Bear Grylls has built a career on surviving the world’s wildest places, so it is fitting that his favourite home is a rocky island with no mains electricity or running water.
An island off the Llŷn Peninsula
Grylls and his wife, Shara, bought St Tudwal’s Island West, off Abersoch in north-west Wales, in 2001, reportedly paying £95,000 for it.
The island, one of the two St Tudwal’s Islands, is rocky and grassy and sits in an area of outstanding natural beauty. Grylls has called it “my favourite place on the planet”.
A lighthouse and derelict cottages
When the couple arrived, the island had a 200-year-old lighthouse and two lightkeeper’s cottages, but the houses were derelict, Grylls has said. The family home today has two-foot-thick limestone walls, which he says keep it cool in summer and warm in winter.
Daily life takes planning. Supplies come over from the mainland by inflatable boat, and Grylls has said it took about ten years to get permission to build a slipway on the island.
The waterslide that had to go
The island has not been free of controversy. In 2013 Grylls fell foul of the local council over an 80ft waterslide he had installed on the cliff edge. The council ruled it breached planning rules, and he removed it, saying it was never meant to be permanent.
A few weeks a year
The family spends a few weeks a year on the island and otherwise lives in London. Grylls and Shara have three sons: Jesse, Marmaduke and Huckleberry. “We’ve made some amazing memories living there and spending time with the boys on the island over the years,” he has said.
Further reading
Image: St. Tudwal’s Island West – geograph.org.uk – 3452069 by Gareth James, BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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