For more travel inspiration, follow Steele Luxury Travel on Instagram: STEELETRAVEL
The music world is in a tizzy as one of the biggest movers and shakers finally came around to releasing a new album after a seven-year pause. Enya, the Irish muse whose headlock on New Age goes back to the 80’s, is gearing up for the release of “Dark Sky Island,” the latest in her unique brand of trance and transcendence—and laugh if you will, but here is a singer who had never once gone on tour and still went on to be one of the industry’s most bankable names. Economists even gave that a name: enyanomics.
And like all her albums, the title is a poetic image-maker. But this time around, it actually has a real story to it. Rather than the idea of a fairy isle on the edge of twilight, “Dark Sky Island” refers to Sark, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of northwestern France. It was Europe’s first designated “dark-sky community,” a fancy way of saying that the Sarkians have made of marvel of keeping their nighttime sky free of light pollution; so much so that the dark sky of Sark is now a major pull. And musical inspiration. Call it “starlight tourism.”
A British possession but with heavy French flavoring, Sark is about 80 miles south of Britain, and is, in a word, rustic. The island is so small the island’s 600 residents don’t use cars. Its bucolic identity went a long way into getting the dark-sky designation, and the island is a model on how out-of-the-way destinations market themselves as, well, out-of-the-way destinations.
But aside from looking like it just stepped out of a Jane Austin novel, Sark can pump out some of the best R&R in the United Kingdom. With no cars (or airport), what strikes visitors right away is how quiet and peaceful the island is. Being only three miles long, island tours are done by horse and carriage. Weather permitting, islanders prefer to eat outside, and the gastronomy writes the book on kick-ass seafood. Hotels like the Stocks and La Sablonnerie are top-shelf.
And it’s not all country pleasures: the rocky, wild coastline offers some of the most thrilling cliff-diving in Europe, and once in the water, take a scuba tour along the thriving sea life below the waves. Sark is very “eco.”
Then the sun goes down and a whole new world explodes overhead. You city-slickers literally don’t know what you are missing. You can actually “get lost” in the nighttime sky of Sark. That’s actually a pretty cool idea.
For more info, go to sark.co.uk. Contact Steele Luxury Travel for al of your European travel planning needs. www.SteeleTravel.com