Anguilla – The Caribbean

I’ve counted. We are outnumbered by palm trees. By a factor Of three to one. From where i’m sat outside gwen’s reggae Bar, sugary sand between my toes and carib beer in hand, To the hook of sand 300 metres away at the other end of Shoal bay east there are just eight people. That Includes the four of us. The empty beach. The cold beer. The gentle sounds of trade winds, lapping ocean and reggae music should be a cocktail for contentment. Instead it just serves to distress me. A hundred metres along the beach is a plantation-style house with which I’ve fallen in love. It’s on the market and I’m ready to make an appointment to look around. It even has an office. I imagine myself sat here, overlooking the beach at Shoal Bay, spending a month or two every year writing between swims and daiquiris. Until, that is, I fi nd out my dream pad is on the market for $8 million. Despite my disappointment, I’ve since discovered that’s actually a bit of a deal. Elsewhere in the Caribbean – say Barbados – $8 million will buy you C-list movie producing socialite Michael Winner or speed demon model Jodie Kidd for a neighbour. In Anguilla you are more likely to have Brad or Jen (obviously no longer at the same time) living next door. There is no island more hip for the Hollywood A-list than the most northerly of the Caribbean’s Leeward Islands, which lies between the Virgin Islands and Antigua. Edgy music TV station VH-1 reportedly called Anguilla the “celebrity winter vacation destination of the year”. Not that you would know it was hip. Apart from the line-up of G5’s or Falcon 300 private jets at Anguilla’s (until not so long ago grass) Wall Blake airfi eld, and the very occasional Range Rover dicing amongst ageing Mini Mokes or clapped-out Japanese cars on the island’s one and only main road, Anguilla is all about stealth wealth. Most of the houses are unpainted and a little unkempt. Rubble and rusting cars are not swept up just to please the visitors. Chickens and goats roam the streets. Forget bijou boutiques or delis selling fresh Roquefort cheese, coffee bars or offshore banks. The Valley, a crossroads around the colonial-sounding Coronation Avenue which spreads (only for a few hundred metres) Anguilla’s capital is a motley collection of utilitarian shops and businesses built to withstand hurricanes not lure Martha Stewart pilgrims. Anguilla is a real place, with a tiny population of 15,000 real people who are genuinely happy to welcome you. “You staying at Spyglass?” enquires the lady behind the counter at Corner Bar and Pizza in North Hill. She has a voice like Barry White’s, deep and soft and has taken an order for what are reputed to be the best pizzas on the island. It is still a little scary that she knows so much about me. But on Anguilla it does not take the skills of Clouseau to fi nd out what’s happening. “It’s a small island. News travels fast.” The pizza is good. We eat it on the verandah of Spyglass – the spectacular four-bedroom villa we have rented on a promontory high above Sandy Ground beach. Behind us is Dakar, Senegal – 3000 miles across the Atlantic. Ahead is the whole of the island and, above the low scrub of Anguilla’s not exactly picture postcard heartland rise the dramatic green peaks of the Franco/Dutch island of St. Martin. Anguilla is about beaches though, not the interior brush land. You’d need to stay on the 25×5 (km) isle for a month to experience a different day on each of Anguilla’s beaches. Just don’t do what I did and fi nd the one you like most (Shoal Bay) in the last few days of your stay. Explore the beaches and you start to fi nd the ingredients to Anguilla that put a £50,000 price tag on a week’s rental of Brad and Jen’s favourite villa. The day we sat on Shoal Bay was not a Wednesday in off-season August. It was Easter Saturday. And even over Christmas and New Year the icing sugar sand that decorates the coast is sparsely populated. “If you have to hear someone else talking on a beach then it’s a crowded day,” says the barmaid, possibly Gwen herself, at Gwen’s Reggae Bar. Her words cue a gaggle of giggling local schoolgirls coming down to the beach, their beach, for a swim. Clinging to the cliffs above the beaches, not just at Shoal Bay but at spots all round the island, is a splattering of large white villas. These are the homes away from home for Hollywood, for whom Anguilla is a fi ve hour jet ride from Santa Monica airport. Spotted disembarking have been rapper P.Diddy, Meryl Streep, Liam Neeson and J Lo. “Anguillans don’t care about most of the stars, but Jennifer Lopez and Puff daddy did cause a bit of a stir,” one hotel manager told me. Surprisingly, the stars are also happy to stay in Anguilla’s new rash of boutique villa resorts like Cap Jaluca and Altamer. Colonies of no more than a dozen or so ultra-luxurious villas. It is hardly mingling with the hoi-polloi. Once in your villa, say at Altamer, there is no need to see anyone else. Everything you need is available in the villa, which has an invisible staff of 9 and every piece of kit your Christmas list could want: 2 tennis courts per villa, 30,000 songs on the in-built sound system, pool table, 15 metre swimming pool and up to 8 bedrooms per villa.  Despite its British heritage (Anguilla was colonised in 1650 and is now a British Dependent Territory – the modern terminology for colony), most visitors are American. The feel of the place though is unmistakably British. Kids play cricket on any open space they can find in an attempt to emulate the island’s star West Indian cricketer Omari Banks. The cars drive on the left. Marmite, the most British of condiments, is on sale in the shops. Pictures of the Queen’s last visit in the 1980s are not uncommon. And the police are unarmed (crime on Anguilla is almost nonexistent). Something, fortunately, Anguilla has not inherited from its British big brother is its cuisine. Food on the island is spectacular, whether it is barbecuing your own mahi mahi and eating simply on your own patio like we did much of the time or splashing out (because, like the best Anguillan villas and hotels – good restaurants are pricey) for dinner. The best food we found on the island was at The Straw Hat at the Frangipani Resort. Chef Marc Alvarez has created a menu that uses the best local ingredients cooked with a mix of Caribbean and cosmopolitan flair. My pan seared snapper with a ‘Somewhat Spicy Thai Curry Sauce’ was heaven. So too Georgia’s Chili Lime Cheese Cake. We never found out who Georgia was though. www. strawhat.com. We did find out that Robert de Niro had allegedly been in for a bite. For lunch try Gorgeous Scilly Cay, where the lobster and crayfish come right out of the water, make a brief stop on the BBQ and hit your table sat on the middle of this offshore atoll. www.scillycay.com. Ease off on the pre-lunch rum punches. You might lose all use of your taste buds and jaw muscles if you drink too many. For the last time, it is back to Shoal Bay to sleep off our meal. One thing no resort nor villa can offer exclusively is access to a beach. They are all public. It means that any A-listers must share the beaches with the rest of us. That’s fine my me…as long as they pick someone else’s stretch of sand.

Anguilla Fast Facts:

Jeremy Hart stayed at Spyglass Hill villa. www.spyglasshillanguilla.com

A hotel option is CuisinArt Resort. www.cuisinartresort.com

Flights to Anguilla are generally through Antigua or San Juan, Puerto Rico. Alternatively you can fly to St. Martin and get the 20 minute ferry across to Anguilla. www.link.ai

For more information on Anguilla. www.anguilla-vacation. com or www.anguillaguide.com.