(Barbados)…I arrived in Speightstown at 8 a.m. because the bus from Bridgetown was going there, and there did not seem to be another bus waiting to go anywhere else. I was happy I did so.
Speightstown has a laid-back feel of a forgotten, perhaps colonial gem that had its hey day when business was far less regulated than it is today. As my bus curled around the west side of the island—though communities such as Batts Rock Beach, Oxnards, Lascelles and Gibbes Beach, I wondered if this circular island could rightfully be considered part of the Caribbean. Bermuda certainly isn’t, but Barbados also is outside the natural arc of the West Indian archipelago that stretches all the way from Cuba to Grenada. Shamefully I did not have a map, but I rectified that situation by visiting the Cloisters Bookstore, before walking down to a church that stood in the middle of a cemetery and was populated solely by a sleeping Rastafarian.
The town, an inviting mix of friendly locals, peeling pastel paint and fading grandeur, was the site where Admiral Sir George Ayscue, a navy man in the service of Oliver Cromwell, could only defeat the Barbadians, who chose to be loyal to King Charles I, by paying for the services of a Barbadian turncoat and tricking his way onto the island’s soil.
No one was fooled. Seeing what a generally incompetent admiral he was, the locals agreed to charter that technically saw them realign their allegiance but which in practice gave them incredible benefits unheard of in England’s dealings with the “native races,” including the oath that taxes would not be increased without the express written approval of the Barbadians’ representatives. Ayscue proved no more capable later, when his flag ship ran aground and he was forced to surrender and be imprisoned to and by the Dutch.
The only battle he won, according to my research, was the capture of the Scilly Isles, a handful of beautiful rocks off the extreme tip of Cornwall. He was the 17th century equivalent of a modern-day CEO who runs his company into the ground, produces huge savings by the wholesale sacking of his staff, destroys most of the benefits of the formerly healthy pensions scheme and then gets a massive golden handshake and a new job within a fortnight.
Pronounced “Spites-town,” Speightstown has a gentle feel that I instantly liked and reminded me of Falmouth, Jamaica; it once enjoyed a regular boat service to Bristol, England. Barbadians are wonderful people. Walking up steps at a back of a building leading to second-story bar might not be everyone’s choice, but I wanted to go to the balcony that I could see from Church Street, as everyone on it looked like they were relaxed, and within five minutes of being seated, two locals bought me a beer, the first one just appearing from the waitress without the buyer announcing himself. Good people. I returned the hospitality, and it was convivial right to the very last moment I really had to be back on the bus to Bridgetown.
It perhaps wasn’t always so friendly there, the term “Speightstown flattery” being slang for a backhand compliment. I took a smaller bus into the interior, and the bus driver went half a mile out of his way to drop me off at a spot—Pleasant Hill—that was much nearer to my goal, Farley Hill.
This is an interesting, little-visited place that is home to a troop of Green monkeys. Their fur perhaps might be construed as green, and there they were, swinging around the trees over the heads of Tropical kingbirds. The site features a ruined manor house, with gardens, built in the early 19th century by an Englishman called Sir Graham Briggs (with a name like that, I hardly have to say he’s English, do I?). The ruins, which feature in the 1965 film An Island in the Sun starring Sidney Poitier, burnt down in 1966, and then Queen Elizabeth II opened it all up as a national park, which seems curious, as royalty of England rarely is asked to open perhaps still smoldering buildings, but anyway, that year also was the year of Barbados becoming independence, so maybe such trivialities were overlooked. That said, Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert and their son, the future King George V, did stay there, so maybe she just felt like following in their footsteps. In Poitier’s film, it was called Belle Fontaine, for another reason lost to knowledge.
I walked back to Speightstown, some five miles, and then stopped for lunch in a low-key little place called the Fisherman’s Hut, which featured black-and-white photos of former cricket stars (see photo above). In bustling Bridgetown, I made a beeline to the Jewish synagogue for its oddity value, and then to a very strange statue purporting to be a likeness to Horatio Nelson. It is covered in bird excrement.
Supposedly, Nelson saved Barbados from the French, but many here see no relationship to him and want it removed from its prominent site and replaced by a worthy Bajan. Maybe he is looking so rough because the statue now is two years short of being 200.