Caribbean > Barbados > West Coast > Holetown > Articles > My Barbados

When you consider how important an annual winter visit to the Caribbean is to some people, it comes as a surprise to realise that two centuries ago the West Indies was a hardship posting. Of course people didn’t go to beaches - they were malarial - and anyway there were no cold drinks and to get there took six weeks in a small, rat-infested ship. It gets worse, though. A hundred years before that, in the late 1600s, to ‘be Barbadosed’ was a catchall term for deportation to the Caribbean islands, where they were crying out for settlers, usually for a criminal misdemeanour.

It’s more by chance than by design that I’ve ended up in Barbados at the start of the winter season for the past three years, but it’s easy to see how it could become an almost constitutional thing. Nowadays, Barbados is as trusty a winter destination as there is in the Caribbean. There are some of the Caribbean’s best-known hotels, and some serious restaurants. Many regulars prefer a villa and there are some magnificent ones, with delicatessens to serve them. Implausibly for the Caribbean, you can actually find reliable supplies of foie gras and Krug.

"You can actually feel the change when Christmas is coming", says Patrick O’Hara, owner of the Coral Reef Hotel, which holds pride of place on the west coast south of Holetown.

It’s true. The winter regulars flood back in, chatting about First Class, wearing their jewellery to the beach. They greet the hotel gardeners and managers as long lost friends, discussing the latest moves on the restaurant and bar scene and who’s giving the big parties of the year.

But winter Barbados is not just a juicy source of gossip for a tropical Bystander. It’s an accessible place. The islanders are gracious and more approachable than most West Indians. You can drop into pretty much any bar and ’lime’ with the locals. To be honest, it’s island gossip that I find fun and you can plug into that at once. The taxi driver will fill you in on the latest scandals as you drive to your hotel - "’nuff rumour, right..."

The island is surprisingly good to explore. The old posse of mini-mokes that were once the tourists’ trusty favourite have really been superseded with Suzukis and Subarus now, but it was all I could find at short notice in the season. The passenger seat had a haphazard habit of sliding forward and back without warning, threatening to garrotte any passengers I took on board.

This time I set off on the trail of Barbados’s sugar heritage. This was what settlement was all about two centuries ago. Sugar was in huge demand to feed Europe’s sweet tooth. It was the basis of empire in the Caribbean, the reason for all the settlement.

Cane sugar is now a small proportion of the world’s sugar. A small amount is made in Barbados, but the majority of the island’s production is actually molasses, which is used in the production of rum, for which there is obviously still a huge demand.

I ended up at the Mount Gay Distillery in the northern parish of St Lucy. It is the oldest distillery on the island and has been bottling since 1703. The first port of call was in fact the molasses room. An oozing sea of tar-like goo, surprisingly bitter to the taste sits threateningly in there. It is then diluted with water for fermentation.

A handful of yeast is thrown into the 14,000-gallon vat. In a few hours it is bubbling scum and boiling like a river in spate; later it throws up slick and wobbly, rainbow-edged bubbles. The process is self-limiting and the increasing levels of alcohol kill off the yeast.

Next is distillation. Through the run of ganglions the wash is piped into two huge stills - one for surgical spirit and denatured alcohol and the other for white rum. After this, the blending takes place in two old copper pot-stills built, satisfyingly, by Arch’d McMillan & Co, Edinburgh, then over the goosenecks and dripping down the spirals to cool. They don’t actually bottle here. That takes place in Bridgetown.

It’s surprisingly easy to get lost in between the curtains of sugar cane that line the roads inland. Unfailingly I do. I suspect that it’s at precisely the same spot every year. But so what? It’s part of the fun. Eventually, though, I made it down to the Atlantic coast, to the village of Bathsheba where the huge rocks stand poised like Titans, while their foundations are eroded by sea and wind.

It wasn’t exactly by chance that I found the RoundHouse again. No doubt if I’d wanted to I never would have, but I was happy enough to stop there, high above the coast, and enjoy a pumpkin soup and salt-bread.

As dusk drew in I came down to a flat area near the Atlantic coast and stopped at the first place I came to, to ask the way. I walked into a rum shop which called itself the ‘Nigel Benn Auntie’ Bar - later I discovered it was owned by the aunt of the British boxer, Nigel Benn. With so many British people getting lost at this particular point, it was clever marketing, I suppose. In a back room there was the slap of dominoes being placed on the table. The three punters looked up and said in chorus:

“Good night.”

This might sound slightly odd, even apocalyptic - were they expecting me to turn round and leave in a hurry?. In fact it is the standard West Indian greeting after about six in the evening; ‘good evening’ lasts from mid-afternoon until dusk. At any rate, rather than leaving, I stopped for a drink.

I’m not sure if it was the beer, but as I was sitting there, chatting and listening, I gradually began to feel geographically out of sorts. The speech made it sound as though this was the English West Country rather than Barbados. It’s in the quality of the vowels, the oi-s and ere-s. They are buried in the lilt of West Indian English, but they are as distinct as they are unexpected and they bubble up, demanding to be heard.

The roots lie in the first wave of settlement, three hundred years ago. At that time Bristol was the major port on the West Coast of England. Besides those who were ‘Barbadosed’, many West Country folk emigrated as indentured labourers. Their language has crystallised in the Bajan patois.

By the end I was given a poster of Nigel Benn in combative pose and sent on my way, with explicit instructions to follow the main road. It seemed simple enough.

Suddenly I was back on the West Coast, immersed in that peculiar whirl that is Christmas in Barbados. For all the tropical shirts and white trousers it might have been in Chelsea. Except that, in the background, playing on the restaurant stereo, there was a reggae version of ‘Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer’.

Articles

• More from James Henderson