Where to stay

Cambridge Beaches Resort & Spa 30 Kings Point Road, Sandys, 001 441 234 0331, cambridgebeaches.com Situated on the headland of Kings Point, this cluster of upmarket cottages has a prime position on a beautiful beach. Doubles from £290 including breakfast and afternoon tea.

The Fairmont Southampton 101 South Shore Road, Southampton, 001 441 238 8000, fairmont.com Upmarket, family friendly and in easy reach of great beaches. Doubles from £225 per night with breakfast.

The Fairmont Hamilton Princess 76 Pitts Bay Road, Hamilton, 001 441 295 3000, fairmont.com Top class and full of character, close to the centre of Hamilton. Doubles from £290 per night with breakfast.

The Reefs Hotel and Club 56 South Shore Road, Southampton, 001 441 238 0222, thereefs.com Cosy, romantic and very pink cliff-top hotel and club with an excellent restaurant. Doubles from £225 per night, full board.

Travel Information

The currency of Bermuda is the Bermuda Dollar, but it is pegged to the US dollar on a 1-1 basis so both are equally accepted (£1 = $1.5). Bermuda is four hours behind GMT and has a sub-tropical climate, mild in the winter and hot in the summer. The best time to visit is from May to July, when the temperature is 23-29°C.

getting there - British Airways (08444 930 787, britishairways.com) flies daily from Gatwick to Bermuda International Airport. American Airlines (08444 997 300, americanairlines.com) flies daily from London Heathrow to Bermuda via JFK.

resources - Bermuda National Tourist Board (bermudatourism.com) provides information on travel, accommodation, dining and nightlife, as well as special events taking place in Bermuda. Bermuda 4 u (bermuda4u.com) offers a comprehensive guide to hotels, restaurants, cruises and transport, plus maps of the islands.

further reading - Hiking Bermuda: 20 Nature Walks and Day Hikes by Cecile Davidson and Stephen Davidson (Veganet, £12). Highly rated guide to walks through Bermuda that other visitors would probably miss.

Island Thyme: Tastes and Traditions of Bermuda (The Bermuda Junior Service League, 15.99) This has gorgeous pictures and information on Bermuda’s history and traditions and a wide range of recipes.

Where to eat

Prices are for a three-course dinner per person, without wine.

Frog and Onion Royal Naval Dockyard, 001 441 234 2900, frogandonion.bm. Hearty pub food is the order of the day at this local favourite that’s always busy at the weekends. £25

Harley’s Restaurant The Fairmont Hamilton Princess (see Where to stay). Overlooking Hamilton Harbour, this restaurant offers a fine seafood menu and international dishes. £40

Hog Penny 5 Burnaby Hill, Hamilton, 001 441 292 2534, hogpennypub.bm. Pub established in 1959 and said to be the inspiration for TV’s Cheers. Dishes include Bermuda onion rings and rockfish with a Dark ‘n Stormy sauce. £25

Island Cuisine 235 Middle Road, Southampton, 001 441 238 3287, islandcuisine.bm. A classic diner serving straightforward Bemudan food such as pan-fried wahoo. £15

Lobster Pot and Boat House Bar Bermudiana Road, Hamilton, 001 441 292 6898. Specialises in seafood, including Bermuda fish chowder. £40

Ocean Echo Restaurant The Reefs Hotel and Club (see Where to stay). From the sublime setting in a dining room that catches the morning and setting sun over the Atlantic Ocean, dine on island favourites such as chowder and superb swordfish, served with orange and pesto crust. £40

Port o’ Call 87 Front Street, Hamilton, 001 441 295 5373, portocall.bm. Smart but not over-priced. Serves Bermuda seafood including fish chowder with black rum. £25

Tamarisk Cambridge Beaches (see Where to stay). Modern French cuisine alongside dishes with a local flavour, Try the shark floss with pumpkin chutney or pan-seared rockfish with island-grown carrots and courgettes. £40

White Horse Tavern 8 Kings Square, St George, 001 441 297 1838, whitehorsebermuda.com. Pub with a great atmosphere and an even nicer waterfront veranda. Peoplewatch over grilled wahoo, chowder, pizza and pasta. £25

Food Glossary

Food and Travel Review

Some locations capture your heart long before you step ashore. Bermuda is that sort of destination: a lazy, hazy subtropical haven for travellers who crave a slow pace of life. This overseas territory wears its Britishness like a well-deserved badge of honour, attracting global bankers and offshore money-movers who shake dusty pink sand from their well-pressed slacks.

As Darwin demonstrated, life on an island tends to evolve in its own direction. Bermuda, also known as the Somers Islands, comprises some 180 islands and islets; part of the rim of an old volcano poking out of the Atlantic. It rests 1,000 miles or so north of the Caribbean islands and another 780 from New York. The islands were too far from anything to make Juan de Bermudez, their Spanish discoverer linger in 1503 but in 1609, Bermuda was settled by accident when a ship was driven on to the reef by the heroic captain Sir George Somers, thus saving the ship’s crew.

