The shopping trolleys are rusting in the aisles at Papa's Supermarket. Chalked up on the blackboard are the prices for the day's catch: king fish, sea trout, red snapper. But the fish counter is coated in a thick layer of ash. Next door, Barclays Bank is half-buried in rubble but if you peer through the broken windows you can still see the blue signs hanging from the ceiling, 'Accounts' and 'Loans'.
Outside, dust devils skitter along the empty high street and the sun-bleached skeletons of dead trees block the road. The only splash of colour in this landscape of grey desolation is the shocking blue of the sea and the sky and the only sound is the wind. No birds sing here. Watching over it all is the Soufriere Hills Volcano, its peak swathed in a menacing black cloud. This is Plymouth, the Pompeii of the Caribbean.
It was 10 years ago today that the first cloud of ash descended on Montserrat's colourful little capital. Until that summer, nobody on the tiny Caribbean island knew they were living on an active volcano. Unlike neighbouring Antigua, this 39 square-mile British territory had managed to avoid the worst excesses of mass tourism. Thanks to its black sand beaches, there were were no glitzy hotels, no overfed tourists on all-inclusive package deals.
Instead it had become a haven for expats. 'Buy a piece of paradise' entreated the real estate brochures, and hundreds of 'snowbirds' from America, Canada and the UK did just that, building lavish villas with pools where they could spend the winter. Cruise passengers would come ashore for a day and buy themselves a plot, charmed by the friendly people and unhurried pace of life of this lush green island. Among those who fell under its spell was George Martin, the Beatles producer, who built his legendary Air Studios here, attracting a string of artists including the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Sting, Elton John and Eric Clapton.
Then the mountain woke up. On the morning of 21 August 1995, a huge, black cloud came thundering down from the Soufriere Hills, heading straight for Plymouth. Within minutes, the town, once feted as the prettiest in the Caribbean, was engulfed in a blinding fog of black ash.
Miraculously, no one was hurt but Plymouth and the heavily populated south of the island were immediately evacuated. Two years later, after a series of increasingly violent eruptions, the volcano finally blew its top, killing 19 people in one day and, a couple of months later, destroying the capital.
Shirley Spycalla remembers clearly the night that Plymouth burnt. Sitting by the pool of the Erindell Villa guest house in the north of the island which she runs with her partner Lou, she recalls how she heard a sound like a jet engine. She came out onto the street with her neighbours and saw the sky glowing orange above the place where her home used to be. 'Everyone was crying because we knew then we'd never be going back,' she says.
Assisted by a controversial repatriation package from the British government, around two-thirds of the population left Montserrat for neighbouring islands or the UK, leaving a population of just 4,500 concentrated in the mountainous north.
I flew to Montserrat on a 19-seater Winair Twin Otter aircraft from Antigua. Just 15 minutes after taking off we were circling the island: a jade green teardrop in an azure sea. A week earlier, hundreds had turned out to celebrate the arrival of the first scheduled flights in a decade at the new airport. Before the new runway opened in July (the old one is buried in ash), a ferry from Antigua had been the only connection with the outside world. My arrival coincides with a series of events to mark the 10th anniversary of the first eruptions. The mountain has been quiet for two years and there's a cautious optimism in the air.
That night I am woken at 2am by a huge clap of thunder followed by heavy rainfall on the roof of my villa. But when I look out of the window the next morning it's clear there has been no storm. The air is hazy and the palm trees and oleanders in the front garden are coated in a layer of fine, grey dust. The water in the swimming pool has turned an unappetising shade of grey-green. It looks like someone has emptied a giant ashtray over the island. There's a strong smell of sulphur. I was mistaken about the rainfall. The mountain has started spewing ash again.
The talk in the shops and on the street corners that day is of the 'ashin'. Some people are wearing face masks and shower caps to keep the dust out of their hair. They are used to this. Words like 'magma chamber' and 'phreatic eruption' are dropped casually into the conversation the way other people talk about the weather.
'The ash falls aren't life-threatening, just very messy and inconvenient,' says Deborah Barnes-Jones, the governor of the island, when I meet her later that day. Rather than playing down the impact of the volcano, she believes it could be the key to a new kind of niche tourism.
There is talk of turning Plymouth into an open-air museum, a kind of modern-day Pompeii, with excavations and walking tours, although this is not a realistic proposition while the volcano is active. When things are quiet, it's sometimes possible for small groups to arrange visits to Plymouth with a police escort: it's a moving and memorable experience, though the knowledge that you could be incinerated within less than a minute if the volcano erupts adds a certain frisson. My taxi driver kept his engine running. For those who prefer their volcanoes at a safe distance, the Montserrat Volcano Observatory has panoramic views and will open an interactive exhibition later this year telling the story of the volcano.
