Skomer Island: How to see puffins in Wales

Skomer Island sits just under a mile off the Pembrokeshire coast in south west Wales, and for a few short weeks every spring and summer this tiny island is home to tens of thousands of puffins – 52,019 in 2026!

Skomer is one of the very best places to see puffins in the UK, and I had a wonderful time on the island, but actually making it happen takes a bit of planning.

This guide covers everything you actually need to know about visiting the puffins on Skomer Island, along with tips from my visit; when to go, how the boat trip booking works, what to expect once you’re on the island, and what else you’ll see while you’re there.

Where is Skomer Island?

Skomer is in Pembrokeshire, in the far south west of Wales. It’s a fairly remote part of the UK, but it’s incredibly scenic, with lots of wonderful things to do. The nearest city is St Davids – the smallest city in the UK.

When to see the puffins on Skomer Island

Puffins spend most of their lives out at sea, and only come back to land to breed. They start arriving on Skomer Island in mid-April, and by early August they’ve all gone again. You can be sure of seeing puffins between May and July, but what exactly you’ll see during your trip depends on when you visit.

During mid April through to mid May the puffins are setting up their burrows ready for nesting – puffins nest underground! There are loads of them running around but they’re not bringing in food just yet. The island is covered in flowers during May.

By late May into June, the eggs have hatched and adults are flying in with beakfuls of sand eels for their chicks. May and June are the best months to visit Skomer.

During July, chicks start fledging and the adult numbers begin to thin out, and by August they’ve all gone back out to sea. The chicks won’t return until they’re ready to mate at around 2 years old (they breed for the first time at around 5 years old), but the adults will be back next year, returning to the same burrow with the same partner.

How to get to Skomer Island – make sure you book early!

If you want to set foot on the island, you need to book a Land on Skomer boat trip with Pembrokeshire Islands Boat Trips. Skomer is a protected nature reserve, and Pembrokeshire Islands are the only company allowed to land on the island. Unfortunately, dogs aren’t allowed on Skomer, and that also includes assistance dogs.

You must book your boat trip to Skomer well in advance. I visited Skomer on a Friday in late May and booked my trip at the beginning of February – the weekend boat trips were already sold out. Tickets for 2027 trips are likely to go on sale in early December 2026.

The Land on Skomer trips are all 5 hours long; the outward and return boat crossing times are fixed to the time on your booking, so you won’t be able to come back earlier (even if the weather is bad) or stay longer. You have to check in at Lockley Lodge an hour before your trip so the whole trip takes at least 6 hours.

The crossing takes 15 minutes and there’s a mandatory briefing from a warden when you get to Skomer, so you’ll get around 4 hours 30 minutes to explore the island and see the puffins. That sounded like a long time to me when I was booking the trip, but in practice it was about right.

Skomer boat trip prices

Ticket prices for the Land on Skomer boat trip in 2026 were:

• 1 to 15 April: £42 adult, £30 child (ages 2-11, under-2s travel free on an adult’s lap)
• 16 April to 31 July: £46 adult, £30 child
• 1 August to 30 September: £32 adult, £24 child

What to do if you can’t get tickets

If you miss out on Skomer Island tickets, you can still see puffins on a longer boat trip. Pembrokeshire Islands run slow cruises around Skomer and faster ‘sea safaris’ around Skomer, Skokholm and Grassholm Islands. Voyages of Discovery run trips from near St Davids across St Bride’s Bay towards and around Skomer.

What to expect on your trip to Skomer Island

Boats to Skomer Island leave from Martin’s Haven, a small cove on the Marloes peninsula. You’ll need to check in at the Lockley Lodge visitor centre an hour before the trip, so be sure to give yourself enough time to get there.

Weather

Skomer is an exposed island on the very edge of Wales, so it gets a lot of weather, both good and bad! If the weather is too bad for the crossing (for example if there are storms or it’s very windy), then Pembrokeshire Islands will cancel the trip.

The weather in this part of Wales can be very changeable. I was lucky for my day on Skomer Island in that we had dry weather, but it wasn’t too hot and there were a few clouds so it wasn’t super sunny either – perfect for a day on an island with no shelter! Definitely check the weather forecast before you head out for the day and pack accordingly.

Getting to Martin’s Haven

By car: The most convenient way to get to Martin’s Haven is by car. There’s a National Trust pay and display car park with plenty of spaces. It costs £7 for the day, and is free if you’re a National Trust member. The roads to get here are pretty narrow; our trip coincided with bin day and we had a few hairy moments coming face to face with a bin lorry on single-lane roads!

Public transport and taxis: If you don’t have a car, you should plan your journey to Martin’s Haven well in advance. This part of Wales is very rural, so public transport is limited, but it is still possible to get to Martin’s Haven by bus. The Puffin Shuttle runs three times a day from St Davids, while Fflecsi bookable bus services serve the Milford zone which includes Martin’s Haven. There are no Fflecsi services on bank holidays. Taxis are also limited. The nearest railway stations are at Haverfordwest and Milford Haven.

Checking in at Lockley Lodge

Lockley Lodge visitor centre sits near the car park at the top of the hill above Martin’s Haven dock. Head here as soon as you arrive so you can check in for your boat trip and exchange your booking for a ticket that’ll get you onto the boat. The visitor centre is run by the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales, the charity that looks after the island, and the little shop sells drinks, snacks, souvenirs and binoculars with the proceeds going back to the Wildlife Trust. You can hire binoculars on the island.

After you’ve checked in, you can explore Martin’s Haven. There isn’t an awful lot here but there are toilets and a small exhibition about Skomer. If you have a bit of time either before or after your trip, there’s a nature reserve where you can see views of Skomer and Stokholm Island, and if you’re lucky you might see seals from the coastal path.

