a 200-year-old tower surrounded by sea

This has to be one of my more unusual dinners: sourced, and consumed, to the rhythm of the tide. 

It all started with a bit of low-water pêche à pied, as my guide Jérôme Thérèse would have it. Having walked for 30 minutes out from the beach, we set about searching for oysters and lobsters on the temporarily revealed rocks, a lunar landscape of jagged granite, ribboned with seams of sand and gullies of dog cockles, clams and razor shells. 

We were keeping a wary eye on the sea, given that the tidal range here is among the biggest in Europe. When the water recedes, the whole island of Jersey expands, doubling in size at big spring tides. When it returns, the five square miles of Violet Bank, the protected site that extended all around us, would completely disappear. Especially as the wind that afternoon was gusting to 25 knots. Despite the pretty name, Violet can be a pretty violent place for the unprepared. 

Jérôme had a long metal hook for hoicking lobsters out from under rocks. If it had been a bit later in the year, he said, we would have also laid trotlines — baited hooks strung across a gully — for bass and wrasse, but the water was still too cold for that.

As it turned out, we didn’t have much luck with the lobster, either. There were several suitable crevices, but poking with the hook and listening — lobsters make a clicking sound — found nobody home. Oysters, however, were everywhere. I quickly learnt to choose those standing proud on rock corners, easy to knock off with a handy stone. And to avoid those that sat on a milky white seam. “We don’t want to eat the spermy ones,” said Jérôme. Quite. 

By now the tide was starting its pitch invasion, sidling up in a pincer movement through the seams and gullies, so although it still looked dry all the way back to the mainland, we were already marooned. A refuge like a giant umpire’s chair stood halfway back for anyone who got really stuck, but we had Seymour Tower, all four storeys of 4ft-thick granite, at our backs.  

The tower was built in 1782 to keep an eye on the French, who the previous year had tried to seize this strategic island — loyal to the English crown since 1066 yet only 14 miles from the coast of France — in order to neutralise the threat to their shipping. (So it was a little ironic to be sharing it with a Frenchman, albeit one who had very much adopted the island as his home.)

Seymour stands proud above L’Avarison reef, about a mile and a half out from the shore. Its entrance door is above head height up a fixed ladder, leading into a roomy living space with wood burner, gas-canister cooker and rainwater sink. The limited electric lighting is solar-powered, but very necessary in a tower with loophole windows that were intended for rifle fire rather than reading small print. “Do you want the WiFi code?” joked Jérôme.

A hatchway in the middle of the floor opened down into an arched cellar which was once the ammunition store. On the floor above were eight bunks, then the top floor with a composting pellet loo and a lead-lined roof terrace offering a magnificent 360-degree view of a seascape that by now was 50/50 water and land. Up here, one of Jérôme’s first moves, after he’d called the coastguard to notify them of our arrival, was to raise the Jersey flag, letting everyone know we were in occupation.

Seymour Tower is far from alone on the shores of an island that has often found itself on the front line and so being repeatedly fortified. The 50 or so surviving coastal defences range from the 800-year-old Mont Orgueil Castle, overlooking the harbour of Gorey, to brutalist second world war gun batteries and radio towers. Nine of them are now available as holiday rentals through Heritage Lets, an offshoot of the charity Jersey Heritage, which must have one of the world’s most unusual portfolios of self-catering accommodation. 

Seymour and La Rocco Tower, built in 1796 just off the western coast, are basic options that must be booked with a guide, but others offer more conventional stays. La Crête Fort, for example, tucked among the cliffs on the rugged north coast, sleeps five and, though built in 1830, comes with mod cons including shower, DVD player and microwave (from £1,233 per week). The properties are owned by the island government and leased to the charity, which manages their conservation and rental.

Back in Seymour, it was time to wash the seaweed and open the oysters. The wind seemed to have strengthened, and now that the water was all around us, pounding away.

For our starter, we’d already grazed on a few fresh oysters, so now we had the rest of them grilled and sprinkled with Emmental. Beyond our rocky outcrop, the skerries were being submerged, as if the tide was trying to conceal a lurking army of frothy sea monsters, and in the distance I could see lights coming up on Normandy’s Cotentin Peninsula.

For the main course, Jérôme flambéed a dozen hand-dived scallops in Calvados, and served them with Jersey Royals, the island’s nutty, slightly sweet new potatoes. The seaweed fried in butter was a tad too salty for my taste, but the Stinky Bay ale, brewed in the centre of Jersey, helped.

By now it was getting late, and the wood burner was making us feel sleepy, but there was still time to think about dessert. Jérôme sautéed bananas in orange juice, which we then had with yoghurt and black butter, a local speciality of spiced apple and liquorice, which tasted like puréed mince pies. 

By the time we were on to our digestif — the rest of the Calvados — the noise from the sea was loud and insistent, as if someone was bashing a drum in the cellar, while his friend the wind was rattling the door. So there we were, properly marooned, castaways on a lonely threshold. From the seaward side, a handful of distant navigation lights were winking conspiratorially at us, acknowledging our induction into their world.

In the early hours, I woke thinking that something was wrong. It took a moment to realise what it was: silence. The tide had taken the sea away again. Listening hard, I could just about make out a distant susurration, like an audience starting to assemble in a concert hall for the next performance. 

Happily, the morning after was a very different scene to the night before. The sea was back but becalmed, the wind had dropped and the early sun beamed across our islet. Jérôme went off for a swim, but — given it was only six degrees outside — I demurred.

Once the pathway back to dry land had remerged, I parted with Jérôme and headed to where another of Heritage Lets’ properties stood overlooking the Corbière lighthouse on the island’s south-western corner. 

The Radio Tower is unmistakably Germanic, a brutalist construction on the headland at La Pulente that resembles a submarine conning tower. Inside walls of reinforced concrete some 6ft thick, however, this outpost is remarkably comfortable, having been refitted with a double bedroom and bathroom on three of its six floors, topped by a kitchen and a winding spiral stair up to its final tour de force. The glass-walled radio room was added to the top of the tower in 1976, from where a duty officer would monitor transmissions from shipping in the Channel. Now a lounge with sofas and a dining table, it has views to rival any seaside rental in the British Isles. 

Sitting up there, as the sun dropped slowly down behind Corbière lighthouse, I wondered what the German officers had made of their posting. After the rusticity of Seymour I appreciated the warmth, the WiFi and the hot and cold running water. But alas, with no Jérôme on hand to do the cooking, I had to get in the car and go in search of chips. Which was not quite the same level of adventure.

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