Cooking or culinary holidays, vacations, tours in United Kingdom:

Baking in the Scilly Isles
. . . learn to bake in the warm airs of the Gulf stream

The five inhabited islands of the Isles of Scilly, and their countless uninhabited islands and rocks, lie twenty-eight miles off Land's End, in the far south-west of Britain. This small, beautiful archipelago is geographically close to the mainland, yet in its own world.

Castles, shipwrecks, smuggling and mystical lands buried deep beneath the sea. Scilly’s history is crammed full of amazing facts, folklore and fantasy. The first settlers arrived from the Cornish mainland over four thousand years ago, constructing settlements, burial chambers and monuments many of which are still visible today. Fascinating remains found on the now uninhabited island of Nornour, reveal at least three centuries of Roman occupation, between the First and Third century AD.

From the Middle Ages onwards, successive fortifications were built to protect Scilly and the mainland from potential invaders. The last two hundred years of history, is associated with the Duchy of Cornwall, which again took up the lease of the islands in 1831. The man who ran the lease and governed the islands for nearly forty years was Augustus Smith who lived on Tresco where he bulit Tresco Abbey and its famous gardens.

Traces of the kelp and ship building industries can be seen dotted around the islands, as well as smuggler’s caves, lighthouses and lookouts. With its frost-free climate flower farming, which took off towards the end of the Nineteenth century, is the second largest industry on Scilly creating a landscape characterised by picturesque box fields which are a blaze of colour prior to harvesting.

Now, tourism is the mainstay of the economy . . .diets of limpet and seaweed are a thing of the past! Scilly is a vibrant, colourful destination, preserved for the enjoyment of generations.

St Martin's is an island of white sands and clear waters boasting some of the best beaches in the British Isles. Coastal paths drop down to wide expanses of beach, with clear waters offering wonderful opportunities for swimming, snorkelling or simply relaxing. The Eastern Isles and the distant sight of Land's End, offer a dramatic backdrop, to Scilly's most Easterly inhabited island.

St Martin's:

• One of the five inhabited islands
• The third largest inhabited island
• Two and a half miles long by about one mile wide
• The north side faces the Atlantic and has a wild coastline with rocky outcrops and sandy beaches
• The middle and ends are moorland with gorse, bracken and heather
• The southern part has superb sandy beaches
• The settlements are at Higher Town, Middle Town and Lower Town
• There are thirty households resident on the island and the resident population is one hundred

. . . islands in a world of their own

Craft Bakery Holiday Course

Here is your chance to visit one of the country's best kept secrets: the most beautiful unspoilt Isles of Scilly, some 25 miles south west of the Cornish mainland, basking in the gentle warmth of the Gulf Stream - a jewel in the sea. St Martin's, arguably the most beautiful and diverse of the Islands, is surrounded by empty golden beaches, azure seas and is covered by a myriad of daffodils, narcissi and fragrant heather.

St Martin's Bakery has been sympathetically converted from a granite lobsterpot-maker's barn by Toby Tobin-Dougan who bakes and supplies St Martin's and the other islands with a fantastic range of hand-crafted organic breads, pastries, pies and tarts, all produced on the premises using organic flours, fresh local fish and island-sourced meats, vegetables and herbs.

In November and from January to late March, the Bakery runs all-inclusive Holiday Baking Courses for those with little or no baking experience, to conquer the mystique of baking. Courses are also aimed at those who have some baking skills, to refresh their minds and expand their repertoire to take on more demanding recipes. Each participant will leave having learnt to bake with confidence and enjoyment.

The all-inclusive courses begin each Wednesday with a wonderful helicopter flight from Penzance Heliport over the patchwork fields of the Cornish flower growers and the abandoned cliff-top tin mines, across the sea to the hundreds of scattered rocks and uninhabited and inhabited islands that comprise the Isles of Scilly.

Twenty minutes later you will land on the main island of St Mary's and from there, after a short drive to the quay, a boat will be waiting to take you on to St Martin's across the clear shallow waters stretching between the Islands which support an abundance of fish, seals and thousands of varieties of sea birds. You will be met on St Martin's quay and taken to your holiday accommodation.