There are no rivers here but there was enough food available from the land and the sea to keep the survivors alive. The mangroves would have provided fish and fowl, including young bream, wrass, crabs and heron; the reef would have given up rockfish and guinea chick lobster, as it does today. The early colonists planted onions, bananas and sugar cane; flavoured the fish they caught with newly introduced parsley and fennel; fed their pigs on the native palmetto berries, and got drunk on bibby, made from palmetto sap.

Today, Bermuda makes its fortune as a tax haven and through tourism – an industry given a kickstart by author Mark Twain, although he was actually arguing against an afterlife when he wrote ‘You can go to heaven if you want. I’d rather stay in Bermuda’.

Rain keeps the island lush and the Gulf Stream keeps it warm. This ensures frost-free winters and comfortable summers, bar the short periods of thundery humidity that inspired the island’s cocktail of choice. Dark ‘n Stormy is a blend of Black Seal rum and ginger beer that demands a good stir before even raising the glass to your lips. Hurricanes rarely hit Bermuda – the two worst in living memory were in 1926 and 2003 – but when they do, the low, sturdy houses built from concrete and white Bermuda limestone remain largely unaffected; detached in more than one sense, behind the low trimmed hedges that lend Bermuda a hint of Surrey-by-the-sea.

The lack of rivers provides the scientific explanation for Bermuda’s shell-pink beaches and clear, turquoise waters but no amount of geological data will ever do justice to the island’s stunning shoreline. The pink sand represents the remains of tiny creatures that might otherwise be flushed out into the sea; the turquoise water is achieved because very few nutrients wash off the land to feed plankton. The sea’s beauty makes it an irrestistible proposition to those who visit Bermuda. Beachcombing, boating, diving or fishing: the possibilities depend entirely on your taste for adventure.

Captain Caleb Zuill can trace his seafaring family’s links with Bermuda back to the 1700s. He divides his time between being a firefighter and running Sail Bermuda which charters his 51-foot ketch, the Shekynah, out of Hamilton Bay. ‘People sail with us for a variety of reasons,’ he says. ‘Some want to snorkel on the wrecks and the coral; some just want to sip a rum swizzle and sunbathe. But, for me, sailing is the main attraction.’

Bermuda’s best-known beaches are Horseshoe Bay, a pink sand crescent bordered by sandstone cliffs and palm trees; Tobacco Bay, a sheltered cove containing intriguing, natural limestone formations; and Elbow Beach, a half-mile paradise used for kiteboarding, beach volleyball and scuba diving. Nowhere in Bermuda is hard to reach by public transport, on hired scooters or even by foot, with a disused railway line providing one of the most interesting walks. The former track defines a well-signposted trail around the island, with maps along the way that identify sites of interest, be they botanical, historical or cultural.

Heritage-seekers are likely to head for the Royal Naval Dockyard or the Town of St George, Bermuda’s old capital. The tropical setting of St George’s, with its gleaming white-washed buildings, has the charm of a Cornish village and is an easy place to linger – particularly when watching one of the many daily cultural events held in central Kings Square. Dancers, gombey troupes and town-criers hold forth by day, before being replaced by music and food tastings after the sun goes down. The rather incongruous bridge to the southern side of the square leads you to Ordnance Island: home to a building that houses a replica of the Deliverance, the ship which first brought the early settlers to these bountiful islands.

If the lively activity – or, indeed, the glare of the midday sun – takes its toll, explore one of St George’s cobbled side streets where boutiques and artists’ studios offer welcome respite. Among the streets behind the harbour, you’ll find several museums of interest including Tucker House Museum. Henry Tucker, President of the Governor’s Council, moved into this house in 1775, and his family remained there until 1809. A wander around its rooms will let you steal a glance at the Tucker family’s enviable collection of silver, china and crystal, alongside antique furniture in English mahogany and Bermuda cedar. Tucker is one of several surnames on the island dating back to the earliest settlers. It is also one of the most common and has more than a page to itself in the island’s otherwise tiny telephone directory.

Nearby, in Duke of York Street, is the fascinating St Peter’s Church which dates from 1612. This makes it the oldest Anglican church in continuous use outside the UK and one of the oldest churches in the Western hemisphere. Gates Fort in St George’s is an equally impressive stone construction that once served as a strategic fort, one of several dotted around the island in various states of repair. At the other end of the island, the Royal Naval Dockyard is buzzing as the latest cruise ship berths. The island is a popular destination for short cruises to and from Florida or still further to the Caribbean. With artisan shops and craft galleries housed in the dockyard’s former administrative buildings, the area has the feel of London’s Covent Garden – it buzzes with tourists but is still inherently charming. Follow your nose past the glass-blowing studios to the Bermuda Rum Cake Company where you can watch bakers craft this sweet, alcohol-laced Caribbean speciality.

