Try it now: volunteering on an island

Volunteering breaks always sounded a bit beard and sandals. But, in recent years, the volunteer weekend has evolved to combine practical life skills with upscale facilities and the company of like-minded people.

If your New Year’s resolution is to reconnect with nature, then a weekend is an ideal toe in the water. For a microcosm climate and a sea air-fuelled escape, try one of the hidden-gem islands dotted around the UK coastline. Organisations such as the National Trust offer a range of volunteer opportunities and people need no previous experience to take part.

Flat Holm Island (Ynys Echni in Welsh) is a great place to begin. The 56-acre island in the British Channel is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and has been managed by the Flat Holm Project since 1982. The island recently introduced short volunteer breaks, including new winter breaks over Christmas and New Year, and even opened a small pub last summer for a post-work sundowner. Some smart new accommodation, the Keeper’s Cottage, is now available with more home comforts in a rural Shangri-La setting.

DAY ONE
10.30AM Meet, brief and exhibition
Following the 45-minute boat crossing from Penarth Marina, Cardiff, we start our visit to Flat Holm with a short briefing and a chance to look round the historical exhibition at the Education Centre. The earliest-known visitor to the island was Saint Cadoc in the sixth century. He came in search of meditation and brought medicinal herbs. The island has been a place of historical and natural importance ever since.

11AM Island tour
Peter Sampson of the Flat Holm Society – a group of volunteer enthusiasts – leads a short, guided tour of the limestone-forged island. Members of the colony of Lesser Black Backed Gulls swoop overhead as we wander the grassy trails, passing Victorian barracks and the island’s solar-powered lighthouse. In the centre of the island is a monument to mark the centenary of the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi sending the first radio message across water. The message from Flat Holm on May 13, 1897, reads: Are you ready? We are – to roll up our sleeves and get stuck in.

2PM Slow worm survey
After a spot of bonding over lunchtime cheese sandwiches and coffee with my five fellow volunteers, it’s down to work.

First task: the monthly slow worm survey. ‘They’re legless lizards and not, like everyone thinks, actually snakes,’ says fellow volunteer and recent environmental biology graduate Sarah Lewis, from Cardiff.

Slow worms are well represented on Flat Holm but the slow worm monitoring stations are often hidden by dense overgrowth. We hack away the scrub with machetes and uncover the stations, each marked with a white pole. We have to sex the worms (females have twin black stripes down their sides) at each of the 16 stations and record the data.

5PM Dinner
It’s back to the farmhouse for a quick cuppa before starting to cook dinner for the group. On the way, I’m introduced to Wonky the friendly ram, who loves nuzzling up to new volunteers. I rustle up a bubbling pot of spaghetti Bolognese, which is devoured hungrily by the group.

8PM Pub and chat
It’s time for a pint at the Gull and Leek, the island’s one-room pub. Well, it is Friday night and mine’s a Cwrw Braf from the Tomos Watkin’s brewery in Swansea. There’s also time to chat with the wardens and volunteers over a beer before an early night.

Day two
8AM Feeding time
I’ve actually been awake since 6am thanks to Feathers, the very vocal cockerel, who patrols the wild-flower garden outside the dormitory. But the day starts properly with a pre-breakfast jaunt around the animal enclosures for feeding time. I administer fresh water and feed pellets to the Black Rock chickens and Indian Runner ducks. Later in the day, we’ll need to give the Black Welsh Mountain sheep their sheep nuts.

10AM Weather checks
I head across to the weather station for the daily check on conditions for the Met Office with head warden Matt Lipton, who began his own conservation career as a volunteer. I check the thermometers and assess the visibility within 30 miles to the Severn Bridge. Afterwards, we welcome a group of day visitors arriving at East Beach and take them to the Education Centre for a health and safety briefing. Matt warns them not to touch the island’s rare wild leeks. There’s a £1,000 fine if you pick this protected species.

12pm Fence-building
The last major task is building an electric fence to pen the sheep on the more managed north side of the island. This will encourage them to graze the grass down and leave the maritime grassland. I help fellow volunteer Jamie McEwan from Glasgow, who recently completed a degree in zoology at the University of St Andrews, to hammer posts into the ground. We then wrap wire around the posts to charge from a portable generator. ‘It’s been very hands-on but I’ve picked up a lot of practical skills,’ says Jamie, who has visited several times over six months.

It may have been my first visit, and my conservation skills still need honing, but I’ve now got a real taste for The Great Outdoors.

The Flat Holm Project flatholmisland.com offers residential weekends for volunteers from March to October, priced at £19pppn for hostel accommodation (£8 for camping) and £5 for day visits.

Originally published in the February 2013 issue of Coast