Before the volcano the island attracted over 40,000 tourists a year. This has been reduced to a trickle of daytrippers who arrive by ferry or helicopter from Antigua, take a quick tour and disappear. But is there enough here to entice them to stay longer? Well, you can take a boat out and go diving for turtles and stingrays or snorkelling in bat caves. You can tour the island's rum shops on a Friday night. If you like hiking there are numerous forest trails.
I get up at 6am to meet Scriber, a forest ranger, who takes me on a winding and beautiful trail in the Centre Hills area, soon to be designated a national park. He points out elephant ear palms, black witch moths the size of small bats, termite mounds and tarantula holes. He stops and makes a strange chirruping sound. Within seconds we are surrounded by orange-breasted orioles, Montserrat's elusive national bird. Scriber was rehoused in the West Midlands after the volcano buried his farm. I try to picture this laid-back Dr Dolittle adjusting to life on a Birmingham council estate: from tropical paradise to concrete jungle. He didn't last long: walking the hard pavements made his back ache.
Undeterred by Montserrat's official ranking as the worst football team in the world (they came last out of 203 teams in the 2002 World Cup after losing to Bhutan), the island government is also pinning its hopes on sports tourism. Fifa recently funded the building of an impressive stadium which, it is hoped, will entice European teams to the island as a pre-season training camp. There's talk too of a golf course and an international-standard cricket pitch, but for the time being, talk is all it is.
Nobody is kidding themselves that Montserrat is about to start rivalling Antigua or Barbados in tourism's premier league. Like the football team, the tourist board has a long slog ahead of it. But they hope that tourists staying on nearby islands, such as Antigua, Nevis and St Martin, might find their curiosity piqued by the distant lump of rock just visible across the Caribbean sea, the dark plume of cloud rising from its jagged peaks.
Those who can bear to tear themselves away from the white-sand beaches and all-you-can-eat buffets for a few days, will be rewarded by a glimpse of a Caribbean island untouched by tourism. Check into the Erindell Villa Guest House. Lou will cook you eggs while Shirley tells you stories about the island. The people here love to talk.
Then they'll drive you up to St George's Hill and show you where their house used to be. The scene will take your breath away. As you leave the hill, stop to pick some fruit from the guava trees which grow wild in the abandoned front gardens of the exclusion zone. Wipe the dust off and take a bite. It's hard to believe that anything so sweet and juicy can grow in such a place. For the people of Montserrat, it tastes a bit like hope.
Why not combine it with ...
Montserrat lies in the eastern Caribbean chain of Leeward Islands. What it lacks in white-sand beaches and glitzy hotels, the neighbouring islands of Antigua, St Martin, St Kitts and Nevis more than make up for. The Montserrat Tourist Board hopes that visitors will use the new daily flight from Antigua to combine a couple of days on Montserrat with a longer stay elsewhere.
Just 27 miles from Montserrat, Antigua is a world away with its white, sandy beaches and huge choice of hotels ranging from cheap all-inclusives to five-star boutiques such as the excellent Carlisle Bay (www.carlisle-bay.com). Antigua is also a major yachting stop-off and is best explored by sailing between its beaches, calling at the bustling capital of St John's for shopping at markets and fish restaurants, the beachside bars of English Harbour and upmarket Nelson's Dockyard.
Although Antigua features some lovely tropical bars and awesome snorkelling, it is pleasantly shabby in places, and not quite so fancy as nearby St Kitts. Luxury-lovers should head here for high-end accommodation, such as the veranda-ringed plantation house hotel Ottleys (00 1 869 4657 234; www.ottleys.com). White sand is abundant and you can tour lava formations, craft studios, lagoons and the dormant, densely forested Mount Liamuiga.
Nature lovers will adore Nevis, a tropical paradise that breeds bright blooms and elusive green vervet monkeys. The Hermitage (www.hermitgenevis.com) offers airy rooms in pastel cottages.
The Antilles island of St Maarten/St Martin is another option. The French side is elegant and more exclusive, while the Dutch offers a busy commercial district. There are many historic forts and 37 beaches.
Factfile
British Airways (0870 850 9850; www.ba.com) flies from Gatwick to Antigua from £614 return. Winair (www.fly-winair.com) operates four flights a day between Antigua and Montserrat (prices from £50 return).
Erindell Villa Guest House (00 1 664 491 3655; www.erindellvilla.com) has two guest rooms with private bathrooms and a swimming pool. Rooms from £36 a night. The Vue Pointe Hotel (00 1 664 491 5210; www.vuepointe.com) is one of only two hotels on the island. Rooms start from around £55 a night. The Sea Wolf Diving School (www.seawolfdivingschool.com) is based here. Villa rental is available from Tradewinds Real Estate (00 1 664 491 2004). Prices start from £1,000 a week for a two-bedroom villa with pool and sea views.
For more information see www.visitmontserrat.com. For more on the volcano see the Montserrat Volcano Observatory's website www.mvo.ms.
