18. The Journey Home (Mick)

And so to the last day, which I’ll keep short.

It started early, as we had to be up before 4 to catch a small charter boat from Virgin Gorda to Beef Island. Despite the early start this was pretty cool – the day was just beginning to break as we set off, and James our skipper spent the whole trip telling us about the deep waves that we were seeing from Hurricane Bill (which explained the murky water yesterday), the annual cycle of bird and turtle migrations, the physical capacity constraints on air travel in the BVI, his life history and a number of other interesting topics. Clare has a theory on the type of person that talks like this, but I won’t repeat it here for fear of getting flamed.

We got to the airport on time, and LIAT did a good job getting us and our baggage to Antigua via a scheduled stop at St Maartens. I don’t know much about that island but it looks like a Caribbean Benidorm, an instant reminder of just how unspoilt the BVI are. We had a lonnnnng stopover in Antigua before our flight home so just like the outbound journey we got to know the departure lounge very well. Still it did at least give Liam to update his Facebook status for the rest of the day.

Thats it really - the plan was delayed two hours but actually even that worked out ok, as most of that translated into extra sleeping time as we landed just after 7am rather than the 5:30am scheduled time.

17. Mick's Birthday & Devil's Bay (Mick)

One great thing about an August birthday (as reader HotJonesy1 of Cheshire pointed out) is you get to spend it in nice places. In practice that can mean airports and motorways, but mostly she’s right. Clare’s preference for last-minute shopping means the exciting unpredictability of “made locally” presents, but this year was good, books, T-shirts, music and the obligatory Christmas Tree decoration (a strange tradition).

We had a very mellow day, chilling out at home in the morning before heading off for the afternoon to Devil’s Bay. The snorkeling was really disappointing as the distant storms seem to have churned everything up and visibility was about nil. It made for a great sea though, not so much crashing waves as all the water in the bay moving in and out like jelly.


Mike and Ciaran climbed rocks high enough to make me worry, never mind Granddad, and Clare, Liam and I kept getting in and out of the water to keep cool as it was blisteringly hot (too hot to walk on the sand). We had a lovely lunch at the “Top of the Baths”, recommended by our gardener, Ralph, then back home to say hi to my Mum and Dad.

We did a Skype video call to them from the poolside which was a hoot, though it was a miracle that Ciaran’s enthusiasm didn’t drown the laptop. We then all had a final swim in the pool (home tomorrow), and got round to discussing Mike's upcoming GCSE's results - due next Thursday. Liam's sole contribution was at the end, pitching in with "Hey Mike, bet you'll able to spell 'FUDGE' with your results", which had us in fits.

To end the day we went back to the Mine Shaft Café, this time getting their early enough to see the beautiful sunset. Dinner was good but conversation was drowned out by the singer who had set up right next to us. He was actually pretty good, both as a singer and a guitarist, and entertained us with a mix of traditional-style songs that he’d written and folk songs from the 60’s. He was from St Lucia and the general theme was “life was so good then, now its pants”. My philosophy on life is a bit different to that, but I respected his opinion and enjoyed the music. When he reached his Bob Dylan catalogue though enough was enough, your reporter made his excuses and left, cats wailing in harmony on all sides.

It was a great birthday, I must have more of them.

16. Savannah Bay (Mick)

We went half-way up the island today to Savannah Bay, which we’d been told was great for snorkeling. Clare was first in but the weather meant the water was very cloudy (all the sand shaken up by the storms I think) so we couldn’t see far and after moving a few reefs around the bay by kicking them with her bare feet, she lost interest.


We had a nice morning swimming and reading, not much more to report than that really, other than that we had to keep our eyes open for the deadly Manchineel Trees. There was a warning nailed to a tree on the edge of the beach that described the 20 ways that these trees can hurt you – if you chop it the sap will burn you, if you burn it the smoke will blind you, if you eat the fruit (“which is tasty” – how do they know?!) it will choke you, if you stand under it and it rains it will drip acid onto you. It didn’t include a picture of this most fearsome of God’s creations but after 15 minutes reading the small print the description matched the tree the warning was nailed to – we took flight immediately but were lucky to escape with our lives!

So back to the pool, where the boys spent the whole afternoon larking about in the pool and were just getting the hang of "corpse photos" when thankfully the film on our disposable underwater camera ran out ...

