Bath is the gateway to the Morant peninsula which juts into the Caribbean Sea. The 30m-tall, red-and-white-striped lighthouse marks Morant Point, the easternmost tip of Jamaica. Cast in London in sections that were shipped to Jamaica and erected in 1842, it is the oldest iron trunk lighthouse in the world, and visiting it is a tremendous adventure.
The lighthouse keeper is generally happy to give tours to the rare visitors, and will ask you to sign his visitors book (a tip wouldn't go amiss). The powerful view and the windy silence make for a profound experience as you look out over rippling sugarcane fields toward the cloud-haunted John Crow Mountains and the deserted, wave-lashed shore. To sea, you can imagine almost seeing Haiti, due east. The beaches here are unsuitable for swimming but you will have their wind-whipped beauty all to yourself – the lighthouse keeper assured us the fishing is great.
You need a car happy with rough roads to reach Morant Point. From Bath, take a right in Golden Grove to the one-street village of Duckenfield – GPS navigation may send you astray, so aim for the tall, unmissable chimneys of the Duckenfield sugar factory. Keep the factory on your left and take the dirt road that runs straight into the cane fields. Several lesser trails branch off from it, but as long as you stick to the main one, it’s very difficult to get lost – in a couple of places there are signs pointing to the lighthouse. The fields of sugarcane and entirely empty horizon have a haunting quality, as if the land is trying to summon the ghosts of the enslaved workers who toiled here in the colonial period. The dirt road meanders through cane for around 8km before emerging at the coast, at which point the lighthouse comes into view. A 4WD is strongly recommended during the rainy season.
