If you haven’t already read it, you might want to start with Kadooment Day Part 1, which describes Grand Kadooment Day, part of Barbados’ Crop Over festival. There are lots of photos too. My Grand Kadooment with Jump Promotions I’d been generously invited along to document the day by Renee Ratcliffe, the designer and co-leader […]
Category: Life in Barbados
Kadooment Day, part 1
If you’re the sort of person who has a ‘bucket list’ of things to do before you die, I’d highly recommend adding participating in a Caribbean carnival to the list. This year I was lucky enough to be invited to document one of the Kadooment costume ‘bands’ – Jump Promotions – as they competed in […]
Release the turtles
A team from the Barbados Sea Turtle Project at the University of the West Indies found 123 baby hawksbill turtles that had hatched this morning, on a beach near St. Peter’s Bay. The hatchlings were taken back and kept cool throughout the day until they could be released further south around sunset. The baby turtles […]
Standing Stones of Paradise
Paradise is one of the less well known beaches on the west coast; you can reach it by walking south from Batt’s Rock, past the abandoned Four Seasons development. On your way you’ll pass several groups of standing stones at the water’s edge, built by a local man called Philip. Philip began balancing piles of […]
Barbados anole
If you spend any time in Barbados it won’t be long until you see the Barbados anole (Anolis extremus). They’re small lizards, mostly green, and can normally be found climbing up outside walls and fences. They were originally endemic to the island, but have found their way onto Bermuda and St Lucia. They tend to […]
Eddy Grant & Bathsheba
The last time we saw our friend was nearly 2 years ago, in a rather chilly, gloomy London; today we went to a rum shop and played on the beach in Barbados. Being reunited with good people is great no matter where one is, but the Caribbean does make for a lovely backdrop. We also […]
Abandoned prison, part 2
In Part 1, I mentioned Harrison’s Point’s history as a US Naval Facility during the cold war. However, its time as a temporary prison is, if anything, more interesting. HMP Glendairy riot On 30 March 2005, a fight broke out among a small group of prisoners in Barbados’ Glendairy prison, a large Victorian prison built […]
Abandoned prison, part 1
As spooky places to explore go, I guess for most people ‘abandoned prison’ is second only to ‘abandoned asylum for the criminally insane’! The derelict buildings at Harrison’s Point, Barbados, fall into the former category, and while I wouldn’t describe the place as scary, its history and remote location do lend it an extremely eerie […]
Relocating turtle eggs
I took a little stroll along the beach after yesterday morning’s school run, and came across a couple of people from the Barbados Sea Turtle Project delicately relocating some turtle eggs to a safer location. It’s not an easy job, as there are an awful lot of eggs (sadly only about 1 in 1,000 hatchlings […]