14. Scuba Diving (Mick)

I've been interested in diving since I was a youngster, but wasn't sure I'd ever get to have a go myself. We used to go on holiday in Ireland with my Dad's brother and sisters and their children, often to Valentia ("Paradise Island of Ireland" I now learn). We were always impressed by my Uncle Billy, who was very involved in the Irish Sub-Aqua Club, and would disappear out into the bay in all his gear and bring us scallop shells, starfish and sea-urchins. He also gave my parents a plate that was recovered from a wreck, the "Tayleur", that went down off Dublin in 1854 with the loss of almost 300 lives (Billy's story of how they discovered the wreck makes great reading) .

The temperature and clarity of the water make the British Virgin Islands an ideal location, so Mike and I signed up for the first step on the ladder, the one day "Discover Scuba" course. They could only cater for people 16 years or older so Clare and the rest of the Blue Team headed off to Spring Bay. We hooked up with two other nubes and had the "classroom" and "pool" sessions in the morning, before heading out on a boat for a proper dive. Another advantage of doing this in the BVI was that the "classroom" consisted of us sitting on recliners on the beach, while Paul our instructor took us through the gear and the safety info, and the "pool" was the shallow bay at Little Dix Bay

This was the first time I’d ever tried scuba diving and I loved it. The things I thought would be challenging proved to be very easy – breathing through the equipment was no harder than breathing normally, and going underwater (40’ was our maximum allowed depth) didn’t cause a problem with either ears or nerves. What was challenging was trying to do everything at once. Its amazing how much you control your depth by the way you breathe, and trying to do this while “clearing” my ears proved to me beyond doubt that men can’t multi-task.

We got to do our “proper dive” after lunch, when we took a boat up the coast to Mountain Point. Our guide, Johann, undid all my years brainwashing Mike to be a steady chap with a solid career, by regaling him with tales of how he’d chucked it all in for a life of sun and sea. He looked good on it too, young, fit, tanned, relaxed, with his own boat and an all–female crew, but was he happy? That aside, he certainly knew his stuff, in our one-tank 45min dive he pointed out about 30 different types of fish, writing their names on a kind of slate. Best were two fish about 4-5’ long (whose name escapes us), a huge lobster that wouldn’t come out of his hole in the reef, and an Arrow Crab, about 9” across with legs thinner than matchsticks.

The dive seemed much shorter than it actually was, and I can’t wait to do it again, though when and where we’ll just have to see.

Clare picked us up from the harbour (technically we picked her up, from the outside bar, “Painkiller” in hand). They'd discovered Spring Bay and had a great time amongst the rocks - tomorrow it would be our turn.

13. Ana passes us by

There are two reasons why this is the "off season" in the British Virgin Islands.

One is that people like coming here when it is cold at home, so peak season starts with Thanksgiving in the US and runs through to the end of spring in the UK. The other is that it is hurricane season (which by the way led to some poorly-informed arguments about pronunciation and etymology , but lets not go there).

Its been pretty quiet while we've been here, but as Tropical Storm Ana became the first named storm of the season we saw how the storms become a part of everyday conversation, and noticed they were picked up a couple of times at mass on Sunday. In the end the BVI were very lucky, the storm swung south and bypassed us, but we did get really strong howling winds and lashing rain all through Sunday night. Monday morning was cloudy and still quite windy so we got a bit nostalgic for Mayo and went for an old-skool drive-around-in-the-rain kind of day.

"Just like Mayo" has actually been a recurring quote through this holiday and while its usually delivered in the smart-Alec sense, referring to the temperature of the sea or the heat of the sun, there is quite often an element of truth in it. Perhaps that's one reason we like Virgin Gorda so much, the rough landscape, the hills (once you get away from The Valley), the often-empty long clean beaches and the Atlantic crashing in.

Of course, not everyone is all that nostalgic about long drives in the rain, use your powers of deduction to see if you can work out which member of the family stayed in the car reading Harry Potter every time we stopped to admire the view...

When I say long drive, thats a relative term as the island is only ten miles long and two across at its widest, and the roads don't reach all the way to the north end. This is the fashionable North Sound, much of it only reachable by boat, and very big with the yachting crowd. We drove as far as Gun Creek, which we'd been told was the only resort that was still open. In fact everywhere was shut so we headed over to Leverick Bay passing the local jail on the way. Leverick was open, that is at least the resort was. Like the resort at Long Bay beach, this had the pros and cons of globalisation - on the down side you could be eating in any bar restaurant in the US, on the plus side it was actually open and the chips were terrific. You'll not be surprised to hear that we swallowed our ideals almost as quickly as we swallowed our Painkillers. It was striking though just how quiet it was, there seemed to be only about a dozen other people in a resort geared up to cater for hundreds, so hurricanes or not, this is the time of year to come here.

