Rafting the kayaks together – each holding their paddle tight to the gunwale – a mesh of spars. The instructor stands up in his, grasps the small orange buoy, and hauls in. Translucent green veils of weed hang from the dripping rope. The cage becomes visible a few feet below the surface – miners emerging from a coal shaft, or some skeletal sea monster. It breaks the waves, and we see it alive with click-clacking mini-lobsters, bright orange. Langoustines.

It’s alive, it’s behind me, and it’s in my kayak. I can hear the scrabbling and feel its vibration through the black plastic seat. I’m in a floating trap. Somehow, the paddle-sweeping, breaker-dodging, coastline-hugging journey home has more edge, more nervousness than the outward journey. We pick our way through the poppy brown seaweed that slops back and forth in the swell, and sludge our way to a halt below the high plywood canoe shoot. The crustaceans are gingerly retrieved, slung in a bag, and lugged over the heather and bracken paths to the lodge.

Someone’s pumping the lanterns. What’s the fuel in those? Kerosene? The smell of it hangs in the air. The one-legged cook stoops to fire up the oven into which a baking tray’s worth of langoustines will be slid.