Travel Guides: All Countries / Caribbean / Barbados
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| | | | Review by Brian Gibbs from Gatineau, Quebec
We also enjoyed a great day on the Cool Running Catamaran, Excellent service, food and lots to do......snorkling over a sunken ship, swimming with the sea turtles and by the Coral Reef.
Review by Virginia Kearton from Fleet
A tropical island with everything you could want for a good holiday - hot weather, but not too humid, beautiful beaches, historic houses, water sports, golf etc if wanted, very friendly people, different but good food, easy to drive round the island (drive on left) but plenty of taxis and buses too.
Review by Michael Piersanti from Toronto
Barbados gives you the excellence that you dream of. From locals to other tourists that you encounter. From nightlife to amenities such as pure powder beaches and crystal clear water, you are always welcomed as a friend. Sit and chat with the locals, learn some culture, or take an excursion through the amazing island from east to west. The perfect experience awaits you no matter where you stay. Beauty, History, Nightlife, Relaxation all in one trip. Most definatly the greatest island to visit thanks to its culture and beauty. The rum is fantastic, even the Malibu and cocktails are better. Everything is better in Barbados. Feel like eating some food from home, sure just pop over to "The Gap". You will find Italian, Mexican, Bajan, American and so many more different types of restaurants, but dont be shy, there is always a party at each. Stay in Barbados, just be careful, you might not want to leave, you will soon call Barbados your new home and fall in-love with it.
Review by Elaine Sey from Manchester
Barbados lives up to every expectation its people are genuinely friendly and welcoming. The island is beautiful with varied landscapes from white sandy beaches of the west coast to the rugged hills on the atlantic east coast.
The is a great choice of nightlife and restaurants to suit every taste and lots of things to do and places of interest to visit. The island is blessed with many natural wonders with caves and gullies and other rock formations to see.
Review by Peter Villiers from Preston
Barbados is a great place for a relaxing holiday - but what impressed me most was that everybody we met was friendly and helpful.
Review by Lee Peddie from Chester, UK
Loved the "shabby chic" of the less well kept chattel houses. There's something really appealing to the eye in the peeling paint, warped and weathered boards and faded colours. They are evocative of lazy days, feet up on the verandah with a cold drink, picking over beachcombing treasues. Please don't let them all be renovated or replaced.
Review by member Curtis from Bristol, UK
We went to Barbados in July 07. As this was the start of what Bajans class as the rainy season I was a little concerned - I was wrong. Although we had rain at times it lasted for 10 minutes and 30 minutes later there was no sign it had rained. The weather was fantastic the whole 2 weeks - but take plenty of sun cream as the sun is very hot. We stayed on the west coast about a 5 min walk from Paynes Bay. All the beaches in Barbados are open to the public - you don't have expensive hotels closing off sections as you do in some countries. On the beach you can hire loungers/umbrellas but definitely negotiate with the vendors. When on the beach you get locals coming up to you trying to sell you bits and pieces. They are really friendly but if you aren't interested just tell them and they will leave you alone. We hired a car for the 2 weeks which was definitelty worth the extra money. Our time was our own and we travelled all around the island to various beaches and historic sites. The East of the island is completely different - much more rugid. The waves are great but take care if you swim - wouldn't recommend it to young kids. Definitely worth going on a Catamaran trip - recommend Cool Runnings. Also a visit to Earthworks Pottery and Kendall Shooting Ground (Clay Pidgeon, Pistols, Archery). They also have a lovely restaurant and swimming pool you can use. The roads are easy to navigate but can get a little interesting as you travel inland. Coming from England it was great driving on the left. Value for money restaurants (£10-20 per head) include The Coach House, Olives, Mangos by the Sea, a little more expensive (£20-£40) but great food Calabazza and Il Tempio. Believe it or not Cheffette and KFC weren't too bad. Near to Holetown there's a Cheffette right by the sea. It was great eating a burger outside right next to the beach. A couple of times we went to the West Coast Mall for breakfast (Bean & Bagel). Whilst there we took the opportunity to check emails etc. They have an internet business centre where you can purchase 30 mins for about BDS$10 (approx. £2.50). We're definitely going to go back as we still have so much of the island to explore. The people are lovely and so friendly. You won't be disappointed.
