Stand on the wide sands at Bigbury-on-Sea and look out to the little green island offshore. At low tide a broad ribbon of sand invites you to walk across dry-shod. Come back a few hours later and that same path has vanished beneath the sea, and a strange high-wheeled machine called a sea tractor is trundling passengers over the covered sand. And there, crowning it all, gleams a white Art Deco hotel — a piece of the nineteen-twenties marooned on a rock in the Devon sea.
This is Burgh Island. Its name is often shortened in speech, but think of it simply as the island off Bigbury. Geologically it is a slate outcrop tied to the mainland by a sandy tombolo — a natural bar of sand that the tide covers and uncovers twice a day. People have known this shore for centuries.
It was once a pilchard-fishing station, and a lookout, or huer, would stand on the summit watching for the dark shadow of a shoal, then raise the cry that sent the boats out. By the slipway stands the Pilchard Inn, parts of which date from the fourteenth century.
Then, in 1929, the eccentric millionaire Archibald Nettlefold built the Art Deco hotel that drew the fashionable set between the wars, among them Noël Coward and Agatha Christie. Christie used the island's dramatic isolation in two of her novels, including the famous mystery published as And Then There Were None.
Let me point out what to look for. First, the causeway itself — that pale sweep of sand linking beach to island, laid bare at low water and swallowed whole at high. Second, the sea tractor, unmistakable on its tall wheels, built so its deck rides clear of the waves as it carries people across the shallow crossing.
Third, the hotel: those clean white curves, flat roofs and horizontal lines, so different from anything else on this rugged coast — pure jazz-age glamour. Fourth, look up to the island's grassy summit for the little stone huer's hut, the old pilchard-watcher's post with its long view out to sea. And fifth, down by the slipway, the low whitewashed Pilchard Inn, weathered by six centuries of Atlantic weather.
Around you, watch the rocky shore too: at low tide the pools are alive for rock-pooling, waders pick along the sand, and seals are sometimes seen offshore.
Picture the island in its heyday. In the nineteen-thirties the smart set arrived by train and motor car, crossed to a private island, and dined beneath the hotel's glass and chrome while the tide sealed them off from the ordinary world. It was exactly that sense of a stylish company cut adrift — elegant, sophisticated, and utterly cut off — that Agatha Christie caught so perfectly.
Sitting here, she looked at this small tidal rock, with its single grand house and its coming and going tides, and imagined a group of strangers stranded together with no way back to shore. The setting wrote half the story for her.
A gentle word of care. This is a tidal island, and the sands cover quickly, so always check the tide before you cross on foot — and if the water is up, that is exactly what the sea tractor is for. Remember, too, that the hotel is private, for guests and diners, though the Pilchard Inn and the island paths welcome visitors.
From Bigbury the South West Coast Path carries on above the sands, heading for the mouth of the River Avon and its little ferry, then on towards fashionable Salcombe. Take one last look before you go: the white hotel bright on its green rock, the sea tractor mid-crossing, and the sands slowly disappearing beneath the incoming tide — a scene found nowhere else on all this long coast.
Walk safe.
