The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Take a walk on the wild side of the Spice Isle
in the soil too long in Grenada and even you will start to grow.”
I didn’t doubt that for a second. The southern Caribbean island of Grenada, with its volcanic earth and generous lashings of both “liquid” and regular sunshine, is ludicrously lush. Every backyard, mountainside, valley and verge seems rife with nutmeg, cocoa and soursop, banana palms, guava, ginger lilies and dreadlock crotons; the island is like one big Christmas tree, baubled with scarlet immortelles and strung with bougainvillea. However, I wasn’t intending to do a lot of standing still.
The majority of people visit lovely, laid-back Grenada for rest and relaxation – and why not? However, I was here to sample a new group walking tour, spending time away from the beach to explore the Spice Island’s wild forests, hill-perched villages, headlands and history via a series of short hikes. The idea behind it is that you can learn more about a place at walking pace. And, as the strolls we’d be tackling weren’t too long, there would still be time for some more traditional Caribbean beach-lounging each afternoon.
As yet, Grenada has few dedicated walking trails. What it does have, however, is Mr Edwin Frank, one-time fast bowler and radio presenter turned verbose tour guide with an encyclopedic knowledge of his island. Edwin had created a trip that would, he hoped, give us a “holistic appreciation” of Grenada’s food and rum, nature and culture.
A walking tour of St George’s, the island’s hilly capital, provides a good introduction. We started amid the boats and frigate birds on the waterfront Carenage – from the French caréne, meaning hull, where ships were once brought for cleaning and repair. The island was first discovered by the Spanish in 1523, but it was the French and the British who fought over ownership throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, with the latter eventually being victorious – and in charge until Grenada gained its independence in 1974.
We climbed from sea level, sweating up a cobblestone path and along the Old Fort Road. On Cemetery Hill, we looked over the tombstones of the rich – “poor people were buried on lower ground” – towards the port. A cruise ship was docked and a rusting cargo boat listed offshore, awaiting the $200,000 (£144,000) clean-up needed to become Grenada’s latest wreck dive. Then we descended (or, as Edwin liked to put it, “proceeded in synergy with gravity”) to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. Now fully restored, this simple 19th-century church stood wrecked and roofless for a decade after Hurricane Ivan pummelled the island in 2004. “Ivan destroyed or damaged 28,000 buildings,” Edwin said. While the church has been restored, many other structures have been left to decay. “Only around 6,000 buildings had insurance,” Edwin added. “People can’t afford to fix them.”
We dropped down a steep hill, patriotic with red-yellow-green bunting, to reach the spice-scented market. Business wasn’t booming; many stalls were bare, one vendor snoozed in a chair by her coconuts, while others were busy discussing a neighbour’s outdoor lavatory (“It was knocked down by a paw-paw tree”).
Far busier was the Chocolate Museum – really just a shop, but liberal with free samples of delicious home-grown cocoa. These morsels powered us upwards again, to Fort George, the now dilapidated bastion that dominates the bay. Completed by Further information the French in 1710, it has witnessed much conflict over the centuries, most recently in 1983, when Maurice Bishop and his closest allies were killed in the old parade ground. In 1979, Bishop led the socialist Grenada Revolution, but four years later the movement had started to selfdestruct. Following Bishop’s assassination, the US briefly occupied the island. Edwin was working at Radio Free Grenada at the time. “God intervened on our behalf, misleading the invaders who were on a mission to destroy the building,” he recalled. “It took them 36 hours to realise where the radio station was; they destroyed the wrong place.”
Exploring at walking pace, the trip felt like an immersion and an