Changing rooms in Barbados
From the Mail on Sunday
The Llewelyn-Bowens setting off on holiday are a frightening herd. The very sweet lady at the BA check-in managed, despite all the odds, to maintain her perma-smile even when 21-month-old daughter Hermione's doll's pram was balanced precariously at the summit of an Everest of luggage.
'So that's three adults (we took Louise, our wonder nanny), one child and an infant. And all this lovely luggage.' The queue continued to lengthen as everything got tagged, trussed and tossed on to the conveyor belt.
Spending a little over a week in Barbados is becoming an annual family fixture. When it was first suggested, there was a high-velocity splutter along the lines of: 'It's really not my kind of thing. Can't we go somewhere in Europe where we're guaranteed 14th-century altarpieces and dusty old museums? You know I don't really do beaches, for a start my wardrobe couldn't cope.'
Gentle coercion got me to Turtle Beach the year before last and we all had the most brilliant time. I can't see the point of adventure or dicing with danger during the few precious days off we're allowed each year, and Turtle Beach has become familiar, comfortable and reliably relaxing.
Cecile, at four, and Hermione are accomplished and patient flyers, so the eight-hour flight to Barbados holds no fear for us as parents. Since they were tiny, they've been used to following the LLB roadshow around the country as part of the retinue and our other holiday destination, our house in Cornwall, is always reached via the one-hour flight to Newquay.
Having successfully shepherded our flock of luggage through Barbados airport and reunited Hermione with her doll's pram, we soon found ourselves checking in to the resort. They made a point of remembering all of us (even Nanny Louise, who'd never been there before), and the audible sound of unwinding tense spines filled the gorgeously frigid air of our suite.
Travel Guide: Barbados
Memories to treasure
If you are looking for a stress free, idyllic and relaxing atmosphere, then Mango Bay is the place to go. The cuisine is more than acceptable and the service is second to none.
If you are into snorkelling and fancy a swim with the turtles, then head for the west coast. Prepare yourself for various beach sellers, but they are very friendly and take a hint!
Overall a very enjoyable holiday with memories to treasure.
Travel Guide: Barbados
Las Vegas on the high seas
The £250m Carnival Legend - a spanking new "fun ship" named by actress Dame Judi Dench - is an eye-popper.
Stretching almost 300m from bow to stern, it easily has space for its 2,124 fun-seeking passengers, from families to couples.
The vast Legend Lobby entrance strongly resembles Las Vegas kitsch. Decor is flashy, lights twinkle from every surface, and glass lifts tower above.
It takes a while to learn the Legend's layout, but its 16 theme bars and restaurants are confined to three lower decks, which makes life simpler.
The biggest chore is playing hunt the cabin. With 15 lifts on board, getting to the right deck is easy, but it can be a long, winding walk to bed.
Most cabins have outside views, and 80% of those have balconies. Decor is tasteful.
The legends theme draws on big names from every genre virtually since the dawn of time.
So you have Club Merlin Casino (busy after dinner), jazz bar Satchmo's Club, The Holmes Library and internet cafe, and Medusa's Lair, a funky nightclub.
Outside on Lido Deck, the Camelot, Unicorn and Avalon pools spread bathers about. Kids get a 72-ft winding water slide and a separate pool on Deck 11.
One of the Legend's big pluses is its unstuffy, fun atmosphere. Live or taped music floats from most rooms, and the Legend Lobby's huge bar has no dress code. Still, bikinis stay poolside and there's at least one black tie do per cruise in grand Truffles Restaurant.
Travel Guide: Barbados
Truly friendly
A truly friendly Caribbean experience. The locals always smile and take the time to say hello. There is no place where you will feel uneasy.
I recommend a trip to Oistins on a Friday night- cool reggae, unbelievably cheap (and good) food, and plenty of Bank's beer.
Oh, and don't forget those beaches....
Travel Guide: Barbados
The quieter side
From the Daily Mail
To anyone familiar with the frenzied west coast of Barbados - its high prices, ostentatious fashions and countless celebrities such as Michael Winner in their London-style restaurants - the east coast comes as a wonderful surprise.
Its rugged coastline is washed by the powerful Atlantic, not the sleepy Caribbean, and looks for all the world like Cornwall - with constant sun, however, and colourful little finches and fierce-eyed local blackbirds rather than seagulls.
To visit these parts is like stepping back a hundred years - although, on an island only 21 miles by 14, it is half an hour away by car from the west coast.
