Well, here are the final photos and clips from Grenada and Barbados.
IMHO, the photo above is quite bizarre.
St George’s is a very attractive town.
Typical street in St George’s
Breakfast on the first day.
Bathsheba, on the west coast of Barbados.
Taken in the north of Barbados.
Leslie is a keen golfer, so we played nine holes in both Grenada and Barbados. The Grenada Golf Club is located in the hills above Grand Anse, in a lovely setting.
Leslie putting
I awarded myself a cup
Golf in Barbados can be very expensive, so we didn’t go to any of the fancy courses, but instead played at the Rockley, which for us was fine.
Lindsey at Rockley
Selfie at Rockley
Lindsey putting on the 9th
We visited the River Antoine Rum Distillery, in the north east of Grenada, but I can’t tell you anything about it because there was no-one there that day, so we didn’t get a tour. The place wasn’t locked up, so we simply walked around and took some photos.
I think I’ll try Fat Mac out on rum punches, sometime in the future. I mean – they can’t do any more damage than has already been done, can they?
We joined a tour of the Belmont Estate, St Patrick, Grenada, and learned all about cocoa production and processing.
Belmont Estate is a unique and authentic 17th century plantation that offers guests an opportunity to participate in and observe the workings of a fully functional historic plantation.
The cocoa beans are dried in the sun. If it rains, the trays are pushed under covers.
The beans need to be turned every day. This is done by walking up and down the trays. Sometimes, they can get tourists to do the work.
The guide, explaining how the beans are fomented.
On display were many local fruits, vegetables, spices and nuts. How many can you name?
We’d put on our masks and were swimming away from the catamaran, when the guide said, “Any of you folk seen the movie Open Water?”
Later on, as we were swimming with turtles, the same guide said, “If you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll show you the wreck of our first boat.”
The snorkeling trip was great fun, and made more so by the hilarious crew and the booming reggae music.
We went with Tiami Catamaran Cruises, and found them to be very professional. Everyone was given a briefing about snorkeling before we started.
In the harbour
We sailed up the west coast of Barbados and stopped twice, once to snorkel off a reef where there were many fish, and once at another spot to swim with some turtles.
One of the highlights of Grenada, for me, was the West Indies Cricket Heritage Centre, at the Spice Basket in Beaulieu, about two miles outside St George’s Town on the road to Grand Etang.
The young man who showed us round the cricket museum and also the natural history museum in the same building was extremely knowledgeable, polite and entertaining. I knew many of the names of the cricketers in the photographs and other artifacts, but he knew them all, and they were numerous, dating back decades. It was a delight to be shown round my someone so enthusiastic.
He caught me out, though. He asked me who was the bowler that Sobers scored six sixes off in an over, and I couldn’t at the time remember. Ten minutes later, he showed me a different scorecard for a Glamorgan team, and suggested that I might find the answer there, which I did. It was clever of him to do that, rather than simply tell me the answer.
If you like cricket, the museum is a must see. It is extensive, impressive and very well displayed in a nice building.
In my element
In the natural history part of the museum, we were fascinated by the examples of different soils and rocks in Grenada. Shaun would find these interesting.
In the mainly fishing town of Gouyave (which is pronounced gwahv) on the west coast of Grenada there’s a Nutmeg Processing Station, which we toured. It is owned by the Grenada Co-operative Nutmeg Association, and is well worth a tour.
We saw the nutmegs, and mace, being dried, sorted, and packed for export, with all processes being done by hand.
I originally thought that nutmeg was only used in cakes, but it is actually an ingredient in an amazing number of foods and drinks. In St George’s we tried nutmeg ice cream, which was absolutely wonderful, and it was also grated on some of the rum punches we enjoyed. It is used in a cocktail called Painkiller, which I am going to try on Fat Mac.
Drying mace and nutmeg
Nutmeg being sorted
This nutmeg was to be shipped to Hamburg
Stencils used on the sacking
Outskirts of Gouyave
Gouyave
After the tour, Lindsey enjoyed a fresh coconut drink.
Having read two books about the history of sugar in the West Indies (The Sugar Barons, and Sugar in the Blood) I was particularly interested in visiting Sunbury Plantation House, in the south of Barbados.
