The Incomparable Bottom Bay

Cave Bay III

We came across this abandoned house while walking the short distance northwards between Cave Bay and Bottom Bay.

It must have been quite the palatial residence in its day. I wonder what events led to its abandonment and its present, rather dilapidated state.

Perhaps, like the house on Farley Hill, this erstwhile mansion was the victim of a movie shoot gone awry!

Cave Bay II

I thought I had seen lovely beaches in Barbados already. But Cave Bay quite took my breath away. From where we stood at the top of the cliffs enclosing it, we could hear the waves booming like a cannon as they crashed up against deep overhangs that had been eroded into the headlands.

Less well known than its companion to the north, Bottom Bay, Cave Bay was completely deserted when we visited on a Friday afternoon. Of course, the currents all along these parts of the Southeast Coast make this a dangerous beach for swimming, but I wouldn't mind bringing a tall flask of iced lemonade with me next time and just sitting here for about three hours.

Perhaps another reason that Cave Bay is less well visited than Bottom Bay is that the way down to the beach from above is via a very steep stair that has been roughly cut into the coral cliffs. There is no handrail--not for the weak of knee, and I mean that both literally and figuratively.

Cave Bay

The Approach to Cave Bay

From Shrewsbury Chapel we walked along to Harrismith Road (or Harry Smith, as on some maps) and turned right towards the coast. This is a mid- to upscale residential area, and the houses get ever more opulent as you get close to the sea.

At the end of the road, an arid, grassy plain opened up before us. We started across it, feeling very hot and exposed (rather like the old lady in Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native who has to cross Egdon Heath).

We would have been more cheerful if we had known what we were about to see ...

"We Are Almost There"

So the walk from Tropical Winds to Cave Bay and Bottom Bay took about an hour in the middle hours of a thirty-degree day.

We trudged northwest from the coast near Sam Lord's and Shark's Hole up to Highway 5 and walked northeast along that for about half an hour. Highway 5 isn't that busy with traffic, but there isn't much of a sidewalk, so it probably wasn't the world's safest pedestrian outing.

At Shrewsbury Chapel we asked a nice old lady waiting at the bus stop if she knew how far it was to Bottom Bay. She said she didn't know, but immediately after I saw this sign on a pole:

At first I thought it applied to our quest for Bottom Bay, then I realized it was a warning of the apocalypse. October 21, 2011? Obama won't even have finished serving his first term yet!

Tropical Winds Hotel

So the Sam Lord's Castle bus actually goes a little beyond Sam Lord's Castle, but we asked to be let off at the Castle and fetched up at the Tropical Winds Apartment Hotel.

It was a welcome sight to a hot and hungry tourist. But even though the hotel was very clean and attractively appointed, we seemed to be the only people there apart from the staff.

The restaurant was completely empty. If it had been anywhere in Southeast Asia (Mersing, say), this would have been a thoroughly lugubrious experience. But our waiter's cheeriness more than made up for the lonely situation, and we had a very respectable dolphin sandwich.

The waiter thought our plan of walking all the way to Bottom Bay seemed ambitious, but we assured him that we were good walkers. So we are, but as it turned out, we would have been better off staying on the bus to the very end of the route.

What of Sam Lord's Castle itself? It is closed, after a spell as a hotel in the Marriott chain.