03 May 2024

 

Barbados

We offer a wide choice of cheap flights to Barbados together with Barbados hotels, tours and self-drive itineraries.

Treasure Island

Barbados might be a magnet for A-list celebrities – but Mark Palmer found its soul, and sunny people, are the real stars.

Barbados - The fabulous Coral Reef beach Barbados - Peace by the Coral Reef pool Barbados - One of the resort's elegant bedrooms

1 The fabulous Coral Reef beach 2 Peace by the Coral Reef pool 3 One of the resort's elegant bedrooms

MY BROTHER - IN - LAW delivered a grave warning. ‘Barbados has gone,’ he said, shortly before we packed our Ambre Solaire and headed for Gatwick Airport.

By which he meant that the bulldozers now outnumber the bullfinches, while battalions of chavs sprinkle the island not so much with gold dust, but bling.

You know what? He’s absolutely right – and completely wrong. It all depends on what sharpens your pencil, because the trick with Barbados is that it’s diverse enough that there are treasures which will appeal to everyone.

Hire a car, head for Cherry Tree Hill in the north and you’ll hardly believe that this has become a celebrity hangout.

The rolling waves of the Atlantic suddenly come into view with such theatrical effect that you feel like Moses arriving at the Red Sea. The great man would have had a job calming these waters, let alone parting them.

There is no development old or new within several hundred yards of this stretch of uncluttered coast. Strict laws forbid any construction, leaving the fields of sugar cane to sway back and forth as they have since the 17th century.

In fact, moving from west to east Barbados is like visiting two entirely different islands – and it’s an almighty pleasure.

To the north, we stopped half way across at St Nicholas Abbey, expecting to find a building with a religious past. Instead, we discovered one of only three remaining Jacobean plantation houses in the world (the other two being Drax Hall, also in Barbados, and Bacon’s Castle, in Virginia), dating back to around 1650.

It’s an almighty pleasure

It’s been lovingly restored by its owner, and even in peak season we pretty much had the place to ourselves, prompting the friendly staff to let us sample far too much of their home-made rum.

We stopped and lingered at Bathsheba, about the mid-point on the remote east coast. Here, experienced surfers get their kicks, although there aresigns warning against swimming ‘because the currents can take you away’.

We arrived just as a school bus deposited its cargo of children, uniforms still immaculately pressed after a day of work and play, none of them sporting a packet of crisps and a menacing face.


They put their British counterparts to shame. The ‘other’ Barbados on the east coast is light on places to stay (although The Atlantis, a boutique hotel on Tent Bay, has just opened). But, back on the busy west side, if you can strike a deal with the Coral Reef Club or its sister hotel almost next door, The Sandpiper, you’ll feel as if you’ve been transported back a couple of decades.

Both have pedigree. It was in the Fifties that Budge (sadly, no longer with us) and Cynthia O’Hara came from England to manage the then fledgling Coral Reef Club – and never left. Today, their three children and their respective spouses are all involved with the business – and I suspect it is they who last year pushed for the building of a new spa within the lush 12-acre site.

Feel as if you’ve been transported back a couple of decades

I had what’s called a Muscle Melt massage and felt, appropriately, that my excess blubber had been temporarily liquidised.

The beach is neither the biggest nor the grandest (although Lady Bamford’s Heron Bay mansion is within walking distance), but for old-world charm, these hotels are in a league of their own.

Couples return year after year, staying in the same room. Reading material on the sun loungers included such tomes as The Bolter by Frances Osborne and David Butler’s Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy.

One thing you must do if you want to bask in the Barbados of yesterday is reserve a table for Sunday lunch at Fisherpond Great House. And that means booking weeks in advance.

What a production! What a feast! John Chandler and his wife Rain can seat up to 80 people (they will do dinners on request if you’re a largish group), some inside the plantation house, others in the leafy garden enlivened by screeching macaws – one of which, Melvin, is 80 years old and expected to live at least another 20.

Two 120-year-old Royal Palms watch over proceedings and you could not wish for a prettier spot. A woman named Betty Sheppard, 87, plays the piano and watches the passing parade.

The main arrangement of flowers on the dining room table takes three hours to complete. Average age of our fellow lunchers? Well, let’s just say that anyone in their 50s would feel like a young Turk.

Chandler’s family moved to Barbados from Scotland in 1638. He used to run a hotel on the island called Ocean View, which was a favourite of Princess Margaret.

His new venture is beloved of Prince Harry (in Barbados recently to play in a charity polo event), Jeremy Clarkson, Dame Helen Mirren and Tony Blair.


Apparently, Mirren came for lunch and stayed for breakfast. We nearly had to be carried out. You start with soup, brought to the table, then go inside for a fish buffet and then a meat fest of stewed pigeon and fricassee of chicken (accompanied by corn souffle and macaroni pie), followed by an array of irresistible puddings. Elsewhere, we ate spectacularly well at The Tides, where our enthusiasm for the island and its sunny people encouraged us to buy a painting in the gallery near the bar. We ate less well at the celebrated and trendy Lone Star and at the super-expensive The Cliff.

In fact, The Cliff is one of the most expensive restaurants I have ever experienced. We paid more than £100 each for only two courses.

Arguably our best culinary adventure was at The Fish Pot, a restaurant belonging to the Little Good Harbour hotel, about 20 minutes north of Holetown.

The hotel and restaurant are both run by a rugged Australian who looks as if he might have caught all the fish that morning himself. And what of Sandy Lane?

We had expected to be horrified and ended up wishing we could afford one of the cheapest rooms (£1,200 should get you a seafront double).

The hotel has been given a facelift in the past 18 months and it seems to have worked. Colours are natural or muted and, of course, the coral works its charm. We had a splendid dinner overlooking one of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean. There’s pedigree here too.

Become beguiled by Barbados’s gentle scenery

Baron and Baroness Guy de Rothschild, the Astors, Aristotle Onassis and the Duke of Marlborough were all guests in the Sixties.

We became beguiled by Barbados’s gentle scenery and charming chattel houses. Wendy Kidd, mother of Jodie and Jemma, is a local and runs an annual art festival. During our week’s stay it rained most days, but only in short bursts, and we noticed that despite our over-indulgence, we felt extremely well.

No wonder that in the 19th century Barbados was considered the healthiest spot in the world.

And no wonder a petrol pump attendant just outside the lively capital, Bridgetown, thought it necessary to remind us that Barbados is the island where you should ‘relax as hard as you like, man’.

We left with treasured memories from this island of treasures.

This article was featured in the April 2010 DialAFlight magazine. All information was correct at time of going to print.

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