Here, one can still come across an old lady surrounded by chickens sitting on the stoop of her clapboard chattel house at sundown, or a mother and child sheltering from the savage heat under a brightly coloured umbrella by the roadside.
There are charming churches, sweeping sandy beaches where the vegetation has been bent double by the strong prevailing wind, and not a jet-ski in sight - or a mosquito, as they get swept away.
The loudest sound is the croaking of the frogs.
Suddenly, too, locals and visitors seem a couple of stone lighter. They get up at sunrise, rather than lunchtime, to enjoy a bracing walk on the cliffs and watch the fishing boats come home through the raging blue, green and violet seas.
To swim at this hour is beautiful, though you have to watch the breakers which in some places are too daunting for anyone other than a professional surfer.
This is nature at its best, and in centuries hardier than our own it was the favourite destination of the original tourist trade.
I headed for the oldest resort hotel on the island, the Crane Hotel.
Travel Guide: Barbados
The best of Barbados
From the Mail on Sunday
'Look at that beach, for instance,' says Lynne Pemberton, slowing down her gleaming new navy four-wheel-drive to avoid a goat.
Funny and forthright, still with a Tyneside accent and a thing for low-cut sundresses, hotelier, novelist and ex-model Lynne is an expert on Barbados; she's the woman behind Glitter Bay - one of the most glamorous and successful hotels of the Eighties - and, since its opening last spring, her new hotel, Villa Nova.
We're driving around looking at what's great about the island, what's being ruined and how much it has changed since she first came here in the Seventies.
We've seen the Crane Beach condominiums ('a grim example of why there should be stricter planning laws') and had lunch feet from the beach at the Lone Star Garage restaurant ('nice, and I remember when it really was a garage').
Now we have arrived at a miles-long stretch of sand called Cattlewash on the east coast - a part of the island which most visitors, staying on the busy west or south coasts, never get to see.
The sand is firm and clean, lashed by surf, and it's backed by empty countryside. Under today's high, blue, cloudless sky it looks exhilaratingly beautiful.
'I've lived here off and on for 25 years but Barbados still amazes me,' Lynne continues, shielding her eyes from the sun. 'It's amazing that a destination like this still has a coast like this, so entirely unspoilt.
'Look at these empty sites opposite gorgeous beaches. In 10 years' time there have to be hotels here. This east coast will never get as busy as the west because the sea is rough.
'Surfing's fantastic, but some stretches are unswimmable. But development will come.'
She should know. In the three decades since she first arrived here she's seen the island progress from an independent third-world backwater to best-selling holiday destination; a favourite with the jet-set as much as with the more, er, down-to-earth holidaymakers.
Travel Guide: Barbados
Summer in Barbados
The Blair family are staying at Cliff Richard's house on Barbados for the price of an undisclosed donation to charity.
While the rest of us may not be able to stay in such grand style, we can at least look forward to some bargains - if we can put up with the weather.
During winter, prices in Barbados are stratospheric, dictated by those with wallets the girth of Michael Winner's. In summer, however, prices drop significantly.
It's the wet season, which brings with it cheaper hotel rooms, high temperatures and a proliferation of mosquitoes.
The 'margarita index' at this time of year shows just how keen the island's bar-owners are to attract custom: a cocktail in the summer costs $7.50 (£4.60), in the winter it's more than $20 (£12.25).
Even the price of cocktails on the island's swanky west coast isn't quite so high now that the celebrities won't be back until winter time.
The Blairs will be staying on the Sugar Hill estate, an extremely expensive enclave of 100 coastal properties on the west coast of Barbados, where land now retails at $3 million (£1,834,000) an acre. So exclusive is this strip that it's become known locally as 'The Platinum Coast'.
The estate, which boasts its own club house, fitness complex, tennis courts and golf course, has been developed by David Lloyd, who has sold off individual plots to people such as Sir Cliff so they can build their own multi-million-dollar holiday homes.
Some of these are available for holidaymakers to rent, but they don't come cheap.
A small four-bedroom villa can easily cost you $400 (£250) a night even in low season (it leaps up to twice that between December 15 and April 15), but that price does include a small army of cooks, cleaners and housekeepers to make your stay more comfortable.
Travel Guide: Barbados
Beware the bus
It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. One tip - be wary of the so-called bus service, we were dropped off miles from our destination in the middle of a shanty town which was quite scary.
