The story
Most islands are older than everyone who visits them. This one is not. Every tree on it was planted after 1962, by a newspaper editor from Yorkshire who bought the place for eight thousand pounds and then spent the rest of his life turning it into a forest.
Quick answer
Brendon Grimshaw bought Moyenne Island in 1962 for £8,000. With René Antoine Lafortune he cleared it, planted about 16,000 trees across its 9.9 hectares, cut the nature paths visitors still walk, and brought in Aldabra giant tortoises. He moved onto the island in 1972 and lived there to the end of his life in 2012. On 28 July 2009 Moyenne Island was declared a national park.
What actually happened
Bought in 1962, replanted for a decade, lived on from 1972, protected in 2009.
1962. Grimshaw, then editing a newspaper in Nairobi, buys Moyenne Island from Philippe Georges for eight thousand pounds. The island had been abandoned since 1915 and was so overgrown that fallen coconuts lay deep across the ground.
The 1960s and 70s. He and René Antoine Lafortune clear and replant. Sixteen thousand trees go in. Paths are cut across all 9.9 hectares. A house is built. Aldabra giant tortoises are brought over and begin to breed.
1972. Grimshaw moves to Moyenne Island permanently. From then until his death he is effectively its only human resident, alongside Lafortune and the tortoises.
2009. After about twenty years of asking, the government declares Moyenne Island a national park, on 28 July. The BBC has since described it as the smallest national park in the world.
2012. Grimshaw is 87 when he goes. The island stays as he left it, and the boats keep coming.
What you can still see of his work
None of this was here in 1962.
About sixteen thousand of them, and the reason a Moyenne Island tour feels like walking into a forest rather than onto a beach.
Cut by hand across the whole island. They still follow the routes he chose.
Around fifty Aldabra giants, descended from the ones he brought over one at a time.
Where he lived from 1972. Small, simple and startling when you realise somebody actually lived here alone.
Two unmarked ones said to be pirates’, and Grimshaw’s own, on the island he made.
Around two thousand of them now nest here, including white terns. They came back because the trees did.
The island was abandoned for forty-seven years before Grimshaw bought it, and it has now been his forest for longer than it was ever empty.
The giant tortoises→Book direct
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Common questions
Brendon Grimshaw, a British newspaper editor, bought it in 1962 for £8,000 and lived there from 1972 to the end of his life in 2012.
About 16,000, on 9.9 hectares, with René Antoine Lafortune.
Yes, declared on 28 July 2009. The BBC has described it as the smallest national park in the world.
9.9 hectares, which is about 24 acres. You can walk the whole of it in well under an hour.
No. It was abandoned from 1915 and heavily overgrown with scrub and fallen coconuts when Grimshaw bought it. The forest is planted.
Yes, by boat from Mahé. There is no causeway, no ferry of its own and no airstrip.
Go deeper
From $83, and the park fee nobody mentions.
The parkProtected since 1973, and the first marine park in the Indian Ocean.
The verdictFourteen listings, and the four worth your day.
TortoisesAround fifty of them, and how they got there.
SnorkellingWhat you actually see, and which trips put you in the water.
Glass-bottomThe reef without swimming, from $83.
Mahé: Saint-Anne Marine Park and Moyenne Island Cruise
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