After lunch we headed back home. The weather had started to lift as Ana receded so the views just got nicer and nicer. The plan was to spend the afternoon chilling out in the pool, but in the end the 20-mile round trip and the challenge of lunch proved to have worn some of us out ...

12. (Part 1) St Ursula's (Mick)

Today was a really great day.

First up, this being a Sunday, we were late for mass. A week late and then some, as we were too lazy last week to go at all and too slow out the door this time - nothing new there. The Yout knew we were having too much difficulty getting ourselves out the door to have enough energy to fight them, so they hunkered down and left Clare and I to go on our own.

Which is a pity, because they missed something special. We went to the local catholic church, St Ursula's, and though it took us a while to find the actual church, we struck lucky on three counts. Firstly, it was the feast of the Assumption, so the mass would have had a little bit more about it in any parish. Secondly, it was the 20th anniversary of the building of the church so this was quite a special mass in this parish. Thirdly, because of the first two, they had guests coming from the catholic community on Tortola and had to wait for the boat to arrive. That meant mass started twenty minutes late, and we made the start by the skin of our teeth.

As you might imagine, a Caribbean mass is a very different experience from a British one. The two electric guitars (one lead, one rhythm), keyboards, conga and massive speaker give a clue. The congregation was pretty small (maybe 100 people in all, including guests) but boy can they sing! The priest, Polish I think, also got with it and the whole mass was loud, colourful and vibrant. The offertory procession was led by a really elegant dance from the senior girls, and there was a separate dance from the junior girls at the end. Everything that could be sung was sung (including the "I Confess", new to me but very effective) and a very memorable Our Father that started solemnly then clicked into a Calypso swing.

As if all that wasn't enough they asked if there were any first-time visitors to the parish - Clare and I fessed up and got to stand up and have the whole parish sing us a welcome song. They then asked if anyone had a birthday in the coming week, so Clare gave me a shove and I joined three other happy campers at the front to get a special blessing, a song from the parish and a special birthday ribbon pinned on me by two members of the choir. Finally they asked if anyone had an anniversary in the coming week and repeated the special attention for an elderly widower and his children and grandchildren. The whole service felt like it came from the parish community, and indeed this is reflected in the history of the parish. It was very thought provoking and they invited us to stay for food afterwards and join them in the afternoon at Savannah Beach, but we'd been out for nearly two hours and had visions of crucifixions taking place back at the ranch.

11. A Bigger Splash (Mick)

Our house on Virgin Gorda is the groovily-named "A Bigger Splash". Its a terrific house, located at the south end of the island about 5 minutes walk from The Baths (more on that from Ciaran in tomorrow's blog).

Even after just a day or two here, the feel of this island is very different to Tortola. This end of the island is flat and quite dry, more sand and cactus, less jungle and hillsides. Its more open to the winds which make it cooler and best of all less buggy. The house is really big, laid out on several levels with a wonderful pool and the luxury of a room for each boy. One of my fellow travelers commented that the colour scheme wasn't quite as original as Limeberry's which reminded me of Chandler's comment about the problems of small wallets.

The sensible thing to do on our first full day would be to explore the island, get our bearings and plan out the rest of the week. But holidays aren't about being sensible are they, so we decided to just chill out, and spent the day reading, swimming and, of course, blogging.

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10. Off to Virgin Gorda (Mick)

Time to switch islands. After a great week on Tortola we had to catch the midday ferry from Roadtown to Spanishtown on Virgin Gorda. Our taxi driver was great, like all the locals we've met, he was proud of Tortola and keen to tell us about it. First up was the racetrack, which we'd seen on our drive to Sage Mountain but had assumed to be an athletics track. I asked him how they got the horses to run in this heat and he said it was no problem, they loved it, went swimming in the sea every day. He also showed us the power station and explained how they got their electricity (all from imported diesel), why they'd changed their currency to the US dollar (the majority of their exports go to the US Virgin Islands) and how different the USVI are (St. John's is the "New York of the Caribbean", six times the population per square foot compared to the BVI). I was tempted to get him to take us round the island but we had a boat to catch.

