03 May 2024

Bahamas

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My millionaire week

At the Ocean Club on Paradise Island, the ultimate in pampering for Manchester United fan John Scheerhout was having a foot massage while watching Beckba, bent it.

1 Ocean Club property & beach 2 Gardens 3 Ocean Club suite

WHERE YOU STAYIN?" asked the barman in a distinctive Bahamian drawl from under a tilted, wide-brimmed hat.

He was in charge of a rickety, wooden building on stilts on a tiny island off the Bahamas called Ship Channel Cay and was offering to deliver videos of the day’s activities.

And what a day! I had fed the stingrays and snorkelled far too close to the sharks for comfort and, like many of our party, was itching to hand $50 to the barman for a copy of the video of the day’s events so I could take home evidence of my stupidity.

“Oh, the Ocean Club. I’ll be round for dinner,” he joked, with a hint of envy.

Millionaires & hollywood stars

Put briefly, the Ocean Club is one of the world’s best and most exclusive hotels, a retreat for millionaires and Hollywood stars. It nestles close to what must be the best beach in the Bahamas and oozes luxury and quiet, colonial charm.

After half a day of flying from Manchester to Nassau followed by a limousine ride to Paradise Island, linked to the mainland by a bridge, I had arrived. And in more ways than one Charles, my butler for the week, introduced me to my room with its marble terrace and outdoor furniture looking out over a green, manicured lawn and palm trees, with the beach and ocean just yards away.

Inside, I walked on oak floors and slept on a huge carved wooden bed. A dining table and upholstered wooden chairs, a 6ft palm plant, a huge TV, video and DVD, three telephones, including one in the toilet, a walk-in wardrobe, a mini-bar hidden by a wooden cabinet with 20 miniatures were just some of the accoutrements.

In the mosaic decorated Moorish-style bathroom were “his and hers” twin marble washstands, a walk-in-shower featuring a showerhead the size of a large dinner plate and a huge sunken bath.

In the evenings, champagne and chocolate strawberries were brought to my room and my toothbrush was carefully mounted in a specially-folded flannel, lest I should be forced to actually pick it up off the bare marble. Godiva chocolates were nightly left on my newly made bed. So this is how the other half lives, I thought.

It is often said you can take the boy out of Manchester but you can’t take Manchester out of the boy so regardless of the distractions all around me my butler kindly found a sports channel on which I could watch Man Utd in the Champions League. “Could it get any better?” I wondered. It did. One of the hotel’s spa staff washed my feet and massaged them with ginger, sand and oils - a jetlag reviver treatment - as I sat on the end of my huge bed and watched the Reds.

“Even my wife doesn’t do this for me,” I told my masseuse, not really sure whether my drooling was down to the foot massage or Beckham’s brilliantly bending a free-kick round the wall. Before she left she ran me a bath which she sprinkled with rose petals and lit scented candles.

And this was merely the start of the pampering at the hotel spa, which boasted eight private villas. I had four treatments during the week, each lasting a minimum of an hour, nearer two. They had names like the Balinese Ritual of Touch massage, or the Aroma Spa Ocean wrap, or the Japanese Silk Booster with Silk Eye Zone therapy. They were girlie, but good.

And I justify the almost ludicrous level of attention to my body and well being by claiming new man status. I was rubbed and prodded almost everywhere, smothered with oils and guacamole or similar, wrapped in bacofoil and generally treated like a king.

After each treatment another bath was run and, meanwhile, I was invited to laze on a day bed. Yes, a day bed for goodness sake, and drink herbal tea. I even had a pedicure.

Shark infested waters

In fact, it was so girlie I had to go to extraordinary lengths to salve my male conscience. I swam in shark-infested waters, as you have already read, as part of an adrenaline-charged speedboat adventure out to the Exuma Cays.

Less brave was swimming with the dolphins on Blue Lagoon Island, which should more properly be known as being thrown in the air with dolphins, as that’s exactly what they do to you.

It wasn’t quite so macho but a largely male preserve nonetheless. I also played nine spectacular holes of golf on the Ocean Club golf course, where Ernie Els is the professional.

Not spectacular in the way I hacked around, rather it was the amazing views of the sea at dusk. It made Altrincham Municipal look a bit silly.

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