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When I was thirteen I found an old canoe. It had been washed up on the rocks near my home which was two fields and some dunes away from the gaspingly beautiful and blissfully underpopulated south coast of Ynys Mon (Anglesey).

I’d never seen anything like this canoe. It had a timber frame and was covered in a blue canvass material which had been pulled tight around it’s spindly skeleton to make it sea worthy. It’s skin was so tight that when I paddled it over wavelets it would make a satisfying drumming sound which became the unforgettable sound track to the following summer.

I had no idea who had lost this canoe or indeed if I had the salvage rights to it, but I dragged it off those lonely rocks, borrowed a paddle from my friend in the village, wore a bright orange life preserver which looked more like a hi-vis toilet seat around my neck and, weather permitting, spent the rest of that summer paddling up and down the stretch of coastline from Aberffraw to the North East and Ynys Llanddwyn to the South West.

I would always stay within, what I calculated to be, swimming distance from the shoreline, just in case disaster struck and the repair I’d made to the canvass gave up. But my favourite and most adventurous sea voyage would mean crossing the mouth of Afon Cefni (The Cefni River) and across open sea, keeping the white tower of Llanddwyn lighthouse firmly above of the pointy bit at the front, which proper seamen call the bow. I would paddle to the sound of the drumming waves until my arms ached before finally reaching Llanddwyn. And taking a left at Trwyn Ffynnon y Sais (The rock near the English Man’s Well) the sound of sand scraping along the bottom of my canoe meant I’d arrived.

Watching the families arrive on the first episode of The 1900 Island brought all these memories flooding back. In the first programme we are introduced to four intrepid families as they make a far more adventurous sea journey than any of mine, in very rough condition by speed boat. Their gasps as they finally reach the shore at the iconic Porth y Peilotiaid (Pilot’s Cove) gives the viewer a small sense of the beauty of this magical place.

But unlike me, they’re not there to go for a quick swim and eat their ham sandwich before paddling home. They are there to stay, at least that’s the plan, but the families soon realise that their journey to Llanddwyn and back in time to 1900 is not going to be an easy one.

I’ve often wondered what life was like for the people who inhabited this seemingly idyllic coast in the past, and 1900 Island dispels any romantic notions I had that I could happily survive here with my canvas canoe, a fishing rod and no wifi.

It’s a tough, unforgiving, and potentially deadly place where only the most resourceful and skilled souls could hope to survive more than a few days.

I’m looking forward to watching the lives of our families unfold in this beautifully filmed series, which captures the stunning magic of Ynys Llanddwyn as I know it, while reminding me that life in a 1900’s coastal community was nothing like my dreamy paddling adventures in a canvass canoe.