A must is the jeep safari, people are very friendly.
Travel Guide: Barbados
Safe and beautiful
Barbados is wonderful. I've been there four times and would still go back again. The people are lovely and friendly and the whole island has such character that it really leaves an impression in you.
It's safe too which makes it even more special because you can get out and about and discover the whole island without any trouble. It's small enough to drive around and see the whole island during your stay. The buses are mad, cheap and fun and worth a ride on.
The west coast is quiet with calm, Caribbean seas whereas the south coast is a bit more built up and livelier.
Crane beach is definitely worth a day visit as the sand is so white and you can surf the waves on your boogie board.
It's mainly the people that make the place so special as they're so friendly. The island is a bonus because it has lovely beaches and lovely hot sunny weather and is sometimes a bit like home from home but better.
The only down side is Barbados is becoming more and more built up and busier with lots more traffic on the road and more and more hotels. But nothing ever stays the same.
Travel Guide: Barbados
So good I keep going back
We have been here twice, and on each occassion we have had the most fantastic of holidays.
We stayed near to the gap at the Bouganvillea and found the hotel and staff so friendly and helpful. I would recommend it to everyone and can't wait to get back there again as soon as possible.
Barbados itself is so friendly and unintimidating. Everyone we spoke to just wanted to wish us a happy holiday.
Travel Guide: Barbados
Grooving with the turtles in paradise
Before a Bajan banquet of epic proportions, a turtle is the last thing you'd expect as an aperitif.
But looking down from our candlelit table at Barbados's most spectacular restaurant The Cliff, that's exactly what we saw.
Hauling itself out of the moonlit Caribbean Sea on to the spotless dusk beach, with its protruding ET-like head and leathery flippers, there it was.
Two days later, we were closer still; gazing through snorkel masks a short paddle from Paynes Bay as the beautiful ocean giants wallowed just yards beneath us.
Of course, turtles are far from the only thing worth admiring on the eternally popular — and quintessentially British — tropical island.
The fine coral sands are legendary, the salmon-pink sunsets breathtaking and the sunshine almost eternal. Yet the day we checked into the all-inclusive Almond Beach Club, the sun was taking a breather behind some clouds darker than the local rum.
Twenty-four hours of incessant rain later, it reappeared to shed a golden glow on our west coast retreat.
Bang next door to the celebrity haunt Sandy Lane, Almond Beach is a favourite with UK stars including Martine McCutcheon and Lisa Faulkner.
But the A-list action was in full swing 200 yards down the coast. Manchester United winger Ryan Giggs was in Barbados for the wedding of his pal, Liverpool's Danny Murphy, and was enjoying some late afternoon jet-skiing with his wife Stacey and Murphy's actress fiancee Joanna Taylor.
Travel Guide: Barbados
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| | | | The social whirl of little girls
Turtle Beach resort places a relaxed emphasis on accommodating children. The little slice of Barbadian coast the resort adjoins is swimming-trunk-strippingly rough. Jackie and I adore it, but it's completely unusable for anything more than ankle-depth paddling by the junior contingent. Which is why the resort is a series of twinkling blue swimming pools.
Cecile and Hermione spent every conceivable second arm-banded and factor-fiftied up to their necks in luke-warm, chlorinated water. As did the vast, peripatetic swarms of similar aged children.
Like her mother, Cecile's a really social animal and, within seconds of poolside touchdown, she'd gathered a like-minded posse of Barbie obsessed five-year-olds around her. It's always so heartachingly funny listening to little girls going through the social motions of asking each other what their fathers do, whether they've been to the resort before (as indeed many of them had), or how many My Little Ponies they own and have resourcefully brought with them.
Turtle Beach's array of inter-locking, kidney-shaped pools is shaded by lush, verdant groupings of tall, tropical plants. Coconut trunks are used to support shady canvas canopies or make rural balustrades for bridges that span the water features. It's quite Ground Force in a Caribbean sort of way, though on a scale beyond even Charlie Dimmock's capabilities in 48 hours.
The main restaurant is an architecturally exciting, double-height, breezy space with a riot of Changing Rooms-style colonial detailing. The rooms are cool, comfortable and largely neutral except for the exuberant splashes of densely-coloured Caribbean chintz on the soft furnishings.
