Burgh Island

The South West, and particularly South Devon, has a few places that the rich (or at least the very well-off) have made their own. It has long been so, ever since Napoleonic times, when foreign tours were impossible.

The Devon Riviera around Torbay was the first to be developed as a posh haunt for fashionable Georgians needing either a rest or a place to live that offered a climate mild enough to grow palm trees in profusion. Villas were built, gardeners employed. Gradually the entire coastal fringe of South Devon was greened over with lawns, exotic trees and well-clipped hedges as Money moved in. Meanwhile local mariners, farm labourers and shepherds looked on, gaping, and wondered where it would all lead.

The snooty exclusivity didn't last long: the railways came early, and brought in the more sober middle classes, though not the shabby poor. The nicest, most scenic, bits of South Devon retained a stylish, upmarket air that froze out the impecunious. The notion of South Devon as a playground for the leisured classes, or the well-off retired, persisted well into the twentieth century, and it was no wonder that the best-known writers of 1930s crime fiction, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers, used golden South Devon as an alluring backdrop.

Its appeal to modern visitors is surely much the same: the promise of sun glinting on lazy waves, sandy beaches in beautiful coves, and mysterious offshore islands. And the evergreen nostalgia for the 1930s is amply catered for. Look at these posters I saw on the quay at Dartmouth, which support my point.

I hadn't been to Burgh Island for many years. This lies just off Bigbury-on-Sea, on a stunning stretch of coastline west of Kingsbridge. Some maps may help. Click on them to view them better.

As you can see from the bottom-most map, Burgh Island is actually connected to the mainland by a tombola, a stretch of sand that is covered at high tide, but dry at low tide. So you can walk across in ordinary shoes if you time it right. But that's no fun. You really want to take a voyage, though not necessarily in a small and uncomfortable rowing-boat. No problemo. For many a long year a special vehicle has plied to and fro between the shore and the island and back again. A strange kind of tractor, that can convey two or three carloads of people and their luggage. Their luggage? Ah, there's a posh art-deco hotel on the island, and you might (if you have the money) be a lucky guest. For the unwashed riff-raff there is (as an alternative) a pub called the Pilchard Inn. I say 'pub' but you'd not go in there with your whippets and cloth cap and ask for a pint o' best. It has a 'gin terrace'.  

I'm making out that Burgh Island has pretensions. But as you will see from my photos, it does have something exclusive about it. And there is no way you can casually enter the hotel, hoping for afternoon tea and cake. Not unless you have booked a room, and are a guest. Some famous people have stayed at that hotel over the years, the sort who value some privacy. So its gates are firmly closed to mere day trippers. There is a hotel Range Rover that takes guests from the landing beach to the gates (which silently open - I watched it happen), and through  them to the out-of-sight entrance. A journey of two hundred yards, max. Alternatively you might arrive by helicopter. There is a helicopter pad. I imagine the 'copter-to-entrance journey is even shorter in that case.

So what about my own visit to this Island of Mystery, which I am pretty sure was the island Agatha Christie used in her 1939 murder novel originally called Ten Little Niggers (she called it Nigger Island), an illustration in itself of what was acceptable during the 1930s. For years past, the book has been renamed Ten Little Indians or And Then There Were None, to avoid using the shameful N-word. I can't remember now what word was used in my early schooldays (during the 1950s) when the macabre children's rhyme (on which the book's plot is based) was no doubt regularly recited. Sadly, I suspect it was still 'ten little nigger boys'. Children were (and still are) so casually cruel and unthinking in their ignorance, and teachers wouldn't then have intervened. It was the same with rhymes and jokes about any kind of disability. Really, any kind of oddness or strangeness or difference. It was hell if you were fat or stupid, and not much better if you were clever, or spoke well, or wore nice clothes. 

Anyway, I'd arrived at Bigbury-on-Sea. Coming down the final hill, the island was set in the sea like a green-grey jewel. The white-painted hotel stood out, even from this distance.

Parked, and now on the beach, I was glad to see that the tractor was running. The tide was well on its way out, but there was no way you could get over to the island unless you waded and got your feet wet. As I waited, the tractor slowly approached from the island. It deliberately (though unnecessarily) detoured into the shallows, to give its passengers the impression of 'driving through the waves'. 

Well, let's get on!

It was easy. After paying, you just mounted some steps at the rear end and stood around in the passenger area at the top. The driver stood in the middle. I wondered whether he had a clear view of what was directly in front of the tractor - probably not. 

I was squinting in the sunshine, which had come out strongly during the previous few minutes.

Stout tyres with the kind of deep tread you'd need on wet sand.

The driver waited until a few more of us were on board, and then we were off. It was a surprisingly smooth ride, no bumps or lurches. In fact it was as undramatic as could be. He did at least head straight into the waves, but we couldn't feel them. I should think he would stay well away from any kind of rough sea: it would be frightening if a big wave hit the tractor's wheels and made it feel unstable. Still, it was pleasant to approach Burgh Island through the water - there was at least the illusion of 'sailing' there! 

Now the island was getting much closer. Then we were there. Was it worth the £2 fare? Oh yes. An experience you'd definitely want to have.

Most people headed straight off to the Pilchard Inn. It looked the obvious thing to do. Unless you were keen to explore the island (the option I chose). 

I still cherished notions of popping into the hotel for a civilised snack, but the way in wasn't clear. In fact you couldn't see a lot of the hotel at all! There was the on-tractor approach view, but not much else to see.

A black Range Rover was waiting for the hotel guests on our trip. While their luggage was packed onto the hotel car, I made my way along the only road, past the pub, and up to the hotel gates. 

This was as close as the hoi-polloi were allowed. So no cream tea for humble Lucy Melford. Here came the Range Rover...

Show over, folks. 

I walked up a steep path, passing the helicopter pad, and then on to the top of the island. The views were excellent.

The sunshine was less now, and the wind very strong. The south-west side of the island was all spectacular cliffs. At the highest point was a ruined building - an eighteenth-century 'huer's hut', which is a fish-shoal lookout - and everyone made there way into it to have a look (although it was no shelter at all from the driving wind).

With the sun gone, I didn't linger long. Back on the landing beach it was calmer. All the sand was now exposed, but the odd wave still creamed over it. It was clear that if I wanted to get back to shore I'd either have to ride on the tractor again, or else take off my shoes and get my toes cold and wet. An adventuress to my fingertips, I took off my sandals and stepped forth. 

Hmm...wetter than I'd thought. And then I hit a soft bit, and began to sink. Oh no, quicksand! I hate it when I'm being sucked under.

The face of a doomed woman, sinking fast. I was lucky to survive. Then a rogue wave, deeper and stronger than the rest, surged across the sands...

You could feel the push of the water. I managed to stay upright, but everything below the knee was now sopping wet. I looked at the passing tractor with longing. 

Back at Bigbury-on-Sea, it took a long time to brush the wet sand away. So much for nature in the raw. I felt in need of some civilisation. So next up would be yachty Salcombe. Next post.