Bountiful Barbados
Dianne Boardman enjoys the sunshine and atmosphere on this captivating Carribean island.
MY husband has begun work on his bucket list. Item number one: watching England play cricket in Barbados.
I agree to go with him as long as we see the rest of the island, too.
It’s January, and in nine hours we’ve exchanged snow on the ground for a balmy 29 degrees of sunshine and a white beach that feels like walking on silk.
Furthermore, I have a rum punch in my hand and a plate of the most lightly battered giant shrimps to soak it up.
Our first five days are spent painfully watching England get thoroughly trounced, but the relaxed carnival atmosphere eases the agony.
Sporting cheering erupts from all sides whenever anyone scores a boundary, century or any other milestone, and the friendly Bajans pass around free consolation rum punches as it becomes obvious what the result is going to be.
Once we’ve recovered from our upset, and the Barmy Army have moved on, we decide to do a circuit of the island’s coast with an entertaining guide called Theo from Coconut Tours.
This gives us an excellent perspective of the history, culture and present-day life of Barbados, and we realise that the amazing beaches and deep blue sea are not the only attractions of this Caribbean island.
We begin at the capital, Bridgetown, with its 17th-century UNESCO British Garrison, an Anglican cathedral, two impressive bridges and one of the oldest parliament buildings in the world.
Oh, and Rihanna’s house – a celebrity who hasn’t forgotten her roots – and then it is quickly past the Kensington Oval, the scene of our recent disgrace.
Leaving Bridgetown, driving on the left, I feel a strange sense of dislocation. There are signs for Brighton, Dover and Hastings, familiar red postboxes, a polo club and horseracing track, golf courses and cricket being played on every spare patch of ground.
School children sit at beach-side bus stops and under palm trees reading Shakespeare, Dickens and the Brontës (the schools still follow the British curriculum), and afternoon tea and cake is almost a ritual.
Barbados has been a British Commonwealth nation since its independence in 1966. Before that it was always a British colony, unlike the rest of the Caribbean, which was passed from one country to another.
It was uninhabited in 1625 when the British arrived and decided to stay.
Many of the island’s residents can trace their ancestry back to the 800 sugar mills that subsequently sprang up, either as owners or workers brought in both voluntarily and involuntarily from Africa and Britain.
Some of the old plantation houses still stand as private museums, as do the old stone windmills that are looked after by the Barbados National Trust and marked with familiar blue plaques.
The west and south coasts of Barbados slope gently into the warm Caribbean Sea, but the north and east shores are Atlantic and rocky.
Stopping for a locally brewed Banks beer at Cherry Tree Hill, a mahogany tree reforestation project, we watch the strong currents pounding up through blowholes in the cliffs below.
“I grew up hearing our island referred to as ‘Little England’,” Theo tells us,
“but this rugged part is called Scotland.”
Barbados has
97 km of coastline, with the west facing the Caribbean Sea and the east the Atlantic.
The island’s water supply is pumped from the natural rainwater formed below ground and filtered through the limestone.
Barbados is divided into 11 parishes named after 10 saints, with the 11th being Christchurch.
The climate is tropical, but rarely excessively hot due to the cooling trade winds. The coolest, driest time is between December and May.
Free or discounted entry is offered to UK RHS members and members of the Scottish or English National Trusts at many gardens, including Andromeda.