Boarding the boat

You can only get on the boat you’ve booked, even if you arrive early. There’s only one dock so you can’t really go wrong, just start queueing up a few minutes before your departure time. You’ll need the ticket from Lockley Lodge to get on board.

The crossing to Skomer

The crossing only takes 15 minutes and we had a great guide on the boat who made it a lot of fun! We started seeing puffins within a few minutes of leaving the mainland; in the air, landing on the sea and bobbing about in the water. The boat was comfortable enough and relatively smooth, but we did have quite calm weather.

Arriving on the island – 87 steps and a ranger briefing

The coast of Skomer Island has cliffs almost all the way round, and the boat dock is at the bottom of 87 steep steps. There are places to pause and get our breath back if you’re finding it a bit of a slog. Once you’re near the top, there’s a little rangers’ hut where you’ll be told about the island and be briefed on the rules for visiting Skomer; the main ones are that you must stay on the paths and take all your rubbish home with you.

They have a board up at the hut where they record sightings of puffins and other birds, insects and animals on Skomer – as well as puffins, you’re also almost certain to see razorbills and guillemots.

After the briefing, you’re free to explore Skomer on your own until the boat ride back.

Facilities on the island

There aren’t any shops or cafes on Skomer Island, but you can buy water if you need it from the ranger hut, and there are toilets and picnic tables at the hostel in the centre of the island.

The hostel building isn’t open to day visitors but there’s a little bit of shelter underneath the eaves in the courtyard. Human visitors aren’t the only ones making use of the shelter; swallows also nest in the roof and even in the toilets!

What to see on Skomer

There are paths most of the way around the edge of the island, and central paths which run east-west and north-south, converging at the hostel at the old farm in the middle.

Walking around the whole island takes around 3 hours, but that’s without stopping to watch the wildlife and take it all in.

From the boat dock on the eastern side of the island, we walked west to the old farm and hostel, then on past West Pond to Skomer Head. We hadn’t seen many exciting birds on the way – just lots of dead Manx shearwaters that had been predated by gulls – but that was all about to change.

The Wick: the best place to see puffins (and more!) on Skomer Island

We headed south towards The Wick, a narrow, triangular bay with high cliffs on both sides.

We started to see the odd puffin, then more, and then suddenly they were absolutely everywhere. I’d packed my longest camera lens thinking that the puffins might be too far away to see well, but they were waddling across the path and squabbling over burrows right next to our feet, completely unbothered by our presence.

The puffins are just as colourful and adorable in real life as they look in pictures. When I posted a video of my trip on TikTok I was accused of using AI because they look too cute to be real!

There are thousands of puffins, razorbills, guillemots and kittiwakes nesting in this part of the island and the ground, the air and the sea are all full of birds. It’s so beautiful, a real bucket-list moment. The Wick is one of the best wildlife-watching spots in the country, so I highly recommend getting here with plenty of time before your boat back to Martin’s Haven.

There were island rangers at The Wick, and one of them pointed out a shape on the opposite cliff; a pair of nesting peregrine falcons. Everyone we met that day was so friendly and passionate about the island, and seemed to really want to share the best of it with us.

What about Manx shearwaters?

Puffins get all the attention, but Skomer is actually best known among birders for something else entirely; it holds one of the world’s largest Manx shearwater colonies in the world, with an estimated 350,000 breeding pairs. You’re unlikely to see them coming and going though as they’re nocturnal on land.

Unfortunately, you are likely to see a few dead ones; they do have a habit of getting themselves killed by hungry gulls and we saw the carcasses while we were walking across the island. It’s a bit shocking at first, and if you’re visiting with children it might be a good idea to be prepared.

Other birds and animals to look out for

As well as puffins, razorbills, guillemots and kittiwakes, look out for oystercatchers, choughs (red-billed crows, rare in the UK) and if you’re lucky, you might see short-eared owls hunting low over the grass. Out on the water, keep an eye out for grey seals, porpoises and dolphins. There are wild rabbits on the western side of the island.

What to pack for a day seeing puffins on Skomer Island

There are no shops or cafe facilities on Skomer, so you’ll need to bring everything you need with you – remember you’ll be there for nearly 5 hours, rain or shine!

Staying overnight on Skomer

If the 4 and a half-ish hours on Skomer that you get on a day trip isn’t long enough for you, you can stay overnight on the island. There’s a small hostel run by the Wildlife Trust in the middle of Skomer Island, but it sells out extremely fast. Booking opens in October, and puffin season normally sells out in the first week.

Members of the Wildlife Trust can book earlier than the general public, so if your heart is set on staying overnight on Skomer then it’s a good idea to become a member. There is another hostel on nearby Skokholm island.

Where to stay near Skomer Island

The closest place to stay to the dock at Martin’s Haven is West Hook Farm campsite, which has basic tent and motorhome pitches spread out across three grassy fields.

East Hook Farm has holiday cottages and is just over a mile from Lockley Lodge.

Marloes and Dale are the closest villages. Broad Haven is a little further up the coast and has a hostel, holiday park and some guesthouses within a few steps of a stunning beach.

I stayed just outside St Davids, and while it took an hour to get to Martin’s Haven, it was a wonderful base for the other things to do in Pembrokeshire. St Davids is the smallest city in the UK and has the feel of a rural village with a giant cathedral right in the centre.

If you want to base yourself somewhere a bit more lively, then Tenby is just under an hour by car from Martin’s Haven.

Is Skomer Island worth it?

Visiting Skomer Island is a truly magical experience. For the price of a ticket and a bit of forward planning, you get to hang out with puffins as they calmly go about their puffin business, on a beautiful island in one of the most gorgeous and underrated parts of the UK.

Have you visited Skomer Island? If you have any tips or questions, leave me a message in the comments.

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