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The official website for Skomer Island visits suggests arriving two hours before the boat departure to purchase tickets because only 250 people are allowed to visit the island per day. This would seem to be 8 am, but I can't find any indication that the visitors centre is actually open at that hour, nor how long we'd be expecting to line up or other information.

Can anyone with experience at buying Skomer Island tickets, especially in peak season, fill in the gaps?

  • What time does the visitor centre open?
  • Do we really need to be there by 8 am?
  • How long can we expect to wait in line?

Notes from the official website:

Boat Times

Boats depart from Martin’s Haven: 10am 11am and 12pm.

...

Skomer is an extremely popular place to visit and so we recommend you arrive two hours before the boats depart to purchase your tickets in the peak season or during holidays, this is not a problem during off peak times (weekdays out of holiday season etc).

Notes from Wikivoyage:

Advance booking is not permitted and reservations are strictly on a first come, first served basis at the local shop at Martin's Haven and long queues can develop early each morning.

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dlanod
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1 Answers1

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I've found an existing answer on TripAdvisor that answers some of the questions:

People are there as early as 7am. June is a busy month for the island ......you could take a risk and turn up at 9am and be lucky but if you really want to visit Skomer I think it's worth getting there earlier as the website suggests. Once you've got your ticket and have been allocated a sailing , you don't have to stand in a queue.

Blog posts provide the opening time and second the 7 am queue time:

[T]he ticket office opens at 8am (ish) even though the first boats don’t leave until 10am. I highly recommend getting there for 7-7.30. Even arriving at 7am there was a queue building and if you want to ensure a spot on the first boat (carrying 50 people) then make the effort.

And thirded:

We managed to arrive by about 7am and yet we were still not the first in the queue.

Update: After doing this first-hand I can report back - we were the second group to arrive when we showed up just after 7am, but the numbers increased significantly after our arrival. The boats didn't run the day before (or the day after - we were very lucky!) so the crowds would have been up a bit on "normal". The ticket office only opens once the boats are confirmed to be running, which is generally around 7:30am. You can view the updates yourself on Twitter.

I'd suggest on an average day you can show up any time before around 8 am and be guaranteed of a spot to the island. If you really want the first boat, you would have to be there between 7 am and 7:15 am. School holidays and other days of high demand would massively affect this.

To spend the time in between you can go on short walks around the headland, which is quite picturesque in its own right, or have breakfast.

dlanod
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