Course Itinerary

Included in your baking holiday course package:

• Your British International return helicopter flights between Penzance and St Mary's
• Return passenger launch transfers between St Mary's and St Martin's
• Traditional cottage accommodation
• The full cost of the course with ingredients and personal tuition
• An evening greeting meal for all on the day of your arrival
• Daily lunches for all at the Bakery during your course and full provisions for all of your evening meals
• Your own laminated folio of St Martin's recipes we cover on the course
• A selection of your tasty creations to take home with you
• Fully comprehensive insurance during your course inside the Bakery
• Moments and memories you will never forget

A holiday to the island of St Martin's in the Scilly Isles in 1982 was the start of an enduring love affair with the place for Toby Tobin-Dougan. During the 1980s he commuted into central London where he was in business as a photographic printer . . . but he was drawn back to the Scillies almost every year. In the recession of the early 1990s on returning from a trip to the Scillies he decided he enough was enough, sold his business and ran away from London.

With the exception of the island of Tresco, which is privately owned, the Duchy of Cornwall owns the freeholds on almost all the properties in the Scillies, which means that

Its almost impossible to buy a home in the Scillies as the Duchy of Cornwall owns the freeholds on almost all the properties. Toby spent some time renting rooms from St Martin's residents before eventually wining a tender to rent his present home from the Duchy. He has worked locally as a fisherman, a flower farmer and then in the island's hotel, during which time he taught himself to make bread and pastries . . . thus began his second career.

He decided to supply the local campsite with bread made at home but after two years it was out of control. The living room was full of sacks of flour and he was getting up at two in the morning to knead dough. He approached the Duchy with a business plan and was eventually rewarded with a crumbling granite barn and the money to renovate it. It took four of them to turn turned the abandoned barn into a fully equipped bakery in fourteen weeks. English Heritage imposed strict conservation criteria - the same tiles had to be used, the ships' timbers in the roof had to be removed, retreated and replaced, and the original door and windows had to be reproduced to the original design."

Seven years on, Toby's organic bakery is busier than ever. He keeps free-range hens, ducks, pigs and turkeys, nips between the islands on his boat and rows in the Scillies' gig races. He is also a regular marathon runner on Tresco.

Toby busy making Sourdoughs	The Bakery and Shop	Providing a buffet lunch for HRH in 2003

This season the Bakery is proving to be very busy, with the expanded range of goods they offer and an ever increasing number of people who are finding them for the first time. They have also continued supplying their specialist breads, cakes and organic beef pasties to all of the Islands. Among those supplied by the bakery is Rick Stein at the seafood restaurant in Padstow with their unique Gradvalaxed and cold oak smoked Grey Mullet . . . listed for the second year in his Food Hero's book.

Since being voted as the 'Best UK Food Retailer' by the BBC Radio 4 food programme, interest in the baking courses has widened. This has also been helped by the increasing publicity the Bakery has been attracting. Last Autumn came the launch of Carlton Television's 'Island Life' programme about a year in the Scilly Isles. BBC2's 'This Land', Craig Doyle on the Holiday 2004 programme and West country Television's feature on the Tanner brothers which visited the Bakery to take advantage of our wild Atlantic smoked Salmon and of course a selection of our continental breads have all helped spread the word.

Courses for begin each and every Wednesday during the month of November and resume again each Wednesday in January, February and March. For those non-participating partners, who wish to taste the produce but not the courses, there is plenty of walking the footpaths and untouched beaches of St Martins to be enjoyed. There are two galleries on the Island where you can take beginners lessons in painting and pottery for modest daily fees and for those who wish to be more adventurous there is scuba diving, snorkelling and clay pigeon shooting to be experienced.

Due to the popularity of the courses and the small groups of people taught, those who are interested are encouraged to book as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

"Toby and Louise make loaves by hand, and are truly self-sufficient:
even their quiches are filled with local fish, caught and smoked by them."
~ Rick Stein, Food Heroes

Mark's lobster pots	Your BIH helicopter	The Island passenger launch