As I discovered to my cost at Agatha Christie’s favourite hotel, there is a tide...

Tracking Back: In his latest reflection on memorable places and pathways, Will Gore recalls an embarrassing moment when karma came to call

Burgh Island Hotel off the Devon coast (Alamy)

It was my job to sort out the honeymoon. Needless to say, I left it a bit late in the day.

The result was that we ended up with what a travel agent might describe as a twin-centre break – those centres being an unusual combination of Corsica and Devon.

After a week of Mediterranean heat, we flew back to the UK to find persistent drizzle making a mockery of the swanky(ish) soft-top car I’d hired for the second half of our adventure. To be fair, in that summer of 2007, it was something of a miracle that the wedding day itself hadn’t been ruined by rain.

Our next port of call was Burgh Island, the tidal island off the South Devon coast which is the site of a beautiful Art Deco hotel made famous by Agatha Christie, who was a frequent visitor and whose work was inspired by the place.

We arrived when the tide was in, and were thus transported from the mainland on the hotel’s sea tractor – a remarkable vehicle, tall enough to carry its passengers above the waves. It was a thrilling way to reach any destination, especially one so utterly unique as Burgh Island. I was glad my failure to sort out the holiday in decent time had led us here.

The next five days were spent eating and drinking too much, swimming in the hotel’s sea pool and generally doing as little as possible.

One afternoon, we sat on our balcony watching the tide come slowly but surely in, swirling around the island from both directions, inching across the causeway that allowed a crossing from the mainland on foot at low tide.

The island is easy to reach on foot at low tide (Alamy)

Suddenly, a family appeared on the far away beach, making hurriedly for the hotel. Surely they would turn back? But no, on they came, as the sea approached from left and right – this group a kind of anti-Moses, drawing the ripples inexorably closer.

And then the water was upon them, lapping over their ankles, rising much more quickly than they could possibly have expected, so that by the time they arrived on the island they were nearly waist deep in the sea – all except a small, perplexed dog being carried high in the air by its owner.

How we laughed, we two mean lovebirds, safely ensconced in the beautiful hotel. How could anyone be so daft as to risk a soaking when the tide was so obviously on the turn?

Nearly 18 months later, we returned to Burgh Island for a long weekend; a delayed celebration of our wedding anniversary. The place was different in winter: no less wonderful, but more isolated somehow, and wild.

We went for a blustery walk along the coast, thrilled to be back and ready to work up an appetite before dinner. Eventually we turned back the way we had come, conscious of the tide.

But we had cut it too fine: as we set out over the causeway, the seas were there to meet us: not balmy August waters, but grey January ones. We ran a few yards but we knew we wouldn’t make it in time so removed our shoes and consigned ourselves to our fate.

It was karma, I suppose, for two little idiots who had once laughed evilly under the sun.