Learning to relax in Antigua

Been here almost a week and what have we done? We have been anchored in English harbour in a small bay, Freemans bay.  The beach is beautiful white sand lined with palm trees and some holiday bungalows but the beach is not very accessible to never very busy.

Freemans Bay

The bay looks back out to sea and over to Montserrat on a clear day and the sunsets are lovely.

Montserrat on the horizon 

English harbour is the home of Nelsons dockyard, we have not paid to visit the museum but visitors pile through the gates at 9am every morning. This restored 18th century naval base was named after Lord Nelson who spent some time here.  Some of the buildings are very interesting.

Restored pillars of sail loft in Nelsons Boat yard

Admirals House, Nelsons dockyard - now a pretty hotel

Pillars again

Entrance to dockyard

Boats come and go in the anchorage including a number of other British boats, which is nice.  

We have ventured on the bus into St Johns, the capital, first visit was to supermarket and to the dentist for Mark, so not so great but the bus journey was entertainment enough – there is not enough beeping, waving and general jollyment in the UK!  We have since visited and had a look around the duty free shops but they are the same as they are everywhere in the world – booze, perfume, sunglasses, watches, etc!

Most of our time has been spent swimming and relaxing, where were joined by quite a large fish (barracuda)  under the boat one day which put as both off jumping in!

Big fish!

We also try to hunt down the turtles  there are quite a few loggerhead turtles but they are a bit camera shy, but we will continue to pursue them.  Abbie and Mark did see a String Ray.

Sting ray with our cool new underwater camera - thanks Alan

We also managed a lovely leg burning walk on the spit of land that separates English harbour from Falmouth harbour, views over the harbour were really nice and another photo of Magnum at anchor.

Magnum is the boat to the right hand side of the big catamaran 

English harbour

Mark with Montserrat very far in the distance

English harbour from even higher on our walk

Clear view over to Montserrat

Mark also made friends.

Cute goats roaming free

The other side looking over to Falmouth harbour

Falmouth harbour

The very pretty Falmouth harbour