Barbados - East of the airport Travel Guides | Barbados | Sub Regions | Barbados - East of the airport

The southeast coast is less built up than the southwest and boasts some of the island’s finest beaches, especially Bottom Bay, though the Crane is a magnet for lovers of Sunday brunch and steel bands. Away from the beach, Sunbury Plantation House gives a real insight into the history of Barbados.

Sights

From Six Cross Roads (Six Roads since a roundabout was installed to sort out traffic accidents) take Highway 5 heading northeast. After the turning for Sam Lord’s Castle look out for a small signpost on a telegraph pole for Bottom Bay. Go down a small road through grazing cattle to the parking place near Bottom Bay House.

This just has to be the most beautiful beach in Barbados and one of the best in the Caribbean. What is more, it is often deserted, even in high season. Steep cliffs surround the small bay and the sand is a glorious pale coral pink. Walk down the steps carved between the cliffs onto a huge expanse of sand, where a clump of palm trees grows in true holiday brochure fashion. Sometimes there is a boy on the beach who will offer to climb up to get coconuts down for you to drink the cool milk. He will ask for an extortionate tip for his labour, but the coconuts are free. There are no facilities as such but there is a little hut under the coconut palms where you can sometimes hire sunbeds. The only shade is under the palm trees or the cliffs, but with few other people around, that is usually plenty. The sea can be rough with quite big waves, and is better for jumping and splashing about than serious swimming. Before you leave, go up on top of the cliffs to look back down onto the beach, then walk round to get a good view of the next bay south, Cove Bay, with the ruins of Harrismith plantation house overlooking the water. Bought by Sam Lord’s Castle, it is yet to be renovated and developed.

US$5 (children US$2.50) even though the hotel reception forms part of the 2 rooms open to the public. From Six Roads roundabout take Highway 5 and follow signs.

Sam Lord’s Castle is the site of an all-inclusive hotel. It is high on the list of tourist attractions because of the reputation of Sam Lord who reputedly hung lanterns in the trees to look like the mouth of Carlisle Harbour and lure ships onto Cobbler’s Reef where they were shipwrecked. There is supposed to be a tunnel from the beach to the castle’s cellars to facilitate his operation. The proceeds made him a wealthy man although the castle was probably financed from his marriage to an heiress who later left him and fled to England. Another legend has it that the captain of one of the wrecked ships murdered Sam Lord in London in 1844. The castle is not particularly old or castle-like, being in fact a regency building dating from 1820. Unfortunately the rooms are poorly lit making it difficult to appreciate the fine mahogany furniture or the paintings and you’re not allowed upstairs (though you can appreciate the superb staircase). Wander down to the cove where there is a good example of a turtlecrawl – a salt water pond enclosed by a wall – where turtles were kept alive until needed for the kitchen. Today the hotel, in conjunction with the Barbados Wildlife Park, keeps a few hawksbill turtles, a shark and a conger eel.

Foursquare, St Philip, Highway 6, T 4201977. US$6 adults, children half. Mon-Fri, 0900-1700, Fri-Sat 1000-2100, Sun 1200-1800. Tours every 30 mins. Rum punch and miniature included.

The new distillery makes ESAF White Rum and also specializes in spiced rum. It is the most modern rum distillery in the world on the site of an old sugar factory. The Heritage Park comprises the old sugar buildings, with sugar machinery, craft market, pottery, bottling plant, folk museum, pet farm, pony stables and Foundry Art Gallery.

Sunbury Plantation House

T 4236270. 0930-1630 daily. US$7.50, or US$20 including lunch in the courtyard restaurant (5-course formal dinner costs US$85).Turn north at Six Roads roundabout, the plantation house is at the first T-junction.

One of the oldest houses on the island and a fascinating insight into plantation life, Sunbury (pronounced Sun-berry) was built around 1660 by the Chapman family. They were among the first settlers and related to the Earl of Carlisle, who granted them land. Chapmans are mentioned on the first map of the island in 1638 and again in Richard Ford’s map of 1674 which shows a cattle mill on the Chapman plantation. It changed hands and names several times and it was the Barrow family who named it Sunbury after their home in England. One of the Barrow heirs was Colonel in Charge during the Easter Rebellion of 1816, during which the plantation suffered damage valued at £4,000. The slave revolt at Sunbury was led by a friend of Bussa called King William, who was later put to death. The estate never really recovered and in 1835 John Barrow sold up and emigrated to Newfoundland. The house was bought by sugar magnates, the Daniels, then, in the late 19th century, by a Scots emigrant, Alistair Cameron. Two of his daughters remained living at Sunbury until their deaths in 1980 and 1981, when the land was sold to the estate manager and the house was sold to Angela and Keith Melville. They took on a house which had been untouched for 100 years, and although they lived in it for a few years, in 1984 they moved back to their previous house and opened up the whole of Sunbury House as a museum. In 1995 a fire swept through the upper floors destroying the old timbers, wooden floors and antiques, except for those in the cellar. Substantial renovation was needed but the massive walls and a few floorboards were intact. The house/museum is now crammed with a very busy collection of mahogany furniture, art, china and antiques found elsewhere on the island or returned to Barbados from abroad. You can roam all over it as, unusually, there is access to the upstairs rooms. In the cellars, you can see the domestic quarters with a good collection of old optical instruments and household items. In the cellar and in the garden there are lots of carts and gigs, including one donated by Sir Harry Llewellyn, the British Olympic showjumper of the 1950s and 1960s.

Take Highway 5 from Six Roads and follow signs for The Crane Hotel. You can either park by the hotel or carry on to a little roundabout by Crane House and turn down a narrow lane which leads to steps giving access to the northern end of the beach. Parking is not good here and extremely difficult on a Sunday. You may have to reverse out.

Another fabulously deep beach with plenty of powder soft coral pink sand, while the water is picture-book turquoise. The waves are a bit rough for swimming but very popular with body surfers and great for splashing about and generally having fun. The Crane Hotel is perched on top of cliffs at the southern end of the beach. The cliffs provide natural shade if you don’t want to hire an umbrella. A rickety path winds part of the way around the cliffs, a useful vantage point from which boys drop fishing lines into the water, but the sea has eroded the rocks so that the cliff now overhangs the waves and the end of the path has collapsed.

Sunday is the popular day here, when the Crane Hotel lays on a huge buffet lunch for US$25 (plus tax and drinks) to the accompaniment of steel pan. They will even hire you clothes so you can look decent when you come off the beach to eat in the restaurant, which has an eagle’s eye view of the bay. The hotel opened in 1867, making it the oldest hotel on the island, although the original building dates from the 18th century. The more recent construction of timeshare apartments mars the skyline but they are invisible from the beach. If you park at the hotel they will charge you B$5 access through their grounds to the beach, redeemable against a drink at the bar, but at least you can use their toilets. There are sunbeds and umbrellas for hire on the beach for B$10 each and some watersports equipment such as boogie boards at B$10 per hour or B$20 per day.

Just south of Crane Beach, take turning signed ’Public Access to Foul Bay Beach’.

Deespite the unappealing name, Foul Bay is another long stretch of idyllic pink sand with turquoise water. It is wide and open and less crowded than at the Crane although conditions in the sea are similar. This is the longest beach on this coast, with large cliffs at each end. There are no facilities but there is some shade and a few picnic tables and benches. A small fishing fleet comes ashore here and you can sometimes see turtles just beyond the waves.

Travel Guides | Barbados | Sub Regions | Barbados - East of the airport
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