Sights of Barbados 2022

Barbados

We travel to friends

on the island of Barbados 

with sea, sand and palms

sparkling in the sun.

Life slows for a fortnight

suiting thirty degrees heat

with a centring of the day

upon a bath in the sea.

The people smile a lot

greeting us on the street 

and many speak first hand 

of God as real to them.

Their history is ugly.

Britain held slaves here.

Now the island is free

and proud of that.

With its warmth and light

its beauty, its people 

and their inspiration

Barbados is second home.

John Twisleton 18 November 2022

Friday is open night at Harry Bayley Observatory in Bridgetown, Barbados. Anne and I enjoyed a talk and debate on the recategorising of Pluto as a dwarf planet and joined a group of 15 or so to view the planets. COVID restrictions meant we couldn’t all look through the telescope eyepiece but viewed a projection on a screen. Here’s Saturn.

Some sights of Barbados Wild Life Reserve where animals are friendly and tortoises unashamed!

Bishop Wilfred said we really must visit Hackleton’s Cliff with its spectacular view across the east of Barbados. We viewed from the top of a tomb linked allegedly to a plantation owner who, catching his wife in flagrante, rode away in distress and leapt on horseback from here to his death.

Having seen many buses heading to the destination ‘Sam Lord’s Castle’ over our years visiting Barbados we went to have a look at it. It’s now a mammoth construction site with new flats and a hotel growing alongside the castellated ruin linked to pirate Sam above a lovely beach. Pirate Sam was a friend of the then Sunbury Plantation owner. The two men signalled to each other about having meetups using mirrors placed on their roofs.

Anne spotted this caterpillar having breakfast as we walked into the grounds of the grand Sunbury Plantation House where we enjoyed a morning of our fortnight in Barbados with Bishop Wilfred and Ina Wood at Oistins. Daily sea bath, sightseeing, sketching and painting, improving Ukelele arpeggio, Caribbean church, food and living in the joy of the here and now - a time of blessing!

Anne, who loves Pringles, was brought down to size at the Exchange Museum in Bridgetown seated beside hotelier Rachel Pringle but was less impressed by the reminder of schooling in the 1950s!

On our visit to Barbados we took in some striking signs. The wet floor sign has an exhilarating almost inviting feel to it. I liked the invitation to ‘live it nice’ which Barbados helps you along with. The ‘Parson’s Pest Control’ van got my imagination going about chasing sinners, people we see as pests and how priests can be pests!

Anne with Fr Noel & Hazel’s daughter Julie-Anne Burke after Mass celebrated by Canon Burke in St David’s Barbados at which I was privileged to preach. We go back to 1998 with the Burke’s exchanging our London house for their Vicarage and our first prolonged visit to Barbados. Noel is a traditional Anglican like myself. It shows in the awesome yet accessible choral liturgy he facilitates at which I am always at home.

Living in Oistins, Barbados for a fortnight meant regular walks on the jetty where we caught sight of turtles attracted by the fish market. The fish fry at Oistins draws great crowds to dine especially on a Friday night.

Anne and I bathed a lot at Carlisle Bay within short distance of the capital of Barbados, Bridgetown, with its long white sandy beach and extensive shallow water for safe snorkelling. We got mesmerised floating above the fish watching them burrow for food in the sand.

Golden Square Freedom Park in Bridgetown opened November 2021 on the eve of Barbados becoming a republic and we were among the first visitors then. On this visit we viewed the Clement Payne memorial ‘Educate, speak, agitate, don’t violate’ which captures the emancipation process and attended a free youth concert evidencing the Square being put to good use. 

A warm welcome from the 15 ordinands at Codrington College, Barbados where Anne and I attended Angelus and Midday Office, presented on the Church of England, partook of a lovely Caribbean lunch and presented a copy of my new book, ‘Guyana Venture - A Church of England Mission’ to College Library.

On our last full day in Barbados we treated ourselves to a trip on the railway and a visit to St Nicholas Abbey in the north of the island. When the railway operated at Consett Bay until the 1930s getting up a 1:33 slope meant 1st class passengers stayed put, 2nd class got off to walk and 3rd class pushed the train up the hill! Anne is cradled by an ancient mahogany tree (picture) and Abraham Cumberbatch (1728-1785) is a forebear of actor Benedict. A tot of the Abbey Rum from the distillery (picture) was a reward for our tour. The ‘Abbey’ has no church connection, just a euphemistic renaming by the Victorians of the plantation formerly run by slaves.