Once in the village, I made for the well-stocked Lundy General Stores. The cliffs on the east coast are green, gentle and peppered with wildflowers, while those on the west – the domain of the seabirds – are sheer and spectacularly rugged. A handful of other characterful buildings are scattered across the rest of the island, including the old castle, a former naval signal station and the ruins of a Victorian quarry, but for the most part it is a wilderness, with grassy meadows in the south and rugged moorland in the north. Civilisation on Lundy amounts to a collection of historical stone buildings in the south of the island known simply as the village, home to staff and visitor accommodation, a pub, a shop and a 19th-Century Anglican church. As I traipsed up the steep, rock-cut path to the top of the island, the scent of coconut wafted over the cliffs from prickly bushes of gorse, which crackle year-round into a riot of yellow flowers. We disembarked on Lundy's south coast in the shadow of one of the three. There are three lighthouses that's unique for such a small island." "There's evidence of Bronze Age occupation in the remains of hut circles in the north, there's a 13th-Century castle and there's a long history of shipwrecks. "Lundy's history is long and colourful," he said. "The name Lundy means 'puffin island' in Old Norse," Green said, explaining that this is a legacy of the Viking raiders who used Lundy as a base of operations from the 8th Century AD, though they were far from the first inhabitants. The least British of the British Isles?. Tourists are drawn by Lundy's spectacular coastal landscapes and its sense of serene otherness from the mainland, and by its wildlife, long recognised as a characteristic feature of the island. In addition to ferrying provisions for Lundy's shop and pub, it carries hundreds of passengers to the island every week. The Oldenburg itself is something of a throwback built in 1958, it wears its heritage elegantly in its polished wood and brass-fitted saloons. I was talking to Green aboard Lundy's supply ship, the MS Oldenburg, as it departed the Devon harbour town of Ilfracombe on an ice-blue April morning. It's a place that is untouched by the modern world." "There are very few vehicles, no pollution, no noise, lots of wildlife. "The beauty of Lundy is that it hasn't changed for many, many years it's like stepping back to the 1950s," explained Derek Green, the island's general manager.
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