Monday 26 November, Bermuda day 6, St. George’s: Scooter trip exploring the beaches along south shore of Bermuda. Magnificent scenery.
A bit of a slow morning after our very late night. We crawl out of bed, reluctantly, as we have to re-dock yet again. s/v Gale, the Swan66 that we are rafted up to, is leaving for the BVI this morning.
After untying the lines, Cloudy Bay says good bye to her beautiful friend s/v Gale, and we wave our good byes to her crew. A very nice group of people whom we are very glad to have met. And hopefully will cross tacks with them in the Caribbean! 🙂
We re-dock on the other side, across from the customs office, where Glen spots a section of concrete wharf that is less crumbly than the rest. Then the usual routine, re-arranging lines and fenders 100 times, till he has it perfect! This even includes sweeping the concrete of grit to ensure none gets blown onto the fenders and then rubbed into our precious Ceramic Pro on the hull. Once all is secure, we head off for our leisure day.
It’s scooter time, and by the looks of it scooter weather too! Sky is clear and zero chances of rain. Perfect to go see some beaches and turquoise water. We pick up our rental scooter in St. George’s town (after a thorough check of Glen’s driving skills) and we head off. Having already done the north of the island on our Go-Cycles we take the scooter south, passed the airport, then along the south shore. It feels so good to be back on a motor bike, and reminds us we miss Horris (our Harley Davidson in Buchy).
The road is nice, not too busy, with attractive scenery. At Tucker’s Point we are impressed with the golf course, which seems to be impeccably maintained. And it’s enormous! We ride along it and seems to never finish! On the hills in and around the golf course there are beautiful houses overlooking the fresh green manicured lawns. Quite a view they have.
The bendy road takes us to Mid Ocean Club, and a water inlet filled with boats. From where we are, the view is charming, and we imagine we could live like that: small house on the hill, and the boat moored up on the jetty in front. Well, anybody could live like that, with not too much effort 🙂 We click our pictures and fly the drone over the bay, to record an aerial view for our collection.
The next jewel we come across is John Smith’s Bay, a small bay with the looks that seem to be the standard here in Bermuda: white sand, perfect blue water, lawns and few houses up on the hill. Charming, again. And we fly the drone, again. The view is even more stunning from the air.
At Devonshire Bay we stop for our daily history infusion. The Devonshire Battery is advertised to be here, an old colonial fort from 1616. The bay is very pretty, with rocky coast. But the only sign of the battery is a few stone walls in the curved shape where a cannon would have been placed … but no actual cannons left here.
We then pass several resorts which are lined up along the coast, and we find them to be quite old looking. Not run down, on the contrary, they are adequately maintained. Just the looks of them… maybe from the 70’s-80’s.
At Elbow Beach we venture inside one of these resorts to see their facilities along the beach. Gardens are nice and few bars by the white sand beach. The beach itself is rather narrow. They seem to struggle with some erosion. Although quite pretty, there are not many people around, only 4 people having lunch and 2 kids on the beach. Christmas trees are up everywhere around, kind of funny to see lite Christmas trees next to a beach 🙂 Maybe their season gets busier in December.
The public Elbow Beach nearby is a different story. A long stretch of wide beach, natural and no development whatsoever. Very few people about again. Glen remembers that this beach is highlighted as a good kite surfing spot. Well, if he decides to have a go, I guess I can put up with sunbathing on this beach for few hours 🙂
Next stop is Astwood Park, with a completely different view. From high on the cliffs, we look down onto a beautiful small cove with rocks poking out of the sand. There is nobody around and it feels like we have all this scenery exclusively for ourselves. We take our time to enjoy it, and of course, fly the drone over it.
And when we thought the view can’t get any better, we drive over yet more similar inlets with magic blue pools of water, and then arrive at the Horseshoe Bay. What a spectacular bay! The sand is very soft, feels like flour and looks like flour, it’s that white. It’s a very wide beach with wild sand dunes in the background, covered with vegetation. And at the ends the bay is marked by big rocks, where we imagine there would be some magnificent snorkeling. Very few people here too. And we are glad we got to see all these wonderful beaches not ruined by sun-beds and umbrellas. As we drive away, from up the hill, we have a nice view looking down onto the Horseshoe Bay. Not sure which view is better: at sand level, or from above. They are both pretty spectacular.
When we left this bay, we thought it is the highlight of the day. Little did we know. A few kilometers further on we come across two small bays. One marked Princess Beach Club, and we learn from a guard that it is the beach club of Hamilton Princess Hotel. Although lined up with sun-beds and few hammocks in the water, it is quite magical. Small, secluded and guarded from the ocean by natural rocks. And the next one along is even better. Perfect in fact. Nobody on the beach, no foot prints in the sand, just pure nature in perfect shape and size. It is not marked in any way, not even by seaweed. Maybe it’s only for the high end guests of Princess hotel.
We feel very hyped up with all these beauties we’ve seen today. Glen comments he is a bit miffed we didn’t come via Bermuda in June, on the way to USA, to see this place in the summer with the full on activities and more warmth. I am glad we saw it like this, without the thousands of tourists which are offloaded from cruise ships every day. And we are both quietly contemplating whether we could live on a beautiful island like this. One thing for certain: with regards to scenery, it’s in the top few places we have been.
The one hour ride back to Cloudy Bay is quite a chilly one. It got cold quickly once the sun was going down. Cloudy Bay seems to have behaved herself while we were away, and feels nice to step directly on our boat for once, having spent the last few days walking over s/v Gale to get to Cloudy. That said, a Swan66 is a rather nice yacht to have to walk on, and what do you know, some people may even think it belongs to us 🙂
In the evening we catch up on the blog, download our photos and try to finalize the next video. We are going to need very good internet to upload this one. It’s a record for us, at over 1 hour long. Get your popcorn ready folks!
