‘I have the island to myself’: how to be a castaway in Cornwall

Book an overnight stay in the cosy smuggler’s cottage on Looe Island and you get to enjoy this marine nature reserve after the day trippers have gone home

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.