Gorgeous Grenada

We have just returned from a week’s holiday in Grenada; a lovely island in the Caribbean, north of Venezuela.

Unlike Barbados, Grenada is unspoilt and perhaps a little underdeveloped in terms of tourism, which is part of its charm. The edges of the island are all beaches, including the magnificent Grand Anse Bay where we stayed, while inland there is a large rainforest.

Grand Anse Bay in Grenada
There are waterfalls, monkeys, birds and lots of tropical plants including Nutmeg, for which the island is famous, and Cocoa, more about that later.

The Grenadines are known as the Spice Islands and for good reason, as the smell of spices pervade the air. Even when swimming in the sea, I could detect occasional wafts of nutmeg or cinnamon when the wind blew from the East.

Our visit happened to overlap with Bernie and Georgina, so we celebrated with a cocktail. I wore one of our latest dresses from the English Eccentrics spring/summer 08 collection. The dress is a drape front silk jersey in the turquoise ‘pavilion’ print; a great colour for sunny climates.

Enjoying a cocktail with Georgina

Another great colour for the sun is pink. Colin wore our new season ‘Baroque’ style t-shirt in pink, which certainly suits a man with a tan.

Colin in the Baroque pink t-shirt

On our trip, we visited the nutmeg processing plant, where we discovered that 85 per cent of the island’s nutmeg trees had been lost during Hurricane Ivan in 2004. It will take ten years for the trees to re-grow, and in the interim many families are suffering financial hardship.

Harvesting the nutmeg

Fishing is another major activity on Grenada and most fishing happens around the town of Gouyave. Colourful fishing boats crowd the beach and once a week they hold ‘Fish Friday’, where lots of temporary stalls are erected in the streets to cook and sell fish. The fish that we ate was delicious; really fresh with plenty of variety.

Fishing boats in Gouyave

We also visited the rainforest and saw chocolate growing in lovely big golden pods. There is a small chocolate factory on the island, where they make absolutely stunning chocolate. Georgina and I had to keep testing it to see if each bar was as good as the previous one, and it was!

Cocoa pods in all their glory

Evenings are fairly quiet if you don’t want to spend all night in the bar. We opted for some Scrabble most nights; one night I found this curious collection of letters on my rack.

Scrabbling in the evening