Three bars, three restaurants, two boutiques selling more sarongs than you can shake a stick at and a lively, friendly and well appointed Kids Club are there to tend to one's day-to-day needs. There are allegedly both a gym and tennis courts, but, as you can imagine, it's never even crossed my mind to find them. Water sports, visits and excursions carried on quite happily without the Llewelyn-Bowens, too.
Food, Follies and Frank
As on any cruise, all-inclusive dining is a major pastime on the Legend - and very good value.
Self-service Unicorn Cafe on Lido Deck dishes up excellent international meals at lunch and tea times, and fresh pizzas are available round the clock.
Apple, orange and lemon juices from dispensers are free of charge, as is coffee and Lipton tea, served US-style with teabags on the side, not in pots.
Evening shows in Follies, a three-deck-high, glitzy theatre, are a bit cheesy but good fun and suitable for children.
Singer Christopher Alan Graves earned a standing ovation for his hour-long Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr set during the three-night inaugural cruise from Harwich to Amsterdam.
Dancers in Las Vegas-style show Take II were polished, despite a dizzying array of costume changes and routines.
The Carnival Legend's swish Fountain of Youth Spa and Gym is a haven of peace and calm.
You have to fight for a spot in the gym's popular indoor jacuzzi with views of the sea. But then, when all the noise and flashing lights become too much, it's certainly worth the wait.
A 10-night fly-cruise from Fort Lauderdale to the Caribbean starts at £945 with taxes, tips and port charges.
The savage beauty
In 1886, engineer Donald Simpson added four coral stone apartments to a private house on the cliffs known as Marine Villa and welcomed celebrities such as American gun-slinger Wild Bill Hickok, who left his gold chain as payment.
The Crane Hotel is owned today by a Canadian couple but it still has its original rooms, including a honeymoon suite where Mick Jagger has hidden away before and its famous pool with white classical pillars overlooking the sea, surely one of the most photographed in the world.
Ingrid Bergman and her daughter Isabella Rossellini have stayed, David Bailey photographed Marie Helvin here, and it was Norman Parkinson's favourite holiday spot.
These days, your companions are likely to be retired British or Canadian academics who have bought into the luxurious time-share blocks being built in the grounds, yet the complex still retains much of its old world charm and standards.
No beachwear is allowed in the restaurant by day, while at night you dine overlooking the water.
The hotel was named after its industrial past - the coral reef formed a natural port, and sailing clippers called to transport the sugar which, in the 17th century, made the colony the richest part of the British Empire.
The savage beauty of this deserted coast, with its folk memories of pirates plundering wrecks stuck on the reefs, is bound to make you want to explore.
Hotel without a beach
The first time she came was in 1972, newly married and on holiday. It was love at first sight.
By 1979 she and her then husband, fellow Tynesider and energetic property developer Mike Pemberton, had packed up their life in England, moved permanently to Barbados and transformed a dilapidated Twenties west-coast beach house into Glitter Bay.
Pemberton hotels followed that in 1986 with what became an almost equally dazzling sister hotel, the Royal Pavilion, and then expansion beyond Barbados.
But if hotels do start opening up on the east coast - and Lynne's hypothesis sounds so reasonable I'm tempted to peg out my own site - it will be due in large part to the success of Villa Nova.
Once owned by former Prime Minister Anthony Eden, who hosted the Queen, Prince Philip and Winston Churchill there, it is the first country house hotel on Barbados - and the first hotel on the east coast.
A hotel without a beach? Local consensus was that it didn't stand a chance. But, despite the gloomy prognostications, it's thriving.
'A lot of people like peace and tranquillity,' Lynne says.
'Last Sunday evening there at sunset I could hear the singing from the local church mixed with birdsong - heaven.
'Travel agents say the no-children rule is a big selling point.
'But I'm used to people telling me things won't work,' she grins.
'That's what they said about Glitter Bay. We were "two crazy Geordies opening a hotel in the jungle".
Colonial past
Barbados is a friendly island, West Indian in temperament but without the racial tensions that permeate some of the other Caribbean islands.
Even late on a Saturday night, Bridgetown, the capital, feels safe. The island is hardly 20 miles across and yet it has always supported itself, initially from sugar production and more recently mass tourism.
Europeans flock here for the white sandy beaches, the palm trees and clear aquamarine seas. It is what we all hope a desert island will be but without any sense of Crusoe-like hardship.
