Published: Jul 22, 2026
Another long and full day today. Having organised a car rental ahead of time to cover the two days we’d be on this island, we were pretty confident from the start. Of course, confidence is there to be shattered – or so it seems – as it wasn’t possible to see our first destination of the day. Hell’s Gate Island – which looked super cool when I looked it up – was actually only accessible by boat, which wasn’t going to be worth it time-wise. We discovered all this when we accidentally drove into a military site, only to be told that we’d have to look elsewhere for our mystery island…
We decided to go straight to our next destination, Betty’s Hope, where one of the island’s first and largest sugar plantations existed. It’s now an open-air museum, containing restored stone windmills, the ruins of many features of the original plantation, and a visitors’ centre which explains the history of slavery as well as the machinery of sugar production. I found the museum really informative – seeing the ruins of the plantation really hit me, and I thought the information explaining the slave trade was sensitively conveyed and almost functioned as a sort of memorial. I was so touched by what I saw, that after our next activity, which we had to rush to get to, we decided to go back to finish reading all the information we’d missed.
As an aside that I think is worth mentioning, there’s something I’ve noticed throughout my time on the Caribbean islands that I’m curious about: institutions, roads, towns, neighbourhoods, and businesses named after plantations and slave owners. Betty’s Hope, for instance, was owned for a long time by Christopher Codrington and is in fact named after his daughter; the Codrington name and legacy remain extremely visible all over the Caribbean. I’m not sure why this is the case, or how people reconcile this, but it’s certainly something I’m noticing that feels uncomfortable to me…
In between the visits to Betty’s Hope, we were engaged in something entirely different: Stingray City! We took a short boat ride to where wild stingrays were located, and we were allowed to touch them, hold them, and some people were brave enough to feed them (though those people ended up with some thumb abrasions!). We learned that these stingrays are accustomed to humans, and as they know they’re about to get fed, they’re keen to approach the visitor boat as soon as they hear the engine. Overall, I thought this was an incredible experience, though I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I was a little scared.
After Stingray City, we ate our classic favourite lunch of rice and beans. Then we started the scenic part of the day (I told you it was a long one!). We enjoyed some relaxed time at Half-Moon Bay and Pigeon Point Beach. I looked for shells, again, which is becoming a wonderful new hobby of mine. We also tried to go to Shirley Heights Lookout, and the Pillars of Hercules (geological formations carved naturally into the cliff face by wind and waves). Those activities didn’t end up working out, which was absolutely okay as we were heading into the evening at this point already. We did, however, get to do a scenic walk down to the beach close to the pillars where we saw beautiful green hummingbirds, and we decided to end the day with a short visit to Nelson’s Dockyard Marina, which is the only continuously working Georgian era dockyard in the world. Needless to say, we were knackered by the end of the day.