The influx of visitors at the dockyard has also created a rush on at the Frog and Onion pub, which sits in a prime location in a former 19th-century cooperage and, appropriately, brews its own ales. It’s the perfect spot from which to people-watch, while munching on locally made bangers and mash or a traditional steak and ale pie. Walk off lunch with a stroll up to Bermuda’s Maritime Museum and the Commissioner’s House, perched at the tip of the peninsula in an old fort atop the rocky outcrop.

If you want to find the locals, watch out for a cluster of people loitering by the pink posts that signify the bus stops for vehicles travelling into Bermuda’s new capital Hamilton. From the Royal Naval Dockyard, the journey to Hamilton curves its way through the parishes of Somerset, Southampton and Paget, passing rainbow-coloured homes with neat little verandas. In Somerset village, near Cambridge Beaches, villagers with surnames like Simmonds and Symonds trace their family ties back through the mists of time.

In Hamilton, light traffic flows sedately along the tidy waterfront with its colonnaded buildings, just two or three-storeys high. At night, Front Street jumps, but gently. On high days and holidays, it resonates to the sound and sight of the Bermuda Regiment Band in full blast or the rattling rhythms and colour of a gombey dancing troupe, two contrasting expressions of Bermuda’s heritage.

The band’s red jackets and gleaming white pith helmets clearly epitomise colonial power but the gombeys are harder to decipher. This is a folk art with links to the Caribbean, one of the main sources of early slaves. The dancers’ exuberantly plumed masks have their origins in Africa, as do many of the moves, while their colourful costumes draw on native American traditions. Adding to an already colourful mix are traces of English Morris dancing and the mimelike performance art called mummery.

In Bermuda, holidays and weekends are for kite-flying, dancing in the park or playing cricket. In 2011, the island will grind to a halt in late July for the twin holidays Emancipation Day, celebrating the end of slavery, and Somers Day. Together, they host the hotly anticipated two-day Cup Match between Somerset Cricket Club and St George’s. Dwayne ‘Sluggo’ Leverock used to be Bermuda’s champion cricketer before announcing his retirement in 2009.

‘It’s more than a game,’ he explains. ‘You pick a team and support it for the rest of your life, whether it’s Somerset or St George’s, so there’s a fantastic atmosphere of friendly rivalry for the whole of the Cup Match. People arrive at five or six in the morning and stay until close of play, picnicking on macaroni and baked chicken.’ Those who can’t make it to the ground camp out at parks and beaches, listening to the action on the radio against a background of carnival music. They feast on on local specialities such as black-eyed peas with onions, salt pork and rice, and ‘Hoppin’ John’, a combination of cowpeas, rice and salt pork or bacon.

Despite its deserved popularity as a cruise destination, finding food from Bermuda within Bermuda is not difficult, although it is often listed under the umbrella heading of ‘international’ cuisine. Sunday brunch is a weekly tradition observed all over Bermuda and one that seems to sum up its heritage. Often prepared by the man of the house, Sunday brunch comprises a butch congregation of salt cod, avocado, boiled potatoes, bananas, hard-boiled egg and a tomato sauce made with the mild Spanish onions that gave Bermuda its nickname, ‘the onion patch’.

The cod comes from the cold waters of the North Atlantic but the other components of the meal are local. The two per cent of Bermuda’s population that are still farmers are able to grow crops that include avocados, potatoes, tomatoes and bananas on its shallow alkaline soil. The potatoes are usually one of two North American varieties, Pontiac and Kennebec. The avocados belong to the leathery-skinned family first developed in the West Indies, and Bermudian bananas are small and sweet. Favoured varieties include Dwarf Cavendish which is regarded locally as the perfect ingredient in banana muffins. That said, the island-grown produce most likely to appear on restaurant menus is, surprisingly, carrots.

Rum and Sherry Peppers (a local concoction that vies for cupboard space alongside Worcestershire Sauce and Tabasco) provide the other strong flavours associated with Bermuda. Both find their way into Bermuda’s staple of fish chowder which combines finely shredded white fish meat and beef consommé, slowly simmered with vegetable, pawpaw, cloves, thyme, parsley and bacon. The fish used is often rockfish, a species of grouper found on the reef around Bermuda. Its habit of sticking to its own patch of coral made it easy to fish the species almost to extinction in the 1980s, using fishing pots which are now illegal. Weighing up to 120 pounds a time, happily the rockfish survived because some mature fish were simply too big to get into the traps.

As a visitor you are less likely to sample guinea chick lobster – also called spiny or Maine lobster – as its open season is the low season for tourists. But you are almost certain to encounter another big fish called the wahoo, a robust game fish from the mackerel family that can weigh up to 180 pounds. A sweet, meaty wahoo steak, grilled and served with a little lemon butter, is a traditional treat that is easily located on menus throughout the island.

Bermuda lays claim to some of the friendliest people in the world. And when those big warm smiles are combined with fresh seasonal cuisine, it’s hard not to feel right at home.