbills, and Lundy’s own population of sika deer.
The island is owned by the National Trust and run by the Landmark Trust, which manages the farm, the Marisco Tavern, and the scattering of holiday cottages. Day visitors arrive between April and October aboard the supply ship MS Oldenburg, a roughly two-hour crossing from Bideford or Ilfracombe; outside the main season, a short helicopter flight takes over. The reward for the effort is a place where the world genuinely stops at the shoreline. There is little phone signal, and the generator-fed electricity shuts off around midnight, and once the lights go out, the sky fills with stars and the eerie calls of Manx shearwaters returning to their burrows.
5. Burgh Island, Devon
For an island escape that takes minutes rather than hours, Burgh Island sits just off Bigbury-on-Sea on the South Devon coast, around 250 metres from the mainland. At low tide, you can walk across the sandbar; when the sea covers it, a sea tractor ferries passengers back and forth on a high platform, its wheels submerged in the surf. The first tractor ran in 1930, and the current one dates from 1969, making the crossing itself half the reason to visit.
The island is dominated by a 1929 Art Deco hotel that has long drawn writers and filmmakers, including Agatha Christie, who used the setting as inspiration. Beyond the hotel, there is little more than a network of footpaths, a tidal swimming spot, and wide views back along the coast. A trip across the causeway to Burgh Island works best as a half-day outing tucked into a wider South Devon trip, timed carefully against the tide tables so you are not stranded longer than you intended.
6. Sark, Channel Islands
Sark, in the Channel Islands, has built its identity around what it does not have. There are no cars, no streetlights, and no paved through-roads; islanders and visitors get about on foot, by bicycle, or in horse-drawn carriages and tractors. With around 600 residents and the near-total absence of artificial light, the night sky is exceptional, and in 2011, Sark was recognised as the world’s first Dark Sky Island. The island’s own dark skies page explains how the community adjusted its lighting to protect the view.
By day the appeal is the coastline. Cliff paths thread around the headlands, and La Coupรฉe, the narrow isthmus linking Sark to Little Sark, drops away steeply on both sides to the sea. Sark was also one of the last places in Europe to abandon its feudal system, only doing so in 2008, which adds to the sense of stepping somewhere genuinely apart. Getting there means a ferry from Guernsey, so it suits a longer Channel Islands trip rather than a flying visit.
7. Eigg, Inner Hebrides
One of the Small Isles in the Inner Hebrides, Eigg has a story that sets it apart from almost anywhere else on this list. In 1997, the residents bought the island from its absentee owner through the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust, and in 2008, they switched on a community-run electricity grid powered by wind, water, and sun, the first of its kind in the world.
The landscape is just as striking as the politics. An Sgรนrr, a vast ridge of pitchstone rock, rises behind the island and is visible long before you dock. Below it sit white-sand beaches, including the so-called Singing Sands, where the quartz grains squeak underfoot in dry conditions, and clear views west to the jagged peaks of neighbouring Rum. With a population of around a hundred and a community hub housing the shop, cafรฉ, and a few small businesses, Eigg manages to feel both remote and quietly alive. The ferry runs from Mallaig on the mainland.
8. Caldey Island, Pembrokeshire
A short hop off Tenby in Pembrokeshire, Caldey is one of Britain’s holy islands, with a monastic presence stretching back around 1,500 years to the early Celtic Church. Today, it is home to a community of Cistercian monks who farm the land and live at the island’s Italianate abbey, which sits incongruously and beautifully above the village green and its row of whitewashed cottages.
The monks fund their life through the island’s small economy of visitors, selling the perfume, chocolate, and shortbread they make on site. Beyond the village, there is a sandy beach at Priory Bay, woodland walks, a lighthouse with sweeping views toward Devon, and grey seals hauled out on the rocks; red squirrels were reintroduced here in 2016 and have thrived. Boats run roughly every 20 minutes from Tenby Harbour between Easter and October, weather permitting, and the crossing takes about 20 minutes. Because sailings stop the moment the sea turns rough, Caldey stays remarkably free of crowds for much of the year.
9. Bardsey Island, Wales
Bardsey, or Ynys Enlli, lies off the tip of the Llลทn Peninsula in north-west Wales, separated from the mainland by a fast and unpredictable tidal sound. For centuries, it was one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in Britain, and by tradition, three pilgrimages here were considered the equal of one to Rome. The island is sometimes called the island of 20,000 saints, a nod to the many who are said to be buried in its soil.
Modern Bardsey is a working farm and a bird and field observatory rather than a tourist resort. There is no mains electricity, a tiny resident population, and a coastline alive with grey seals, choughs, and breeding Manx shearwaters. It has also been recognised as Europe’s first International Dark Sky Sanctuary, so the nights are as memorable as the days. Boats cross from Porth Meudwy near Aberdaron when the weather allows, and most visitors come as day-trippers, though a handful of simple cottages let you stay and fully unwind into the island’s slower pace.
Choosing the right island for your trip
The deciding factor on this list is rarely the island itself; it is how you get there and how much flexibility you have. Tidal crossings, seasonal ferries, and small aircraft all bend to the weather, and several of these islands will happily strand you for an extra day if the sea turns. That unpredictability is exactly what keeps them quiet, so the sensible approach is to build a trip around the island’s rhythms rather than your own. Pick one, give it more time than feels strictly necessary, and you will come away with the rarest thing the British coast still offers, which is room to breathe.