Fairchild Street Bus Terminal, Bridgetown

Bridgetown has two bus terminals, the main one on Fairchild Street and a secondary, open-air one on Alice Street. The Fairchild Street terminal lies just across the O'Neal Bridge, which is what Bridge Street is called where it spans the Careenage.

The Fairchild Street terminal is a slightly claustrophobic building, but like the Speighstown bus terminal it is efficient and well signposted. The Sam Lord's Castle bus leaves every half hour from Gate 12.

This is the bus that goes along the southern coast where most of the tourist resorts are located, so it was packed with a fair number of tourists. At the end of the stretch, as the bus turned away from the coast just past Oistins, we were the only conspicuous non-locals left on board.

The driver was so concerned that we had missed our stop that he shouted back to make sure we knew where we were going! Just one of many instances of kindness we've met in Barbados, and a major reason we keep going back there.

Bridgetown

The yellow bus we took into Bridgetown let us off on a narrow shopping street near the centre of the city. I'm not sure which street it was, but it may have been Milk Market or a street parallel to it. In any case, we walked down to the corner with Broad Street and turned left to head towards Trafalgar Square and Bridge Street, which crosses over the Careenage to where the Fairchild Street Bus Terminal is located.

We've only been in Bridgetown twice. It's a busy, dusty city, and not really what we like best about Barbados (after all, there's lots of city grime where we come from). We tried once to have supper there at the end of a long day and found to our surprise that everything, even the restaurants, shuts up at about five-thirty.

I'd like, however, to stop here for a Chefette roti lunch the next time we are here changing buses for Sam Lord's Castle. There is a Chefette around the corner from the Fairchild Street Terminal, which is what I'll write about next.

Oistins Traffic Jam Avoidance

So our cunning plan to get to the fish fry without meeting the Oistins traffic jam was this: We would spend the day visiting the famous Bottom Bay on the southeast coast of Barbados. Then, at about five, we'd catch a bus to Oistins, travelling in the opposite direction to everyone else!

It was an excellent plan. We just executed it in a less-than-perfect way, so if you're going to try this, please learn from our mistakes.

At about 10.30 in the morning, we left our digs in St Peter's Parish and caught a yellow bus down to the Fairchild Street Bus Terminal. From there, we caught the noon bus to Sam Lord's Castle. There, we had lunch at the Tropical Winds Apartment Hotel, then walked the rest of the way to Cave Bay and Bottom Bay.

The walk took about an hour, which wasn't great in the 30-degree heat. The GH got a big blister on his heel, though by the next evening he had rather more to worry about in the wounds and swellings department! If I did it again, I would stop for a Chefette roti lunch in Bridgetown, then head out on the bus. The bus goes beyond Sam Lord's Castle to Shrewsbury, which is where we should have got off.

Instead, we ended up making something of an epic journey, which I'll chronicle in the next few posts.

Getting To and From Bathsheba

As mentioned in an earlier post, there is a bus to Bathsheba that leaves the Speightstown Bus Terminal every two hours on the odd hours. The trip takes about 50 minutes.

There is also a bus from the Fairchild Street terminal in Bridgetown that leaves at the top of every hour (every half hour in the rush hours). The running time for this journey is 70 minutes.

The "terminus" in Bathsheba is the Soup Bowl Cafe (about which more elsewhere). The buses leave from here to go back to Bridgetown every hour and to Speightstown every two hours on the even hours.

The West Coast from Bridgetown to Speightstown

Many visitors to Barbados stay on the West Coast. It's not surprising, since most of it looks like this.

There are buses running up and down the stretch between Bridgetown and Speightstown all the time. It's rare to have to wait even five minutes for one.

Both Speightstown and Holetown are good for shopping and dining, as well as banking and communications.

If you're staying on the West Coast, getting around by bus is surely the easiest and cheapest option.