The ferry was a hydrofoil so very quick and smooth. It was lovely and cool, reminded us that really the best way to manage the heat of the Caribbean is to be out on the water.

We also had a great view of the smaller islands as we crossed - Peter, Salt, Cooper and our favourite of course, Ginger, for you sir, a deal at just $20million.

7. Today we did ... (Mick)

... nothing, nada, zip, zilch, nowt

Actually that's not quite true. "The Yout" voted to have a chill-out day (like there is any other kind on a Caribbean holiday) so we spent the day at home, doing lots of reading, lounging around in and out of the pool and getting dive bombed by Stukka.

We did manage to drag ourselves out in the evening however, visiting the resort hotel at Long Beach for dinner in their beach restaurant. Food was pretty good, a buffet of local Tortola food, served on an eat-as-much-as-you-like basis, which is always a winner with The Noo-Noo and his friend. We tucked into ribs, jerk chicken, peas'n'rice, mahi-mahi, fried plantain, corn-bread and ox tail (which Liam loved) then watched the lightning as a storm came in and the rain poured down.

3. Long Bay Beach (Mick)

Today we got our first proper taste of the Caribbean, walking from Limeberry to our nearest beach at Long Bay, about 10mins walk. Most of that is through what looks to our city-boy eyes to be jungle, so there was lots of excitement and talk about Vietnam films before we emerged blinking into the daylight:
The beach is amazing, perfect sand, warm clear waters, waves not big enough to surf maybe but big enough to turn you upside down if you get a bit lippy. It was also deserted, perhaps in part due to our city-boy nous guiding us to go to the beach at midday, so we could fry our lilly-white skins in the hottest part of the day!

Thankfully we escaped without too much damage, just a feint sizzling sound and a whiff of bacon as we walked home. Our local contact Jon has been encouraging us to get out more, and we were almost tempted to catch Maxi Priest, who was playing at the next bay up from Long Bay, bit in the end sitting on our arses won the day.

I continued my reading frenzy, and finished my first Chuck Palahnick novel - Survivor. Clare and Mike are both fans and it was actually from Clare's holiday reading pile, which I'd had to raid on desperation. Terrific book, like to read some more of his stuff, Fight Club next I guess.

Anyway the day ended on a high as LIAT finally found my bag and I was able to shave, shower and put on clean clothes, much to the relief of everyone in Limeberry and indeed the West End of Tortola.

2. Limeberry House & Roadtown (Mick)

First day on the island we basically just took our time and got our bearings. Spent the morning unpacking then headed into Road Town, the main town on Tortola (and the British Virgin Islands) to get our victuals. We found a big supermarket that had pretty much everything you need, even down to Waitrose Pesto! We also grabbed a lovely lunch at The Moorings, where the kids discovered the delights of Maraschino Cherries ("The Fruit That Made Oregon Famous" would you believe).

I also finished my first book of the holiday, Manicdotes by Chris Joseph. I know Chris quite well, though I haven't seen him for 25 years. We were at Liverpool University at the same time and spent our first year living in Morton House, ground floor of B block as I remember. I therefore can't be an objective critic, but I thought the book was terrific. Its a series of anecdotes that provide a skeleton autobiography, and a large part of it portrays the impact that bipolar disorder has had on his life. Chris says that this first hit him a few years after he left university, so it was never a factor when I knew him. Even at that stage however he had had a more interesting life than anyone I met, having already started at University once before, quit to pursue a vocation as a Catholic priest, spent time in a Benedictine monastery, worked as a night club bouncer, and worked in a steel factory where he lost his right arm in a horrific accident. As you might guess, the next 2o-plus years have not been uneventful and I hope our paths cross again some day.

1. Gatwick to Beef Island (Mick)

There must be a better way to start a holiday than a 4am alarm getting you out of bed.

To be fair, my holiday actually did start better than that, as the alarm was to get Clare out of bed and I hung on in sleepy denial for another 20mins or so before bowing to the inevitable. We've had a busy 2009, and haven't been away since Christmas, so we're all ready for a good break.

