Basking in Barbados - Cobbler's Cove
From pickled onions and piccalilli to Barbados… This site is nothing if it is not eclectic. Anyway this New Year’s Day everything is cold and grey and drab in England, so I have been recalling a press trip I enjoyed staying in one of the most charming hotels in all the Caribbean…
Here’s what I wrote at the time - and in recalling this trip I must pay my respects to the late Graham Ross who was of the great doyens of the British Travel PR industry…
Barbados is arguably the most beautiful democracy on Earth – a place where local fishermen sit shoulder to shoulder with international celebrities in rum bars built on stilts overlooking palm-fringed bays, an isle where the great outdoor happy-go-lucky Caribbean culture is celebrated communally by rich and poor alike.
Travel by powerboat down the “Platinum Coast”, as the western shoreline is sometimes known, and the local skipper will point out villas and mansions in a litany that sounds like a contents-listing for Hello magazine.
Graham Ross (left) makes his way along Cobbler’s Cove beach
Yet tucked between the $multi-million homes belonging to the mega-rich and famous you will see the fish markets, shacks and rum bars that add the vital and wholly enjoyable touch of local colour, without which any location soon becomes bland and wearisome.
From a visitor perspective at least, Barbados does local colour better than any other island in the Caribbean. Why? Because Barbados is friendly. I know of staggeringly beautiful islands in those warm seas where that is not the case – where, no matter how fine the views, there is an edge that has you watching your back. Indeed, some don’t bother offering visitors local colour at all - you find yourself spending a week trapped in some lovely but boring gated resort sealed from reality.
Barbados is the opposite. It is very real, very exciting and very lovely to look at. You can step from the cocooned air-conditioned luxury of your hotel into a shack that passes for a bar and feel as snug as you would in an Exmoor pub.
Which actually isn’t stretching an analogy too far because you will, surprisingly, hear Somerset accents in some of the more remote parishes of Barbados. An historian told me this is because a whole bunch of West Country hot-heads were deported to the island after the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 – and they obviously passed on their slow burr to the slaves on the sugar plantations…
Mr Ross goes walk-about
More of all that later. What about that cocooned air-conditioned luxury I mentioned? Well, places don’t get much more cocooning or luxurious than the amazing boutique hotel known as Cobbler’s Cove which is located in a heavenly bay towards the northern end of the Platinum Coast.
My bit of the gardens at Cobbler’s Cove
When the people who run it claim it is one of the “best-loved hotels in the Caribbean” they are not exaggerating. Set in exquisite tropical gardens this English country house removed to the Caribbean coast has more style in its little fingertip than you’ll find in an entire Somerset-Maugham novel.
In fact, you can image someone like Maugham frequenting the place, or Graham Greene, or Noel Coward. Modern celebrities go there too – although the staff will refrain from telling you which ones.
For people with busy lives this place is an ideal antidote. A tropical peace pervades and the excellent staff go about their business with a quiet efficiency that is laced with good humour. This hustle-free, noise-free, TV-free zone is both beautiful to look at it and extremely comfortable to be in.
The suites all have a full opening frontage of slatted doors that fold back to open your living room to the gardens with their humming birds – without even leaving your bed you feel you’ve suddenly attained millionaire status.
The daily afternoon tea, the cocktails, the general unhurried but luxuriant ambience… All add up to provide the perfect getaway for a person who drives themselves too hard in their working life.
As for the dining, enjoyed in the open terrace above the beach – it was just about faultless. A daily catch brought in by the hotel’s very own fisherman (the charismatic Barker) supplements each menu and the fresh seafood was dealt with in superb ways.
Executive chef Brian Porteus is French trained and has a sparkling and infectious enthusiasm for local Caribbean ingredients. One morning he took me to the island’s main fish market in Bridgetown so I could see the amazing array of seafood that is caught around the island’s waters. The flying-fish-filleters had knife skills I couldn’t believe – flying-fish being one of the great staples of the local Bajan diet.
