Some homes perfectly match their owner and for survival expert Bear it could only be an island with one building and basic amenities
Property and person matched perfectly at private Welsh island(Image: Bear Grylls)
Sometimes a property purchase makes sense when the current owner’s identity is revealed and, of course, adventurer, explorer, survival expert and television presenter, and Bear Grylls owns an island; surely never has anyone been more suited to living on a remote private island with only one building as Bear?
He is so captivated by this unique Welsh location called Saint Tudwal’s Island West that he happily shares what it’s like to stay on this rocky outcrop across his social media accounts.
In a newly released video on the popular celebrity’s public Facebook account, Bear flies a drone from the ground up into the air above the island and around the lighthouse, capturing panoramic views of the ocean and rocky landscape off the coast of the Llyn Peninsula. For more home, renovation and interiors stories sent to your inbox twice a week sign up to the property newsletter here.
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Bear’s video starts in his man-cave with children Huckleberry and Jesse(Image: Bear Grylls)
Bear comments: “This place has been one of the greatest things we ever bought as a family – aged 25 it was a scary first project but it’s become what I believe is the coolest home on the planet! (Starts in my office man-cave with Huckles and Jesse, steaks cooking after a sea swim.)”
The island became the family’s Welsh sanctuary in 2001 when they took a risk and purchased it in 2001 for a reported £95,000; it has limited mobile phone coverage, no mains electricity or running water or people just wildlife and the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks and cliff-faces.
The drone footage pans out to reveal the Grade II listed lighthouse and former keeper’s cottage(Image: Bear Grylls)
Father of three, 52 year-old Bear told The Times: “The island had a 200-year-old lighthouse and two lightkeeper’s cottages, but [the houses] were derelict with no power, no water, no roof and rats.
“It took about ten years to gain permission to build a slipway on the island. It has been life-changing for us. Previously we had to keep a boat on a mooring, row ashore and walk a mile up the beach with all the shopping.”
In past social media posts Bear has said: “We’ve made some amazing memories living there and spending time with the boys on the island over the years, and just being able to have that space and enjoy nature has been really special. But people always think that we must have somewhere really nice inside to go and all these fancy things but it’s not like that at all.”
As the drone moves back the main path and landscape of the island becomes more of the focus(Image: Bear Grylls)
The only neighbours or welcome visitors not invited are the grey seals, porpoises and bottle nose dolphins regularly spotted passing by off the coast rather than passing traffic plus birds that include razorbills. choughs, gulls and guillemots.
Recently Bear was spotted by people on the mainland shopping for supplies by meeting a Waitrose delivery van on the shoreline – the van and driver on dry land but Bear in an amphibious vehicle that can easily travel between water and land.
The footage, sent to Sell Us Your Story, was filmed at around 4pm on July 19, 2026, find out more about that here.
High in the air now, the drone reveals just how incredible the island looks from the air(Image: Bear Grylls)
Mostly grass on its crown, the island is also home to the unmanned St Tudwal’s Lighthouse, built in 1877 at the northern end of Cardigan Bay to be illuminated. It became automated in 1921 and since 1995 has run on solar power according to Cadw.
In 1996 the lighthouse was given a Grade II listing as a ‘good example of a small late C19 lighthouse which retains much of its original character’.
The tower stands at 10.7 metres and includes the optic, the glass lenses and prisms at the top, dated as 1876 on a makers’ plate ‘Chance Brothers & Co Lighthouse Engineers and Constructors near Birmingham’, with the former lighthouse keeper’s cottage next door and Bear’s detached ‘man-cave’.
Bear has described the island as the planet’s coolest home(Image: Ian Cooper/North Wales Live)
According to website Trinity House the island itself measures around 650 metres long by 167 metres at its widest point and is one of a pair of rocky islands, the other being St Tudwal’s East, easily visible from Bear’s sister island.
In April 2021 a modernisation of the lighthouse commenced, including installing LED lighting, under the guidance of project engineer Phil Hawtin with delivery of materials and machinery coming via boat and helicopter plus the use of three recycled huts from the 2017 Mumbles Lighthouse project that provided shelter for the team of workers, supervised on site by lighthouse technicians Ian Arthur and Phil Horner.
Planning was eventually passed for the building of the jetty(Image: Ian Cooper/North Wales Live)
Project engineer Phil told Trinity House: “On a few occasions some of the team were lucky enough to meet Bear and his family when they popped their heads through the lighthouse door to say a neighbourly hello. Bear’s two dogs were often found seeking out members of the team for a good old belly rub too.”
Bear recently spotted using an amphibious vehicle to pick up his shopping(Image: Anonymous / SWNS)
The island regularly features on Bear’s social media accounts. In 2023 he posted a picture of Shara relaxing and reading in a deck chair, saying: “A happy place for Shara and me… she loves to read and I love to soak up the Welsh sun and swim! #wales”.
Visitors on the island appear to be rare but documentary maker Louis Theroux was welcomed and shown around some of the features at the site, including a bar he has built into the cliff face, his inflatable hot tub and describing this special spot in Wales as ‘his happy place’.
Bear recently seen picking up his shopping by boat on the shoreline(Image: Anonymous / SWNS)
The special privilege of owning a slice of outstanding natural beauty and a landscape of outstanding Welsh historical interest is not lost on Bear, who is said to stay on the island with his wife, three children a few times a year, he told Vanity Fair in 202: “It is surrounded by amazing sea cliffs, seals, and dolphins. It is my favourite place on the planet!”
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