Steep Holm is a nature reserve now, and there are no human residents - though in the past it's been used by the army, farmed, been the resort of pirates and the site of a mediaeval priory. My own interest comes from writing Calypso Dreaming, set on a Bristol Channel island called Sweetholm. I'd already decided on the name and was browsing in a local bookshop to find material on the Channel's flora, fauna and geology, when I came across a book by Stan and Joan Rendell on Steep Holm. The similarity in names immediately felt more than fortuitous, and I booked myself out on a couple of the trips that the Rendells organize to the island - about ten each summer. It makes for an exciting day, in which you're landed on the island's one beach at low tide and collected again twelve hours later: in between, Steep Holm's beach is submerged and the only way off is by helicoptor.
Steep Holm is much smaller and more desolate than Sweetholm, but a lot of Sweetholm's features are borrowed from it, including the aggressive gulls (should you happen to visit during the nesting season you will be invited to carry a branch above your head to deter their swooping attacks), the alexander meadow, the Victorian and WWII gun batteries, the priory, the caves, the muntjac deer, and of course the grey seals.
If you happen to be near Weston one summer, why not try the Steep Holm experience for yourself? Contact touristinfo@n-somerset.gov.uk for details.
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