It is just after dawn and from a viewpoint on Looe Island, Cornwall, I watch two seals on the beach below. The pair entwine in the surf, her freckled, creamy belly against his, flippers wrapped around each other, eyes closed in blissful bonding. I feel like a peeping Tom, watching from behind a bush. It feels too intimate a moment to be spying upon, but the emerald-eyed cormorants guarding the beach seem unbothered.
I had arrived on Looe Island, also known as St George’s Island, off the south coast of Cornwall, the previous morning via the romantically named Night Riviera sleeper train from London, changing early in the morning in Liskeard, then 15 minutes across the waves in a small fishing boat. The island is managed by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust and can only be accessed on organised visits, and while most people come on day trips, I’m staying for a little longer. I have come loaded down with all the food and bedding I will need for my three-night visit, but also with the mental baggage of workaday life. Now, that weight lifts as I watch the male seal court his lady in the shallows.
Rain threatens, and I return to Smuggler’s Cottage, a pretty whitewashed house that sleeps two, tucked into a garden of fruit trees and fading flower heads. The cottage, with a bedroom, tiny kitchen, bathroom and cosy living room with a wood burner, is a homely place and was once lived in by a pipe-smoking, fist-fighting smuggler called Black Joan and her brother, Finn. The rain drips steadily from the sycamore trees clambering up the hillside and clings like frost to the spiders’ webs hanging from the windowsills. I snuggle back into bed with a cup of tea and feel the warmth that comes from a wildlife encounter in which the wildlife never knew you were there.
Undoubtedly it was to preserve moments such as these that the former owner of Looe Island, Roselyn “Babs” Atkins, left her home to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust as a nature reserve. Babs and her sister, Evelyn “Attie” Atkins, were women who defied the conventions of their time. The pair never married and instead invested in their careers and took up hobbies such as mountaineering and rifle shooting. Then, when Attie was in her mid-50s, the chance came to realise a long-held dream to own an island. She bought Looe Island along with her sister in 1965 for £22,000 and became a daffodil farmer; Babs joined her later when she retired.
Cornwall Wildlife Trust took over the island in 2004, after Babs’s death, and the charity manages the 9 hectares (22 acres) of woodland, maritime grassland and rocky shoreline for the benefit of wildlife, including one of Cornwall’s largest breeding colonies of great black-backed gulls (stately birds with a wingspan of over 1.5 metres) and marine wildlife such as the graceful compass jellyfish, which can be spotted in the rock pools.
Apart from the cottage, visitors can stay in a bell tent, which sleeps two, overlooking Trelawny Island to the south-east, where breakers crash on the rocks and seals sleep, nose skywards, kissing the surf. Additional revenue comes from the landing fee charged to day trippers, who come across with Looe Sea Safari a few times a day when the weather allows. There is also a diminutive museum and giftshop, where wardens Claire and Jon, who live on the island year-round, sell homemade chutney, chillies from their veg garden and charming books on island life written by Evelyn Atkins.
Today, the seas are too rough for day trippers and I have the island to myself. I read in a meadow, something I never find the time to do at home, and explore the winding pathways that climb steeply up to the summit, 47 metres above the sea.
There’s a self-guided trail (free from the bookshop) for further exploration. One of the stops is Babs’s meadow, where she is buried looking out over her beloved home. The whole route could easily be walked in an hour, but why rush? The trail winds past Island House, Roselyn and Evelyn’s old home, and follows the coastline, with views out over the reefs that fringe the island, before returning through woodland bright with bird calls.
In the afternoon, I head for a swim on the island’s main beach, where the black-backed gulls roost in between fishing trips. I try hard to follow Claire’s instructions, staying close to the tree line and not looking in the birds’ direction to avoid disturbing them, and am delighted when the colony largely ignores me. The sea is icy and the surf threatens to pummel me, but I spot silver striped mackerel swimming inches away and relish the thrill of taking a dip from a little-visited cove. Afterwards, dried and bundled in layers, I sit propped up between the boulders, hands warming around a cup of hot chocolate from my Thermos as I catch the last light of the dying sun. I gaze across the water, my mind clearer than it has been in weeks, as the gulls take off into the wind and sail past along the coast.
When I watch the two seals again later that evening with Claire and Jon, she explains that they hope to encourage visitors to respect coastal wildlife and minimise disturbance. “When the seals are resting,” she says, “they are laying down layers of fat from their meals, which helps the adults survive the winter and enriches the milk females give to their pups. Each time they are woken by a boat, even if it’s only for a few minutes, they use up a little bit of energy and the effect accumulates.”
For each seal, disturbance can be the difference between life and death, she says, but agrees that protection needs to be balanced against the need for people to engage with wildlife in order to increase empathy and support. Staying on – or visiting – a nature reserve is one way that people can get to know the wildlife on its terms. “The island forces them to slow down, to notice the small things,” Jon says. “People put their phones away and spend the afternoon watching a spider building its web.”
After only a day watching the seals, I can already feel that kinship. After all, these animals look so much like us that they were once mistaken for mermaids. It is these priceless moments of connection that Claire and Jon hope will stay with guests and teach them to be humble in the way they live alongside other creatures.
I have come to realise, as Babs and Attie did before me, that it is the lordly gulls and the amorous seals who are the real owners of the island. Still, I am grateful for the opportunity to share their home, if only for a few days, and for the sense of peace and reconnection with the wilder world it has allowed me.
The trip was provided by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust. Smuggler’s Cottage is available to rent from spring until October and costs £450 for a three-night stay for two. Looe Sea Safari runs day trips either side of high tide in daylight hours and fair weather, £12 adults, £7 children 10 and under, plus Cornwall Wildlife Trust’s landing fee of £8 adults, £3 children.
