Bermuda

David Brown Travel is a Bermuda specialist, and three of their staff have been lucky enough to visit this lovely island.

Bermuda is a lush green sub-tropical country in the Atlantic Ocean made up of 150 small islands. The eight largest islands are joined by causeways and bridges to form a continuous land mass known as "the island".  The whole archipelago is just 21 miles long and on average one mile wide. It is more than 1000 miles north of the Caribbean, where a lot of people mistakenly believe it is located.  The houses are painted in a variety of colours, mostly pastels, but all the roofs are white, making it very attractive. Bermuda is volcanic in origin, and is surrounded by a coral reef, which shelters the island from the Atlantic and gives its coastal waters their beautiful turquoise colour. The sand contains tiny particles of broken-up coral, and this gives many of the beaches the appearance of being pink.

One of Bermuda's pink beaches

 The island has remained very much unspoilt. In spite of its obvious appeal to tourists there has been no building of high-rise apartments or vast commercialisation. The island has kept pollution by traffic to a minimum by limiting Bermudian families to owning one car only, and not permitting tourists to hire cars. Tourists can only hire mopeds, or do their island tours by taxi, bus, boat or ferry. The island is very affluent, there being no income tax and no unemployment. It has also become an international business centre, especially for insurance companies. Also, it is practically crime-free, with severe penalties for breaking the island’s speed limits both on the roads and the waterways, and for drug offences. Very few charter flights are allowed in. 90% of its tourism is from the USA, as it is only 600 miles from the American coast. However, the island is still very much a British colony (the oldest, in fact), and British-style policemen control the traffic. It is also still quite conservative in nature, some restaurants still requiring men to wear jackets and ties at dinner (unlike most of the Caribbean these days). In the daytime most of the Bermudian men wear traditional Bermuda shorts with long socks, and look very smart. Flight time from the UK is around 7 hours.

The climate in Bermuda is excellent, being a semitropical island warmed by the Gulf Stream. There is no rainy season as such, but there are two definite seasons. Summer temperatures prevail from May to mid-November, with the hottest weather being in July, August and September, although it seldom rises above 85F (29.5C). "Off-season" is from December to late March when the average temperature is 70F (21.1C), occasionally dropping to low 60’sF (15-18C). Off-season, however, can be an ideal time for golfers, who would find it too hot playing in the summer. The island is a mecca for golfers, there being eight championship courses (one for each day of the week, and one spare!). The courses are some of the most beautiful in the world. Being such a small island most of the courses have sea views.

Bermuda is also a great place for diving and other watersports. There are over 200 species of hard coral, and also many wrecks which have come to grief on the reefs. Motorised watersports are not allowed on hotel beaches, consequently you are not hassled to hire a jet-ski every five minutes! There are, however, Tennis is available at most of the hotels on the island. Hamilton is also a shopaholic’s paradise, with Scottish woollens, French porcelain, Italian leather and Belgian lace all at duty-free prices. Rum is also a bargain, especially the black rum from which you make the local drink "dark and stormy" (rum and ginger beer - lethal if you drink too many!).

There is none of the "hustle and bustle" in Bermuda’s streets such as you would see in some of the Caribbean islands,  nor any shanty town areas.  Cruise ships call regularly into Bermuda, but this again is restricted to no more than two at weekends and two in the week.

Hamilton's main street

Click here for Calendar of Events in Bermuda

Visit the official Bermuda Tourist Board website to learn more

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