Together with Debra and Paul we took a local bus into the capital, Hamilton.    This is a city dominated by luxury shops and business - we all agreed that St Georges had a lot more charm.  

After sampling a few of the delightful, but slightly expensive eateries in St George, we spent an afternoon exploring the island on which it stands…Bermuda is made up of several islands forming an archipelago…and headed up out of the town towards Fort St Catherine. This is now a well informed museum and the fort itself looks down on Gates Bay, where the first British settlers were forced ashore in a gale, and a leaky boat!

Bermuda is very orderly after the Caribbean, which appeals to a different sense of charm entirely. In Bermuda, gentlemen wear shorts, of course, but they are ironed and the cognescenti wear dark blue long socks as well. Houses are of stone with inimitable Bermudan white roofs, designed to catch rainfall for domestic consumption. There are no wooden shacks and all dwellings are immaculately painted in one of a selection of artistically poignant and correct pastel shades. Everything works, which is helpful in itself. The population is polite to a fault, and everyone greets everyone else in the streets.

The heritage is fiercely English…if not British and the English flag accompanies the Union flag everywhere in these Islands.

Someone asked us yesterday if we thought we would ever come back to Bermuda…and the answer is of course, yes…especially if we complete another Atlantic circuit…

Our minds are turning towards the 2000 mile journey to Faial in the Azores…and specifically Horta. Maybe we'll depart in a day or so.  Waioting for the Bermuda Azores high may delay us too much so we will sail with what we get...