The climate is warm and the soil fertile. And in common with other former colonial outposts, there is a curiously familiar Britishness about it.
Among the place names: Carlisle, Folkestone, Newcastle; the cricket ground is even called Kensington Oval. (Ours is at Kennington in London, of course.)
The island is divided up into 11 parishes, ten of them named after very English-sounding saints - St George, St John and St James - while the capital, Bridgetown, sits in the 11th parish of Christchurch.
But all of this sits amid a cheerful informality and a tropical countryside. Mahogany trees, vibrant plant life, mangrove swamps and sugar cane proliferate inland, providing a habitat for green monkeys - descendants of stowaways on the first slave ships - parrots and the mongoose.
Other examples of more colourful fauna likely to be spotted on the island: Madonna, Elton John, Mick Jagger and John Cleese.
It's only in the last half-century or so that Barbados has become a fashionable spot.
Back in the Sixties the island was little visited and the Platinum Coast just a seven-and-a-half mile stretch of white beach.
Fine sand, great bathing... and cricket, too
Back at our resort after some lively pool volleyball and a workout in the spa, we hopped into a hired Mini Moke to explore the rest of Barbados.
Due south is the capital Bridgetown with its UK post boxes, sprawling market, duty-free shops and jewellery boutiques. There's even a Tiffany's. Half an hour east is the Atlantic coast's surfing mecca Bathsheba, desolate but rugged on our visit.
The drive between the Atlantic and Caribbean coasts of this teardrop-shaped island is dotted with ramshackle villages, cricket pitches, gleaming white churches and a flower forest.
But Barbados is all about beaches. Unless you're a cross-channel swimmer or a wreck diver, avoid the eastern coast and head instead to the gentler western coast; the water is calmer and the sand infinitely finer.
Crane Beach is famed for its flamingo-pink sand in Barbados but Paynes Bay, Sandy Bay and Mullins Bay are all great spots for watersports. Shamed by Giggsy's jet-skiing prowess and the waterskiers' iron-thighed balance, I braved a kayak.
After cocktails at sunset back at our hotel, we tucked into flame-grilled king fish and juicy beef steak from the weekly beach barbecue. Sublime.
Island entertainment is limited but reggae and calypso fans are spoilt for choice with Bob Marley tribute bands as prevalent as rum bars.
Personally, I'd rather listen to the sound of the waves breaking gently on to the turtles as they launch their latest Barbados beach landing.
- Prices for a 10-night, all-inclusive holiday at the Almond Beach Club & Spa with Kenwood Travel (020 7749 9220) start from £1,249pp, based on two adults sharing and including return flights from Gatwick, taxes and transfers. For more information about the hotels visit almondresorts.com.
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| | | | Lawrence gets dressed for the occasion
For us, every day had a reliably sun-kissed horizontality enlivened by regular splashing bouts in the pool with the children and a few intimate afternoons à deux on the beach while Super-Nanny did her bit with the girls.
The food is not adventurous, but, unlike so much international hotel cuisine, makes a brave stand against Americanised dumbing down that forbids garlic or anything that might give food real, unprocessed flavour. The quality of the raw ingredients is staggering and, as you'd expect from an island whose flag boasts a trident, dominated by fish. Because of its all-inclusive nature, it's only too easy to treat each meal as a Caligula-style blow-out. Similarly, the unstoppable fountain of poolside booze needs to be approached with a little self-control.
Because everyone at Turtle Beach seems to have at the very least a toddler, if not a brace of five-year-olds and a baby, hotel nightlife is not late. Parents more adventurous than us made use of the friendly and capable babysitters and flung themselves into taxis, drawn, like moths, to the pulsating lights of nightclubs outside the resort.
For the rest of us stay-at-homes, every evening offered a band, singer or show of surprisingly high quality. It provided the ideal excuse for wheedling children to side-step sleep training in favour of a few hours of frantic samba and reggae. There was heady competition among Cecile's coven trying to outdo each other in the evening-wear category, and getting ready to go to dinner precipitated high-pitched tiara tantrums.
Last year we were in Barbados over Easter. Easter Sunday dawned as dress-up-for-church-parade day and the lot of us went by taxi to Bridgetown's cathedral for the Easter service.
