Travel and leisure
Destinations
Bermuda - savour the manana mentality
Skirted by blush-coloured beaches and sapphire seas, Bermuda offers an enticing mix of the exotic and the familiar
Britain's oldest colony comprises 138 islands whose combined land mass amounts to little more than 20 square miles. Thanks to its compact proportions Bermuda is easy to explore - getting from A to B is simply a matter of taking one of the frequent ferries, catching the pink bus towards Hamilton or boarding the blue bus out of the capital.
Since the islands span just two miles at their widest point you're never far from the pastel-pink beaches for which Bermuda is renowned. But other than its sun-bleached shores what else does Bermuda have to offer?
There's the former capital and UNESCO World Heritage site of St George, settled in 1609 and therefore one of the oldest English municipalities in the New World. Named after Sir George Somers who took refuge here after being shipwrecked en route to Virginia some 600 miles west, its streets recall England of old with names such as Old Maid's Lane and Duke of York Street.
Hamilton stole capital status from St George in the early 1800s. It's in this pristine pint-sized city you'll glimpse policemen in their trademark ice-white Bermuda shorts directing traffic amid candy-coloured buildings, and see cruise ships wedged in the harbour offloading passengers to Hamilton's 19th-century fort and world-class Underwater Exploration Institute.
Beyond the capital, the islands' other notable sights include the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda Maritime Museum and the 18th-century manor house and gardens of the Verdmont Museum.
Natural attractions are plentiful. Among them the spectacular underwater Crystal Caves of Bailey's Bay (viewed from a walkway suspended above the lake), Tom Moore's Jungle, Firefly Nature Reserve and Paget Marsh, where you might spot great blue heron, black-bellied plover and even a swallow-tailed kite if you're lucky.
When it comes to sport, the gentlemanly pursuits of cricket and golf are almost a national obsession in Bermuda, although tennis fans, water sports enthusiasts and walkers will find plenty to occupy them too. But if all you want to do is soak up the rays and savour the manana mentality, you'll also find there's no better place to be than Bermuda.
About Bermuda: did you know...
• Bermuda's beaches are tinged pink by the crumbled red skeletons of red foram
• Sir Winston Churchill was among the first travellers to take advantage of Imperial Airways' flying boat service established in the late 1930s. Then the journey took nearly 18 hours; today it takes under seven.
• Bermuda has the most golf courses per square mile in the world.
• The booming business of offshore finance means Bermuda has the third highest per capita income in the world.
• The Bermuda rig is the basis for nearly all modern day yacht rigs.
