About halfway across Lundy, if you’re trudging from the landing bay towards the north lighthouse, there’s a tiny holiday cottage all on its own. It’s a mile and three quarters from the island’s village and very basic inside. There are two bunks in the single bedroom; a dodgy oven in the kitchen that only works if you jam a wooden stick between the wall and the ‘on’ button; and, in the sitting room, the kind of gas lights that died out in the 1930s, because there’s no electricity — and so no wifi or TV — in the whole place.
In other words, it’s bliss — at least for the right sort of person. Tibbets, as the cottage is called, is perched on the highest point of the island with views over the Bristol Channel on two sides. A Royal Navy lookout until 1926, it’s now owned by the Landmark Trust, a charity set up 50 years ago by the philanthropist Sir John Smith and his wife, Christian, to try to prevent the loss of historic buildings that were too small or insignificant to attract the attention of the bigger National Trust.
Which is why you can stay there — and at lots of other historic properties, from a fisherman’s cottage in the Highlands, to a castle on the south coast of Devon — for surprisingly little.
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