As much as I love our big, bright, perpetually busy city, it’s not the first place you’d make a beeline for in the pursuit of peace and quiet, right? Fish and chips? Absolutely. Hustle and bustle? Goes without saying. But peace and quiet? It’s not exactly something that’s synonymous with the capital city, is it?. It turns out, however, that silence and serenity can be found a whole lot closer to home than I personally would have anticipated. Because the quietest islands in the whole wide world have just been revealed – and the UK made a number of appearances.
The ranking comes courtesy of leading retreat booking company, BookRetreats, who – upon discovering that searches for ‘quiet destinations’ have risen by a rather hefty 1,268% year-on-year and that a whole load of us are exposed to harmful noise levels – took it upon themselves to find the quietest destinations of all.
With a bit of intel from silence researcher, author, and psychology professor, Olga V. Lehmann, they put 100 islands across the planet under the microscope for the occasion. Each island was analysed against the European Environment Agency’s benchmark for what’s considered a ‘quiet place’, and then and then scored based on factors including road density, air traffic, and uncrowded space. Once all the numbers were thorough (but ever-so quietly) crunched, they revealed the quietest islands in the world. And finding itself at number 5 on the list is an idyllic island right here in the UK.
St Martin’s, Isle of Scilly
Picturesquely perched just off the Cornish coast, the largest of the Isles of Scilly earnt itself a very admirable spot on the list. The fifth quietest island in the world can be found in the form of St Martin’s, a picture-perfect pocket of the planet with no main roads, no airport, and just 135 residents. The island is made up almost entirely of unspoilt shoreline, with 12 beaches dotted along just 13-kilometres worth of coastline. Not bad, hey?
St Martin’s wasn’t the only British island to make the cut. Scotland’s Isle of Skye came in at number 11, whilst the dreamy Isle of Wight found itself at number 81.
The 10 quietest islands in the world
- Stewart Island, New Zealand
- Anafi, Greece
- Ilha Grande, Brazil
- Lord Howe Island, Australia
- St Martin’s, England
- Tioman Island, Malaysia
- Koh Chang, Thailand
- Koh Rong, Cambodia
- Havelock Island, India
- Santa Catalina Island, USA
You can browse BookRetreats’s full findings here.