We (Leslie, Lindsey and I) arrived there about mid-morning, and I asked the person who greeted us for tickets. She looked at me, Lindsey and Leslie in turn, gave Leslie a double-take from tip-to-toe, and then asked us if we wanted four tickets. Three will do, I responded.
Later, when we’d toured the house, we went to the cafe at the back of the house and asked the waitress for a table. She looked at us, and asked “A table for four?”
This time I walked right round Leslie and Lindsey to see if there was a ghost with us. There wasn’t, so I said that a table for three would do. The coffee was great. Leslie said it was the best coffee he’d had in Barbados.
If there was a ghost, it might have been that of King William, who came from Sunbury, was involved in the slave rebellion of 1816, and who was later tried and put to death.
You can read about the history of Sunbury here. It’s a wonderful house, over 300 years old, and is full of lovely furniture.
We really enjoyed our two week holiday in the West Indian islands of Grenada and Barbados. Both islands are fascinating, colourful and full of fantastic things to do and places to explore. The food was awesome. All the people we had contact with were friendly, happy and helpful, even away from the tourist centres, and everywhere we went we were greeted with the most wonderful smiles. I didn’t feel threatened or unsafe at any time. Everything was entertaining, even the gaudily dressed tourists regularly disgorged from enormous cruise liners in St George. I was asked for money fewer times than would happen if I walked down Princes Street, here in Edinburgh. I put the well-balanced nature of Bajans down to their love for, and understanding of, the great game of cricket.
On the flight home I was keen to get some sleep in preparation for a 5 am arrival in Gatwick after a four-hour reduced night, and as soon as the evening meal had been served, eaten and cleared up, I carefully lowered my seat to its reclining position.
There was suddenly a lot of kicking into my back from the person behind me. It continued for some time. It was obviously deliberate, and I couldn’t ignore it, so I turned round and said to the man, in as pleasant a way as I could,
“You’re kicking me in the back, you know.”
I was expecting a response such as, “Oh, I’m sorry. There’s not much room in these seats is there. Sorry.”
Instead, and in a loud and overly hysterical voice more suited to an infant throwing a tantrum, the man behind me, who was older than I, squealed, “And you are banging my knees with your back and it is very sore!”
Oh gosh, I thought…why do I have to end up in a seat in front of the psychopath?
I said, simply, “Please stop kneeing me in the back.”
He responded, again in a squealing voice, “You’ll have to move your seat two inches forward.”
“I can’t do that, because I want to sleep.” I answered.
“Don’t you dare say another single word to me!!! Not one word!!”
His responses had been so completely over the top that I felt like getting up, putting my face in his and saying to him, “You inconsiderate, self obsessed, anal retentive, psychologically inadequate, squealing, piece of shit. If you don’t stop deliberately kneeing me in the back I shall stick my fingers so far up your nose that you will sound even more like a pregnant pig with diarrhoea.” But I didn’t. Instead I kept completely calm, and looked for the attendant.
She wasn’t to be seen. I carefully lay back, drew the blanket up to my chin, and awaited the next stab in my back. It didn’t come! There was no more kicking throughout the flight, but for at least an hour I couldn’t relax in case there was.
Meanwhile, the woman to Lindsey’s right was obviously feeling ill. She called the attendant several times, and spent most of the flight in a sort of brace position, with her head between her knees (as much as this is physically possible in such a confined space).
Meanwhile, in front of Lindsey and the sick woman, were two large very rowdy gents aged about fifty. They spent the entire flight talking loudly, drinking, gesticulating wildly, and bouncing up and down on their seats.
If only one of them had been sitting in front of the psychopath behind me, I thought, we might have seen fireworks.
Shortly after 5 am we landed at Gatwick, where there was no in-transit route for our flight three hours later to Edinburgh so we ended up in one of the various exit areas. Time for a ciggy outside!
I finished the ciggy and returned inside, only to find the person I was traveling with, who has requested anonymity even though she’s my wife, half way through one of those mini bottles of wine that BA dish out with their evening meals.
“I kept thiz from last night for later, but now I’ll need to drink it before going through security again.” She informed me, sounding more and more like Queenie from Blackadder with every sip.
“Good grief [name deleted]! It’s six in the morning, you’ve had two hours sleep, you’re jet-lagged and you’re drinking wine?”
“Ith only a liddly-piddly wee bottle.”
We agreed to dump the half empty bottle before it caused any more damage, and I guided her through security and on to the final plane.
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