A stroll to the beach

Well, the first week here in sunny Hamilton has passed without  mishap.  It’s a nice little project in a nice little bank, with the usual multi-cultural project team.  The bank folks are also very friendly and helpful, and clearly desperately keen for a successful project – right now their systems and procedures are largely manual and hence 25 years out of date, so essentially anything we deliver will be an improvement.  So it’s been workshop after workshop to go through the usual intelligence gathering and get it all down on paper in the approved manner (even where the approved manner actually doesn’t make a lot of sense).  But we’re getting there and on track to deliver the first milestone on time.  

With all this going on, there’s not been a lot of time to see Hamilton or the greater island, but so far what I’ve seen has been very pleasant.  The town (you can hardly call it a city) is a very pretty and relaxed place, beautifully situated on the Paget Bay inlet.  It’s clearly an affluent place, as befits a global centre of offshore banking and tourism, with a good selection of shops and bars and restaurants along the waterfront.  Back from the shoreline and town centre are the residential areas, along winding and hilly streets filled with palm trees and lilacs and bougainvillea.  The houses are substantial and expensive looking, many of them in good sized and well enclosed gardens for privacy (although I’ve seen no swimming pools apart from the one at the hotel – I guess so close to glorious beaches no-one wants one).

There is a shopping mall between the bank’s location and Front Street that has a good food court where we’ve taken lunch a couple of times, and the meals have been excellent.  One day we took sushi, and the other Chinese, both times from a buffet, and ate in a sunny central atrium in the fresh air.  We also went to another place further up the hill, close to the small cathedral, that did another buffet, and the rice, vegetables and sliced fried beef I had was delicious.  On Friday we went to a Jamaican place behind the mall that offered excellent sliced roast pork, rice and vegetables, as well as ribs and jerk chicken, and a selection of delicious sweets.  So I’ve eaten well and at a reasonable cost – each meal with drinks has come in at around USD20. No complaints.

In the evenings I’ve, as usual, fended for myself.  Sandwiches and concoctions involving rice and beans and corned beef and onions and garlic mostly, washed down with Nescafe and water and Abbott’s Ale (a pleasant surprise to find that in the local supermarket).  The kitchen is pretty well equipped, so when I get round to it I’ll stock up and do some proper meals.  It’s a bank holiday today (Monday) and all the shops are closed so it will have to wait.

The weekend was pleasant enough.  Two free days to explore, so I consulted the map and picked out a reasonably close beach (Hungry Bay on the South Shore, about 2 ½ km from the city centre, an hour’s walk from the hotel according to Google Maps), stuffed my towel, book and swimmers into my rucksack and set off about 9:30 Saturday morning.

I arrived in Front Street just in time to see the annual Queens Day parade start off from the Cabinet Building and War Memorial (it’s an exact – but slightly smaller – copy of the Cenotaph in London’s Whitehall).  The street had been closed from there westward as far as the Ferry Terminal, and there were a handful of tourists scattered around takings pictures, but by and large the locals seemed absent.  About half way along a small enclosure had been set up for local dignitaries (I assume government ministers and the British Consul) to sit in the shade and relative comfort to watch but it was oddly deserted – perhaps they were behind the enclosure having a quick gin and tonic or something.  So I took a few pictures of the small contingent of troops and sailors lined up in the gardens of the Cabinet Building, and the marching band as it struck up when the flags were presented, then moved on. 

                                                  

                                                          Queen's Day Parade, Hamilton

There is a small container port close to the end of the bay, not much bigger than a jetty with a couple of cranes, and then the last little section is full of small boats and cabin cruisers tied up in the safety of the Inner Bay.  I wandered past into Harbour Road and headed off towards the South Shore.  At that point, although I didn’t realise it until hours later, I was lost.  Blissfully unaware, I ambled along, up the steep and narrow Stowe Hill to join the South Road, where I spotted a sign “South Shore Beaches”.  Fifty metres further on was a junction, with no indication which way to go…..I took a punt and stayed on the main road.  A kilometre further on, past the College, there was still no sign of a beach or even a sign pointing to one, so I asked a guy cutting hedges where to go.  Helpfully, he told me to go back the way I had come and turn right at the church – my unsigned junction.   Back I went, and next to the church ducked into a little store for a bottle of water – thirsty work in the hot sun, this wandering around Bermuda.  I checked my bearings with the check-out girl….who totally contradicted my hedge-cutting friend and sent me back that way again.   She was right.  Not more than 100 metres beyond where the guy had been working was the grandiose entrance to the Elbow Bay Beach resort, and a couple of hundred metres beyond that the little trail that led down to the public section of the beach.

