I went to the hidden UK island you can only visit by kayak – it’s like a ghost tour on water

THE UK is home to some very spooky islands – and there is one you can only get to by hopping in a kayak.

Jutting up from its low-lying mud flats and wafting grass are mysterious wooden posts, standing like slowly crumbling sentinels.

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I visited the hidden UK islands you can only get to by kayak[/caption]

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The islands are closed to the public unless on an authorised tour[/caption]

Shrouded against an overcast sky with just enough visibility to spot hazy ships and turbines in the distance, we really couldn’t have picked a more atmospheric day to visit this Deadman’s Island.

The haunting location is found in the River Medway estuary in Kent.

I hope we don’t spot any skeletons from here — my stomach is already feeling a little weak from the gentle undulations of the kayak.

In the early 19th century, the nearby Burntwick Island was used as a quarantine location for yellow fever and maritime disease victims.

Deadman’s Island was designated a burial site, with bodies shuttled between them.

The offshore graveyard lay “out-of-sight-out-of-mind” for hundreds of years, safely buried under six feet of mud.

However, as sea levels changed and erosion gradually occurred, the land was worn down, leaving the skeletons and coffins exposed at low tides in a boggy mess.

There’s a blanket ban on access to the island, and it’s closed to the public.

That is, unless you book a kayaking tour, passing remarkably close to what would otherwise be a totally inaccessible slice of creepy British history.

You’ve just got to be mindful not to disturb the nesting birds – something Rob Davis, my guide from South East Kayaking, is paying close attention to.

As a total kayaking beginner, I’m sitting in a tandem vessel, with Rob handling all the major steering and mustering most (if not all) of the rowing power.

He points out passing egrets and oystercatchers, weaving in opportunistic bird-watching with historical insights into this section of the estuary.

Jon, makes up the third of our little adventuring group in his own kayak — stopping to snap pictures at adhoc intervals.

In approximately two hours, we are circumnavigating Deadman’s Island and adding a quick detour to Burntwick, where the yellow fever victims actually resided and perished.

At the current tide, I haven’t spotted any human remains; the water has to be a certain level to allow us to skirt by at all and I shudder to think what lingers just below the surface.

It’s a rush against the tide; as water levels drop the Shepherd’s Creek, aka our home-stretch, quickly dries out, leaving us vulnerable to running aground.

The route is enough to send shivers down your spine; I’m experiencing what feels like a ghost tour by water.

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My guide explains the creepy history of the islands[/caption]

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I was glad the tour was in the day – as you can see some horrifying things[/caption]

You track out towards Burntwick Island on The Swale and River Medway, tracing where the victims would have been abandoned to their fate, slowly returning back past Deadman’s Island, along the eerily still waters of Shepherd’s Creek.

The thought of lingering after dark while waiting for a coastguard rescue is far from appealing.

Dr Paul Wilkinson of Swat Archaeology is one of the few people who have been authorised to step foot on Deadman’s Island.

He accompanied a BBC crew in 2017 as an attending archaeologist; his job primarily being to confirm that the remains were human.

He remembers the experience, highlighting how most were male, before adding: “At low tide as the waters retreated I saw extremely large eels writhing inside the skeletal bodies; some were being rocked by the tide which made them seem almost alive.”

The Medway is full of tiny islands with dark histories, but these are mostly inaccessible unless you jump aboard a kayak.

The network holds some of the creepiest stories, from shipwrecks to naval attacks; Deadman’s Island takes the title as the spookiest of all.

“Local fishermen have seen human ghosts calling out to them to come and save them,” Wilkinson reveals of the island.

Maybe book your kayak tours on a strictly daytime basis.