ENGLAND will be based in St Lucia for the Cricket World Cup next year, and the incoming supporters are bound to have some hankering after a place in the sun. visited the island to see what it has to offer.

St Lucia is not the smallest of the Windward Islands, the chain that stretches up from the coast of South America, but nor, at 616 sq km is it the largest.

I walked across it one day, through the lushest of rainforest where parrots squawked, mountain whistlers shrilled, and the jungle trails were littered with scarlet heliconia, and hibiscus flowers. Away from the obvious ports of call for cruise passengers pressed for time, it is a remarkably relaxed agricultural society.

The capital has all the mod cons one could want - an airport capable of taking long-haul planes, a deep port for the big cruisers, supermarkets and business hotels.

Meanwhile, inland the landscape is like something out of a sci-fi novel cover: all mysterious green-cloaked mountains, 50ft high bamboo stands, and Rastafarian farmers working their organic vegetarian plots. Don’t be worried if they greet you with a few words of German - until recently it was only the hiking-mad Germans who ventured into the interior.

The island was so greatly prized by both the French and the English that it changed hands 14 times in the 17th and 18th centuries. It’s a member of the Commonwealth now, and the official language, spoken by the predominantly African population, is English, but its patois is still French.

Today, holiday companies like Headwater are introducing the island to a new generation of Brits who find an experience light years away from the bland all-inclusive holiday resorts more recently associated with St Lucia.

Nothing compares to a cold beer in a back country bar, maybe with an intense discussion of just when West Indian cricket sold its soul in exchange for a pot of gold - a very strongly religious streak still runs through the predominantly Roman Catholic island.

The snorkelling diving is tremendous with plenty of respectable companies offering tuition and outings. The seafood is fresh out of the water, and the interior gives year-round fruit: mango, papaya, coconut, sugar apple, guava, breadfruit, cashews...

The native plants are attracting a lot of attention from biochemists looking to the natural world for the next breakthrough in medicines. Snap an agave stalk to gain immediate relief from sunburn and you understand the thinking.

I stayed on the same side of the valley as the new development. Leaning back with a local rum, and a little calypso on the iPod, the view, from left to right, is of the green hills, wisps of smoke from the sulphur springs and, like two exclamation marks, the two Pitons, Grand and Petit, that are the emblem of the island.

From the top of Grand Piton almost the entire island can be seen. Yachts, cruisers, and fishermen’s small craft float on the azure sea. Helicopters buzz like dragonflies below.

All this, and cricket too. Treat yourself.