Brian Porteus - only buying the best in the local fish market
Flying fish
After an hour spent in the heat of that mad loud seemingly anarchic free-for-all it was a relief to get back to the cool quiet of the hotel – which is something you find yourself thinking quite a lot on this holiday.
Only a person looking for plenty of noise, glitz and bling could possibly dislike Cobbler’s Cove – those looking to unwind in a world of tropical luxury will run out of superlatives…
Oddly enough, though, getting out of the haven and into the heated, pleasant, always jolly, maelstrom of Bajan life somehow highlights the charm of the hotel. Leaving the luxury-zone is a very easy and altogether joyful thing to do - all the happy resident need do is stroll half a lovely mile along the white sand beach under the palms to turn a coastal corner into Speightstown.
After a few rum punches and a fried flying fish or two in the Fisherman’s Pub perched on stilts above the lapping Caribbean you’ll find yourself gently falling into the laid back mañana attitude for which this island is so renowned.
If you wanted to shake off the idyllic torpor you could visit the town’s new museum and learn all about the sugar plantations and the slave trade on which the island’s economy was originally built.
At Speightstown we’re in the parish of St Peter, which is one of the most northerly parts of the island, but of course a trip around the entire 166 squares miles is a must – so too is a visit to one of the old plantations where you can learn more history and buy single estate rum.
Barbados, like a football match, is a game of two halves. This odd statement is actually highly relevant to sightseers going around the island because you can basically divide the place east and west.
The West Coast has fabulous beaches and safe calm seas, and as a result is fairly built up. One of the best ways of seeing it and learning all about those famous celebrities is to cruise up the coast in one of the many charter boats. We enjoyed a day out in a sleek catamaran called Silvermoon – the crew were a joy and kept us wined and dined for hours, stopping here and there so we could dive over reefs and meet gentle giant sea turtles.
The East, or Atlantic, Coast is breezy and beautifully wild. Its rugged terrain sweeps down to miles of untouched, windswept beaches bordered by rough seas.
Swimming here is not recommended, but walking most definitely is. There’s even a disused railway line that takes you along the scenic cliff-tops safely away from traffic. It was opened in 1881, closed in 1937, and makes for an ideal hiking route.
I was delighted – and amazed – to discover just how empty the East Coast is. It is no exaggeration to say that the 20-mile long littoral is one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world – and yet you can walk for an hour or two without seeing a soul.
Tucked just behind the booming beach in a particularly green, hilly and scenic bit of the island is tiny remote Shorey Village where we visited Aunty Benn’s Bar – the aunty involved being the female relation of the boxer Nigel Benn.
“Auntie Benn” - Nigel Benn’s aunt serving in her Barbados bar
What you get is a concrete shack boasting a counter and two homemade stools, but this belies the great charm of the place which seems fossilised in the steamy sugary syrup of the Bajan rural idyll. This is where I heard local men talking in a pure Somerset dialect – albeit one with a touch of Africa about its vowels.
Further down the coast we called in at beautiful peaceful Bathsheba where a stately church on a hill looks down upon a windswept tropical beach-fringed paradise - and where I was tempted to make permanent retirement plans.
From here we headed due west across the widest part of the island to descend the low hills to the capital. Apart from its famous cricket stadium where I was lucky enough to watch two of the 20-20 World Cup matches earlier this summer (and what an altogether heady experience that was) Bridgetown boasts an amazing array of shops as well as some fine restaurants.
The most pleasant of these are located down in the Waterfront area where jazz musicians mingle with waiters to bring you an entire musical and culinary experience in the heat under the stars.
And so once again you find yourself heading back to Cobbler’s Cove after a long hot busy day. Put on a robe, stroll down to the beach for a moonlit swim, have a night-cap in the al-fresco bar under the stars on the way back to your air-conditioned room… It is very, very hard trying to find what’s not to like about a week at Cobbler’s Cove – unless it’s the fact that seven days is simply not long enough…