The cathedral feels surreally Home Counties with a riot of muscular, high-Victorian, Gothic detailing. Glimpsing coconut palms through the lancet windows felt distinctly out of place. Cecile and Hermione squealed with pleasure all the way through a spirited rendition of Handel's Halleluja Chorus sung by a choir resplendent in intricately draped cherry red brocades.
The entire family is hook, line and sinker addicted to Turtle Beach. The broad, relaxed smiles of the staff, the sunny reliability of the weather, the homely familiarity all compel us to keep returning like migrating birds.
And now, thanks to the wife, I have a wardrobe suitable for a week by a Barbados pool which, to be entirely honest, was the only thing that didn't quite work during our first visit. What compelled me to pack velvet and leather for the Caribbean that first year, I'll never know.
The ink-black ocean
From the oldest hotel I wanted to see the newest, so I drove up winding roads through sugar cane and past ever more deserted beaches to the Villa Nova in the interior.
This, Anthony Eden's old plantation house, has been renovated into a sophisticated country house hotel, with tropical grounds approached by an avenue of casuarina trees.
In the loo, where many of the best things nonchalantly hang in British country houses - Lord Lichfield has a painting by Landseer in his - there are fabulous photos of Clint Eastwood, Mick Jagger and Paul Newman by Terry O'Neill.
As in Britain, Sunday lunch, at which roast beef and apple pie are served, is a ritual here, though it is eaten on a white terrace overlooking a dark and shady swimming pool which reminded me of the famous La Colombe d'Or in the South of France.
You can hold your own party in the grey gazebo overlooking the sea, or get a picnic to take down to Cattlewash, another famous Atlantic beach.
Yet, for all its luxury, I was happy to drive back down the dramatic East Coast Road, past the surfing town of Bathsheba, past Codrington College, the oldest seminary in the Western hemisphere, and colourful shacks - back to the Crane, where the macaws that live on the lawn were already snoring in anticipation of the sunset.
There, I finished my day in blissful solitude on my balcony overlooking the ink-black ocean, with a simple take-away from the nearby supermarket at Six Crossroads.
'What's wrong with Crane, is what's right with it,' as one regular told me.
Vigorous and enthusiastic
'No one wanted to invest. Ha! It was hard. We had disasters. We had to hack our way down to the beach and the grounds were full of land crabs so big they were frightening.
'The guy who was designing the kitchens suddenly got deported for cocaine. But I've never had as much fun in my life as in those first few years.'
She turned the story into the 1993 bestseller Platinum Coast.
Four titles followed, but that first book - in parts an update on the Seventies bestseller by Herman Wouk, Don't Stop The Carnival, which also told the story of amateurs starting a hotel - remains a beach-bag favourite.
She makes a face. 'It makes me cringe because my writing has improved a lot since then. But there was so much to say it almost wrote itself.
'Everything was restricted then. You couldn't import furniture: it all had to be made locally, so I'd take photographs of pieces I wanted copied.
'The prototypes were the funniest things you ever saw - glass tops the wrong size, wrong legs on tables.
'Sometimes they'd deliver at night and just leave everything outside in the rain.
'But we were a little group, all ex-pats. We felt very vigorous and enthusiastic.
'Once we had an impending strike and all the customers said, "Don't worry, we're gearing up to run it ourselves, we'll roll our sleeves up".
'The old back-to-the-wall thing - the British are always great like that.'
International jet set
Things changed when Ronald Tree, a wartime adviser to Winston Churchill and former MP, built a hotel to the south of Sugar Hill at Sandy Lane.
The idea behind the hotel was that it offered a British country house experience: somewhere warm to stay which would offer the kind of service expected by the English upper class.
The hotel, with its sweeping coral-stone staircases, marble bathrooms and distinctive pillared portico, still sends its chauffeured limousine to the airport every day and is offering $2,000 (£1,222) suites this summer from as little as $600 (£366) a night while the $7,000 (£4,280) a night penthouse is reduced to a mere $3,000 (£1,830).
But it's not that exclusive - a law passed in Barbados after independence forbids privately-owned beaches.
This means that while security guards patrol the high perimeter wall of the hotel, guaranteeing the likes of Mick Jagger, Tom Jones and Michael Winner their privacy, if they want to swim in the sea they'll be down on the beach with everyone else.
Sandy Lane really took off as a jetset destination in the early Eighties when four-hour Concorde flights from London and Paris made it possible for Europeans to spend weekends on Barbados.