We'd had a bit of hassle getting Ciaran a last minute passport (long story) so were delighted the journey went well, we got out on time, checked in early, took off on time and had a good flight over. We'd booked Virgin, the family favourite, so enjoyed a couple of films with "Looking for Eric" as the standout:

The Virgin plane landed at 1pm local time and we then had a few hours to kill in Antigua airport before catching the LIAT airlines flight to Beef Island in Tortola. This was quite a cool flight as it was a small propeller plane, full with less that 40 people on board. It was more like getting on a bus than a plane, especially as it had a row of five seats across the back, perfect for the naughty kids coming home from school, or the Hegarty family going on holiday. This flight was only an hour and while the views either side were pretty cool everyone was too dozy from the long day to get very excited. Things got more excited when we landed in Tortola, as it turned out that the plane had carried rather less luggage than passengers. We were relatively lucky as we got four bags our of five, but mine was nowhere to be seen. Our host, Jon, later explained that LIAT stands for Luggage In Another Terminal, though in fact that is only one of several affectionate interpretations.

After a 40min queue to fill in a missing luggage form we met with David our taxi driver and came over to Limeberry. It was on this journey that everyone began to realise how different this place was. It wasn't any one thing, but the combination of accents, heat, sounds, vegetation and nightlife are very different to our usual Mediterranean or US holidays. Which is what we were after of course.

Jon met us at the house, we'd said we were fine but when I'd mentioned that this was our first trip to the Caribbean he was keen to welcome us in person. The house looks fantastic, but we all headed for the best part of it - bed.

Killington 2008/9 - Day 7

Day 7 - More words about Skiing and food
by Mick Hegarty

The weather was better today, so my Great Plan was to use our advantage of “being on English time” to get out early and catch the first lifts at 8am (ie: 1pm UK time). The reality of course was that we had flopped onto US time about 5 minutes after arriving here, so we got up slowly, had a slow breakfast, and drifted out to the slopes at about 10:30.

We headed down to the base via Carpenters Run, which is a really nice family run through the trees - you rarely see other skiers and it is generally very quiet and peaceful:
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You know, when I die, I will be like the Czechoslovakian politician Vladamir Clementis mentioned in Milan Kundera’s novel “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”, who only exists in photos in the form of his hat. In Clementis’ case it is because he fell out of favour, was hung, and then was airbrushed out of all photos (they forgot the hat, which he had leant to a colleague). In my case I am never in favour long enough to fall out of it, and don’t get into the photos in the first place. No one in our family will take photos, so I have to take them all and then don’t really exist when we look back at them later. It’s thus an added joy that they criticise me* while I’m taking them (Michael roared at me when I took this video clip for example) only to Ooh and Ahh about them once we are home.

Anyway, enough whinging. After a bit of skiing we headed up to the top of Killington Peak for lunch. We split in two, with the “Green Team” (Clare, Liam and Ciaran) taking the gentle Highlander slope, while the “Blue Team” (Mike and I) took Bittersweet. I am an imposter really, as I’m nervy on the steeper Blue runs, whereas Mike is confident, graceful and fast as hell.


The steeper runs are exhilarating and its one of those oddities of life that you feel most alive when the only thing in your mind is sudden painful death!

We had a nice lunch at the peak – the food was the usual but the view is spectacular (you can see five states plus Canada) and while we were there the snow came in and visibility dropped to almost nothing for a while. This was somewhat poignant for Clare and I as one of our most memorable evenings was a dinner in Windows on the World with The Goblins about 20 years ago where the same thing happened and we came out on a snow-covered world.

After lunch we did a couple more runs then Liam and Ciaran headed back to the hotel leaving Clare, Mike and I to finish the afternoon on Easy Street – a basic run as the name suggests but the find of the trip for us this year. One of the many things we love about Killington (and staying at the Grand Resort) is the freedom it gives the boys. Its massive - there are something like 200 trails - but it’s a very safe environment, and the benefit of a “ski-in ski-out” hotel is that there is lots of flexibility for people with different interests to do their own thing.

We finished up at Yoshi Sushi and the famous Hibachi dinner. The food is great, cooked right in front of you, but it’s the showmanship of the chef that makes it special, including the famous volcano made out of onion rings. Clare’s mum Nuala commented after reading the first couple of days that all we seemed to do was eat and it is true! We all love our grub and the great thing about a skiing holiday is that you can eat like a horse and actually lose weight. Or at least that is the Great Plan….

* Liam saw a good T-shirt: “If a man is standing in the middle of the forest speaking and there is no woman around to hear him . . . is he still wrong?”