Shoal Bay East is three kilometres of coral-powder sand on the north coast of Anguilla, and nothing on it stands higher than a wooden bar. A reef a few hundred metres out keeps the water inside it flat. The water is clear because the island is limestone, porous enough that rain sinks into the rock instead of running off, so no stream ever arrives carrying silt. Above the waterline the sand is loose enough to wade through, so the walk is easier down where the sea has packed it. Past the bend halfway along, the loungers and the music stop. There is no bar, no chair and nobody selling anything for the whole upper half, and most people turn round there.
At the far end the reef swings in close, and the coral heads rise in scattered mounds with lanes of bare white sand running between them. The tops sit near enough to the surface that a swell lifts you over them rather than past them. Those lanes are also how you find your way back, because from the water the beach behind you is one unbroken line with nothing on it to steer by. Ashore, grilled ribs, crayfish and rum punch come out of wooden bars standing directly on the sand. Sunday is the loud one, with live reggae and a crowd as much local as visitor. Irma cut about twelve metres off the beach and dune in 2017, and the ground beneath Gwen's Reggae Grill went with it, so the bar moved further along. By the next spring the upper sand had come back on its own, with nothing trucked in. Uncle Ernie's has been on this beach since 1984, when the bay had no electricity and he cooked over an open fire for whoever walked up. His daughters and a nephew still run it, and nothing taller has gone up behind them since.