It may only be an hour's flight away but it feels like another world.

Andy Rutherford visits the Scilly Isles.

ON A gentle, sun-flecked day, it is stretching the imagination to breaking point to picture waves breaking over the top of Shipman Head.

In a howling gale however, such as we had the following day, it is easy to believe. For this is Bryher, one of the Isles of Scilly, and during storms the waves which break here have a fetch of 2,000 miles, beginning way out in the Atlantic Ocean.

The gale we encountered was not quite strong enough to send waves over Shipman Head, but contained sufficient power to take the breath from your mouth and to blow you back upright again, provided you chose the right moment for an experimental fall forward.

The Hell Bay, the island's sole hotel.

Fortunately, the island's sole hotel, the Hell Bay, is a wonderful place to recover one's windblown wits, and savour the sound of the sea.

The whole windy experience came as a bit of a shock, because though a walk around Bryher covers barely four miles, it has two very distinct characters.

Its west side, all foam and fury, car-sized boulders tossed up on the forbidding shores of Hell Bay, is described above. It is nature in all its unfettered magnificence.

Its east side however, with views across to the neighbouring island of Tresco and the main island of St Mary's, is sheltered from Atlantic tempests and boasts, in Green Bay, a lovely crescent of sandy beach.

Thirty miles off the coast of Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly are a retreat from the increasingly fraught British mainland, and a balm to the soul.

St Mary's boasts the biggest settlement, Hugh Town, and the ferry and air ports, yet remains distinctly low gear in its approach to life.

Skip over to the likes of Bryher and Tresco, or the other inhabited islands of St Martin's and St Agnes, and the pace is positively pedestrian.

This is due to the fact that, apart from public transport in the form of tractors pulling trailers with seats, and a number of vehicles required for the islands' upkeep, there is no motorised traffic.

The kids will find plenty to do on the Scillies.

Tresco is little bigger than Bryher - a five-mile walk around the edge will bring you back to wherever you started - and is just a two-minute boat trip across New Grimsby Harbour - but it offers markedly different delights.

While its northern third comprises the same wild, coast-edged moorland and scouring winds as Bryher, its southern two-thirds comprise lush farmland and, in the very south, the spectacular, sub-tropical mini-paradise that is the Tresco Abbey Gardens.

Discovering the garden's sun-dappled corners and riots of colour offered by the trees and flowers, it is difficult to believe that just a couple of miles north and barely three-quarters of an hour's walk away, you can be exposed to the same elemental power of wind and sea as on Bryher.

It too boasts a gem of a hotel in the Island, perched on the edge of the sea, with airy suites and a restaurant with a breathtaking view into the infant Atlantic.

For history lovers, there is plenty to see on the Scillies' five inhabited islands, and on a good number of its deserted ones too, if you can arrange a trip. There is everything from Bronze Age burial chambers, to Cromwell's Castle on Tresco, and the splendid 16th-18th Century fortifications on St Mary's, the latter a testament to the islands' strategic importance in past turmoils.

But really, an encounter with the Isles of Scilly is an encounter with nature and a chance to relax and marvel at its power, its diversity, its capacity to dispel the pressures of modern life.