Travel: Barbados

An hour later, sitting in the opulent surroundings of Cobblers Cove Hotel, rum punch in hand and tree frogs chirping in the warm night air, my irritation had evaporated. And when two glasses of champagne were delivered a few minutes after we were shown into our cottage, we began to feel this was our sort of place.

And so it proved. Situated on the ritzy western Platinum Coast, Cobblers Cove - with its attractive gardens, helpful staff, guests' cocktail party and waterside restaurant serving fabulous food including lobster lunches and lavish weekly barbecues - is such a haven of pleasure it isn't surprising that some guests hardly stir from their loungers.

Which is a pity, since there is far more to Barbados than beaches. The island has, for example, some of the most beguiling architecture in the Caribbean. On our first morning we took a short walk in the sunshine to nearby Speightstown. In the days of slavery this was known as Little Bristol and was a major stop on the triangular route in which ships sailed from Bristol in the UK, picked up slaves in West Africa and brought them to the West Indies before returning home laden with sugar. Now it has become somewhat shabby and only one of the four jetties remains but there are still several old buildings to explore. One of these is Arlington House, an example unique to Barbados of a "single house", meaning a house only one room wide on the street side, rotated 90 degrees from the typical position.

This is a layout identical to houses found in Charleston, South Carolina, and in fact points up a fascinating connection between the two places for it was British planters led by Sir John Colleton who sailed from Barbados to colonise Charleston in 1670. Many slaves were subsequently shipped over there from Barbados to work the plantations and even today the Gullah dialect of South Carolina has much in common with Bajan, the creole language spoken on Barbados. Charleston is a city my husband and I know and love so we hastened to Arlington House which is now an impressive, imaginatively restored interactive museum, and spent several interesting hours there.

This is by no means the only architectural rarity to be found in Barbados. St Nicholas Abbey is one of the only three Jacobean buildings in the western hemisphere (Drax Hall, also in Barbados, is the second and the third is Baron's Castle in Virginia). Despite its name, St Nicholas Abbey was not an abbey but a plantation. Approached through a magnificent avenue of tall mahogany trees, the pink washed house with its curved Dutch gables and bobble-topped finials is extremely attractive. Larry Warren, architect of many prestigious buildings in Barbados, bought it in 2006 together with his wife Anna and two sons in order to prevent it being developed commercially. They have restored it impeccably, recreating the outbuildings and setting up a family enterprise producing and marketing rum, molasses, sugar and chutneys to help defray the considerable costs.

Although we dropped in unexpectedly, Larry's son Simon welcomed us most warmly and explained something of the fascinating history of the house. After coffee (served in china cups) we explored, admiring the antiques and especially the hand-painted Coalport dinner service and the antique sailor's valentines.

To one side of the house is an English-style herb garden and to the other a 400-year-old sandbox tree, while farther away lie an orchard, a steam mill, a syrup plant and a distillery. We could have lingered much longer as everything about this "heritage" establishment is done exactly as it should be (and so seldom is). The care and enthusiasm of the family permeates the atmosphere - typified by Simon giving us a slice of cake made to his grandmother's recipe as we left.

From here we continued south through a wilder landscape known as the Scotland district. The area does bear some resemblance to Scotland but there are far wider historic ties between the island and Scotland. The first "proprietor" of Barbados was a Scot, James Hay, 1sr Earl of Carlisle, and during the plantation era many Scots came to Barbados, not all willingly. So great was the need for labour to work the fields that the number of black slaves was inadequate and the quantity was made up by sending out indentured servants, many from Scotland and Ireland. Not only were the indentures almost worthless but this presented opportunities to empty jails of inmates including criminals and dissidents such as the Covenanters and even to "carry away" children from orphanages. Later numbers were further swelled during the Highland clearances.

To be "Barbadoe'd'"was no holiday in the sun for these unfortunates and the lives of those who survived the journey were no better than those of slaves - worse to some extent as they were unused to the burning sun - hence the nickname "redlegs". In many cases things did not improve after emancipation because, being white, they did not want to fraternise with the freed blacks, while the aristocratic white plantocracy certainly did not want to fraternise with them. Hence they remained poor whites - a tribe apart. Many have now integrated successfully and indeed one of the wealthiest men on the island, Richard Goddard, is proud of his redleg ancestry. There are, however, still families of fair-skinned Barbadians with names like Sinclair, Bailey and McCafferty who claim Scottish ancestry ekeing out a living in the Martin's Bay area.

Many of these people live in small wooden houses known as chattel houses. Such dwellings are seen throughout the Caribbean and originated when the plantation worker, not owning the land on which his home stood, simply took his home apart when he wanted to move and reconstructed it on a new site. Often painted in bright colours, decorated with fretwork "gingerbread" with pretty porches and louvered shutters, these little houses have considerable charm. It is a type of domestic architecture which deserves to be valued and seen as part of Barbadian heritage but as people become upwardly mobile far too many of them have been left to rot.

Another thing well worth doing in Barbados is visiting gardens. We took a tour organised by Cobblers Cove, first visiting Welchman Hall Gully and strolling among the magnificent collection of trees and shrubs clothing the sides of a deep ravine. We saw the bearded fig, Ficus citrifolia, the Portuguese for which - Os Barbados - is said to have given the island its name, as well as baobabs, mahogany, many fruit trees and some magnificent royal palms. This tropical habitat is also home to a tribe of green monkeys, sweet-looking creatures which are known throughout the island as thieves and garden pests.

Also on the tour we visited Hunte's Garden, and it interesting to compare the two establishments. Hunte's is also built around a sink hole but has been meticulously laid out as an exuberant pleasure garden in order to achieve mass appeal. The design includes shrubs and brightly coloured exotic flowers cascading down the sides of the crater and there are fountains, twisting paths leading to little sitting places and even classical music relayed from the trees. The visit ends with a drink of rum with the owner.

For those with a more serious interest in plants, Flower Forest Botanical Garden offers an outstanding plant collection with spectacular views towards the rugged east coast. At Bathsheba on the east coast is Andromeda Botanical Gardens, founded by the late Iris Bannochie, who travelled the world looking for plants. This is another horticulturally significant garden which, after a period in the doldrums, is being expertly revived by enthusiastic young gardener Sharon Cooke.

Getting there and where to stay

Patricia Cleveland-Peck was a guest of Visit Barbados (visitbarbados.org) and Cobblers Cove Hotel (cobblerscove.com). She flew with BA, which flies to Bridgetown daily from London Heathrow from £629. BA flies from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Heathrow - see britishairways.com for prices.

A week at Cobblers Cove costs from $1,325 per person with breakfast based on two sharing. A half-day private tour of the local gardens costs $130 per person with a driver, again based on two people sharing.