It was worth the effort.  Elbow Bay Beach has the reputation of being one of the best beaches on the island, and I could see why.  From the steps leading down, the powdery white sand stretches clean and, even at 11:30 on a June Saturday afternoon, virtually deserted both east and west.  The sea is astonishingly clear and calm, and a little offshore you can see the small coral reefs that provide for good snorkelling.  At either end are sun beds and umbrellas belonging to the Elbow Bay Beach resort and its neighbouring Coco Reef Hotel, and of course there are signs that mark the limit of the public sector (which stretches for maybe 300 metres or so).  At the eastern end, just before the Elbow Bay Beach Resort section, was a little stand of rocks a couple of metres high that offered some shelter from the hot sun, so I parked myself there, stripped off and went for a swim. 

                                            

                                            Elbow Bay Beach, 11:30 a.m. Saturday 14 June

The sea was quite warm – Mediterranean temperature I would say, but it’s still early season and will get warmer yet – and the clearest sea water I have ever seen.  A bowl of tap water would be no clearer.  There was a gentle swell, no massive breakers as I’d experienced four years ago on Trinidad’s Maraccas Beach, nor the sort of rough waves that are more or less constant in the Baltic and English Channel.  It reminded me a lot of Elafonissi Beach on Crete, another favourite place of mine from maybe seven or eight summers ago, and a place I want to re-visit.  So I floundered around happily for half an hour so, cooling down from the six kilometre walk from the hotel (I checked it on Google Maps that evening).

                                                           

                                                             My rocky place to chill

In all I spent maybe three hours at Elbow Beach, and there were never more than about 30 people along the whole public stretch.  Then some guys from the Elbow Bay Beach resort came along and sneakily I thought moved their boundary sign along about 20 metres – so that I now found myself essentially sprawled on private property.  So I packed up my stuff and headed off, deciding to try and find my original Hungry Bay destination if I could, and if not head for the pub back in Hamilton for a beer or two before football.

Back on the outskirts of Hamilton, I found where I had taken my wrong turning, and plodded off up Trimmingham Road to re-join the South Road – in doing that I had added a good couple of kilometres to my walk.   But eventually I found the road that, on my map, led to Hungry Bay.  On the map, it looks like a very small and enclosed bay not much more than a hundred metres or so across, and when I got there that is indeed accurate.  But what the map fails to convey is that it is a private beach, with entrance limited to the residents of the surrounding neighbourhood.  And very nice that neighbourhood is too – a couple of dozen big secluded mansions, bigger and grander than anything I had seen before, sitting in manicured and landscaped grounds behind high hedges and secure gates, all I would think with superb sea views.   But the only way onto the beach seemed to be through somebody’s back garden, so that was a no-go.  Back to Hamilton I went.

I broke off for some food in Flanagan’s Irish pub, and sat on the balcony upstairs overlooking Front Street and the Ferry Terminal.  It’s a typical themed Irish boozer, but very good for all that.  The Kilkenny ale was cold and went down a treat, and the Shepherd’s pie with a side order of fries was very tasty.  Actually, it wasn’t a Shepherd’s pie as it wasn’t made with lamb – the minced beef technically made it a Cottage pie – but I hadn’t the appetite to point out to the staff that they needed to change the menu, on the basis that the majority of visitors would probably be American cruise ship passengers (judging by the accents surrounding me that’s a good bet) who would neither know nor care about the finer points of British cuisine.  And it’s their loss, frankly.  Anyway, after that I trudged wearily back to the hotel for a cooling shower and an evening of World Cup watching.

Hamilton Harbour from Flanagan's Irish pub

And what a fine World Cup this is turning out to be!  I can’t remember the last time I watched so many exciting and entertaining games in the group stages.  Up to last night, in 11 games there had been over 30 goals, which is ridiculous really, and of 22 halves of play only one had been goal-less.  There have been some unbelievable results as well – I don’t think anyone saw Holland’s 5-1 drubbing of reigning champions Spain coming, least of all the Spanish squad, and no-one gave Costa Rica a chance against Uruguay, but they still ran out victorious.  Perhaps predictably, England lost to Italy, but I thought a bit unluckily, and they showed some very good play too – quite unlike England in fact.    And it took a moment of inspiration from Lionel Messi to put away debutants Bosnia – Argentina are a good side and I fancy them to win it, but at times they had looked ordinary.  There’s a long way to go yet, but I really hope the tournament carries on like this.  After all the publicity about the problems Brazil were having getting the stadia and infrastructure – roads, airports, hotels and so on – ready for the off, I had predicted (along with many others) a disaster, but so far it’s been anything but that.  Long may it continue!

So there you go.  Week one was fine, as was the weather – hot and sunny every day.  Today, typical for bank holidays everywhere it seems (at least when I’m resident), it’s a good deal cooler, and quite overcast.   There could be rain later I think.  Most of the team fly home tomorrow night (they’ve already been here a few weeks) but I stay until early July, so plenty of time for more exploring yet.

And I guess some work too……