‘Tourism, tourism and tourism,’ said my Antiguan cab driver, when I asked what the country’s main industries were. Still, it’s easy to avoid the other tourists, even though the island’s just over 100 square miles. Take a quad-bike tour — arranged by my hotel, the Sandals Grande Antigua Resort — and you can go from one end of the island to another in a morning, without seeing another tourist.
Instead, you’ll see fields of sweet potatoes, dotted with sprawling tamarisk trees; jagged cliffs and pale-yellow beaches, fringed with luminous, aquamarine water. You’ll also come across remnants of old sugar plantations; in the early colonial years, slavery was Antigua’s biggest moneymaker.
Most stirring of all is Betty’s Hope Estate, Antigua’s first major sugar plantation, founded by Christopher Codrington in the late 17th century. I felt a little chill when I read, in the pretty little museum there, that Codrington’s son’s legacy paid for Hawksmoor’s library at All Souls, Oxford.
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