The wreck of the Napoli and the hordes of people scavenging its cargo from the beaches of Devon have been big news this week. Channel-hopping in my hotel room here in Davos I found the familiar sight of Branscombe Beach popping up on late-night television news bulletins from all round Europe.

I say “familiar” because it’s a spot I know and love, and I am dismayed to find it pitched into the headlines for very distressing reasons. Branscombe beach is a little over an hour’s drive from my home in South-West England, and my wife and I first discovered it one hot afternoon in August 2001. We were on the last day of a long hike along the East Devon coastline; to come across such a beautiful secluded spot and swim in its gentle blue-green waves was bliss.

I’ve been back a couple of times since, most recently on a sultry Sunday afternoon just over four months ago. We parked on an obscure country lane and my wife and I and our two Labrador Retrievers (sniffing the salt air excitedly – Labs adore the sea and can smell it from miles away) made our way to the beach on foot, threading our way through woodland echoing with birdsong and along a coastal path with views over the English Channel.

When you get down to the place itself there’s no shop, no pub, no car park, not even a hut selling teas. It’s a shingle beach, which deters the crowds and means the place is never crowded, even on a summer weekend.

This bitter January, though, the hordes have come to Branscombe beach, reviving one of the oldest traditions of the South-West: plundering wrecks. Centuries ago, wreckers used lanterns to lure ships onto the rocks deliberately; this time the elements did it for them.

I just hope that once the last containers have been looted of their BMW motorbikes and perfume, the dead fishes and sea-birds have been cleared away, the shampoo and other debris have been picked up by volunteers or washed out to sea, and the insurance companies have settled some very big bills, the beach will go back to being to exactly what it was: a place that made you feel that there’s nowhere better on a fine day. I doubt it, though.