Princess Margaret, Claudette Colbert, David Niven and Jackie Kennedy-Onassis were regulars in the hotel's heyday.
Some people say that the hotel is not what it was. In recent years, a rival in the shape of Villa Nova, the former home of Sir Anthony Eden, which is set in a tangle of jungle miles from anywhere, has emerged.
Described both as 'the thinking person's Sandy Lane' and 'Cliveden-in-exile', this English country house hotel employs a chef who has worked at both The Ivy and Kensington Palace and has played host, in its time, to Queen Elizabeth II, Noel Coward, Norman Parkinson, Elton John and Madonna.
The hotel is said to have a regular client list of about 100 millionaires. Rates this summer range from $450 (£275) a night to $750 (£460) if you want the Eden Suite.
Winter prices are about a third higher. Given the luxury of most accommodation on Barbados, the Blairs may be tempted to stay put once they arrive.
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| | | | B-listers are OK
After launching the hotels and bringing up a son, Lynne and Mike - who also still lives on Barbados - separated several years ago.
And with Villa Nova, funded by a multi-zero'd divorce settlement, she's been able to do everything her own way.
Celebrity guests, for instance, have not been courted this time around.
'Because they're a nightmare! The B-listers are OK, often very nice, but the top echelons can be monsters.
'And I'm sorry to say the women are invariably worse than the men.
'Demanding, complaining, neurotic and obsessed with what they will and will not eat.
'Take Raquel Welch. She'd only have a certain number of ounces of chicken. Grilled, not fried. Aaargh!
'A big star also has a very unsettling effect on the other guests. They don't want to go up and talk to them in case they're being obtrusive, and they resent the staff being taken up with them.
'They like to see them in the restaurant for lunch, though.'
The utter self-confidence is, she thinks, thanks mostly to her father - a miner whose life was changed when he joined the RAF and who, after the War, became a door-to-door salesman.
'A lovely man,' she smiles. 'So adventurous. He took my mum and my older sister and I away on a foreign holiday every year - on the train to the south of France, on the coach to Lido di Jesolo.
'And I was his little princess. A bit of a horror, too. I remember on that trip to Lido di Jesolo, reporting my sister to my father: "Dad, she's not looking at the Alps! Make her wake up!" And singing and dancing up and down the coach the whole journey!
'But I always knew I could do whatever I wanted to do - and that's because he told me I could.'
She gives one of her unladylike cackles and starts the engine. Time for tea on the veranda 'at the hotel discerning people choose', she says, straightfaced. So we know where that is, then.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Elegant Resorts features the Villa Nova, details on http://www.elegantresorts.co.uk tel: 01244 897999.
Simple pleasures
Certainly with August temperatures approaching 100F, it will not be easy to give up on air conditioning, even for a trip to the beautiful wildlife reserve of Welchman Hall Gully ($11.50 pp, £7) with its cheeky green monkeys or the subterranean delights of Harrison's Cave ($25 pp, £15).
And the food? Barbadian cuisine is primarily seafood-based; it includes flying fish, the island's national dish, plus snapper, prawns, lobster and dolphin fish.
Without a doubt the island's number one restaurant is The Cliff in Fitts, half way between Sandy Lane and Bridgetown.
Arranged on three levels, all of which overlook the sea, The Cliff is built of coral stone, is lit by distinctive gas-burning torches known as flambeaux and employs a vast army of waiters to make your meal memorable.
Prices aren't cheap. Diners should reckon on $75-$90 (£45-55) per person for two courses before drinks, but it's worth it for the romantic sea views.
A particular favourite on the menu of most restaurants is the chilled seafood platter, which is well worth sampling but doesn't come cheap at around $200 (£125) for two.
And the top nightlife spot for celebrities? Crocodile's Den, half-a-mile inland from Sandy Lane and close to the Barbados Polo Club.
Here Harry 'The Croc' Hinds presides over a collection of 12,000 LPs and the late-night crowd is said to include Joan Collins and John Cleese.
Even if the Blairs prefer to keep a lower profile, away from the celebs, they will certainly have plenty to do.
This is an island that people do fall in love with. It's a place for those who take their pleasures seriously - and don't mind paying for it.
Indeed, the motto of Barbados could be summed up in a remark made by Winston Churchill, one of Anthony Eden's first guests on the island: 'I am a man of simple tastes, easily satisfied by the best.'
* Prices correct in July 2003.
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