The Grenadines: Heaven is on my doorstep

It's off-season in the Grenadines - especially on the island of Bequia, where nothing much happens at the liveliest of times, and the languorous days before Christmas stretch out like sleeping dogs in the sun. Fancy a snorkel, then? Or a mango? Or one of Silma's poems? C'mon, relaaax...

The sole security officer at Bequia airport is a poet. We discover this within minutes of touching down in our four-seater plane. As the only passengers on the flight from Barbados (two others have left us in Mustique), we have Silma Duncan's full attention. Ours is the only commercial flight that day, so Silma shuts up shop, follows us out of the airport and joins us in the back of Lency's taxi, a red pick-up truck.

The sole security officer at Bequia airport is a poet. We discover this within minutes of touching down in our four-seater plane. As the only passengers on the flight from Barbados (two others have left us in Mustique), we have Silma Duncan's full attention. Ours is the only commercial flight that day, so Silma shuts up shop, follows us out of the airport and joins us in the back of Lency's taxi, a red pick-up truck.

We bounce through the villages of Paget Farm, La Pompe and Friendship (the names reflect a chequered history at the hands of rival European navies) and Silma reads us one of her pieces - about God's love for a Downs syndrome child. Would we consider purchasing one of her works? We promise to give the idea serious thought, and she leaves full of smiles.

Bequia (pronounced Beck-way) is certainly a cheerful place. With 7,000 inhabitants on seven - mainly hilly and forested - square miles, everyone knows everyone else's business. There are only half a dozen roads, and if a taxi driver can't find anyone willing to pay a full fare, he'll turn his truck into a bus and pick up pedestrians for an Eastern Caribbean dollar a ride - about 27 pence.

Lency's cab swings back down the northern shore of the island, via an alarmingly steep slope, and along a rutted track beside Lower Bay. This is one of Bequia's most celebrated beaches, although Hurricane Lenny removed much of its sand in the last big gasp of 1999. To the relief of the handful of bars and guesthouses on the shoreline, the sand is returning - and the nearby Princess Margaret Beach (where she once dipped a toe during a visit from Mustique) is well supplied with the stuff.

Our own destination is Marie Kingston's beach-house, at the very end of the road, with waves lapping at the foot of the garden, palm trees on all sides and a cool veranda overlooking Admiralty Bay. It is material proof that you can find heaven on the internet: we booked in online while in the throes of a chilly British autumn.

The house, it turns out, is in the heart of a thriving Lower Bay community: a few cabins with peeling paint; litters of scrawny puppies; gaggles of smartly uniformed schoolchildren; a beer-house where the local menfolk gossip all day, conserving their energy; Petra's shop, with a few basic groceries and (more) blissfully cold beer. Up on the hillside are Coco's Place and Dawn's Creole restaurant, offering rum punch and shimmering views, and a few lazy yards along the track, the Parrot Café, where they sell cinnamon buns, pies and toasted sandwiches.

You make friends easily. Within minutes of my first visit to the Parrot, I find myself promising to buy them some door-chimes when I returned to London. It seemed quite natural at the time...

The weeks before Christmas are technically out of season, but the sun shines most of the time, and the temperatures hover in the eighties. The aptly named "magnificent frigate bird" soars, and the rather less magnificent brown booby dives for fish outside our front door. The crickets chirrup. The sand-fleas bite.

And then there are the blackbirds. Unlike their celebrated British namesakes, blackbirds in Bequia sing only four notes. The same four notes, over and over again. In rough musical notation, the bird's song runs thus: E, F, A, G ... E, F, A, G ... E, F, A, G - an initial quaver followed by three crotchets. This can grate on the ear, but the locals love Quiscalus Luminosus, with its beady eye and curved beak. In 1880, a poet decided that the wretched bird was singing "Bequia sweet, sweet!" This promptly elevated it to the status of the island's mascot.

Despite the blackbirds, a delightful sense of calm and isolation soon envelops us. We can see Bequia's mother island, St Vincent, in the distant haze to the north, but it looks a world away. There are no spare seats on the few planes flying in and out. A power cut reminds us that the island has had electricity only since 1969, and Lower Bay boasts just one public telephone, half-hidden behind a hedge on an unlit stretch of road. Mobiles don't work. Most locals communicate by two-way radio. In principle, it's possible to dial overseas (at great expense) with a phone-card, or by using a credit-card system which allows you two calls a day. But then, why worry? If some dire political crisis were to loom through the World Service static, the effort of finding a way off the island would certainly be too great for most to contemplate.

Instead, picking up a taxi/bus en route, we wander into Bequia's only town, Port Elizabeth, known universally as De Harbour. (You can also dine at De Bistro or stay at De Reef Hotel.)

De Harbour is charming and laid-back - a handful of shops and street-stalls, restaurants like Frangipani and Gingerbread, sleeping taxi-drivers, a bank and a market with rival Rastafarian salesmen offering mango-bribes for your custom.

The best food is supplied by Doris, who gets a delivery of exotic produce twice a week from St Vincent. But even supplies of fish can run short. Bequia's small fishing fleet, we're told, can't put to sea because of the ocean swell - or perhaps because it can't quite stir itself into such energetic activity?

The next day we accept the excuse. On an excursion to St Vincent, the steamer plunges across the bay like a demented cork. Not many passengers are sick. The sea is usually calm. So they say.

Mostly, the lure of inactivity seeps into even the most restless of souls. There are the sailors, of course, and some are attracted by the excellent diving. (Wimpish snorkellers, however inexpert, can join Dive Bequia's expeditions at £15 for a two-hour trip, including hire of equipment. If all those rubber suits and air-bottles produce a sense of inferiority, it doesn't last long once the amazing submarine show begins.)

But once ashore, most succumb to a delightful torpor. And when your trip to town is over, water taxis will carry you to your own strip of beach for a fiver. In our innocence, we had assumed that Bequia would be a cheap place to live, far less expensive than neighbouring Mustique with its opulent villas and superstar clientele. In fact, a total dependence on imports - bananas and sugar included - helps to keep prices surprisingly high. A good restaurant meal with wine for two can easily cost £75, though the most fascinating Caribbean meal - cooked to your specification by Daphne at her tiny back-street dining-room - is also the best value on the island. Order the day before, and expect to pay £20 a head.

You won't want to do much, but our favourite taxi-driver, Terence, of Sunshine Cabs, charges £30 for a two-hour tour of the island, and it's worth it. The views from the highest hill, Mount Pleasant; the rutted road to the Old Hegg Turtle Sanctuary (baby turtles have to be reared within the sound of the sea or they lose the knack of ocean-living); the semi-tropical jungle reclaiming a tennis-court near the old Spring Hotel - there's magic at every turn.

At the end of the week, we summon up the energy to climb back onto Lency's taxi for the trip to the airport. At the top of the hill we stop, and a familiar figure sidles over the tail-gate. It's Silma Duncan, of course, bearing laminated poems.

One is called "The Old Harbour":

"Long ago our harbour was small and unsecured/ But the motives of our people were always pure/ The straits were narrow, the harbour was slow/ At nights there were no places to go."

It ends:

"Our old harbour has now become new,

Very busy and exciting too."

We buy Silma's poem, at a typical Bequia price of $20 (£13). Exciting isn't really quite the word, Silma. But we'll be back. Getting there: The easiest access to Bequia is via Barbados, served by British Airways and Virgin Atlantic from Gatwick, and BWIA from Heathrow. From there, Mustique Airways has one flight a day in each direction, at a fare of $120 (£85) per person. The flight takes about 40 minutes, and there is a 20kg luggage limit. We booked on the internet, www.mustique.com, and dealt with the Airways' local office on 001 784 458 4380

You can also fly to St Vincent and take the ferry that leaves every hour or so at a cost of about £4

We booked accommodation through Bequia Villa Rentals (001 784 485 3393; beqvilla@caribsurf.com), where Judy Simmons has a wide selection. She will also arrange for a food delivery when you arrive. We paid $730 (£500) for a week, though many of the properties are for more than two people. And many cost a great deal more, especially in high season, which runs from Christmas through to April. Even the 'rainy season' in Bequia - May/June and October/November - is warm. And relaxing

Nick Clarke presents Radio 4's "World at One". His biography of Alistair Cooke is now out in paperback (Orion, £8.99).