Slow down and savour

And check this for romance - they dance the beguine. However, when they do begin the beguine, you can see that unlike the justly famous Cole Porter number, it's not at all langorous but quite jiggy - to judge from the fabulously sexy Ballet Martiniquais (see them if you get

the chance).

Yet these islands are uncommon destinations for us Brits because they are French departments with the same political, educational, and cultural structures as mainland France. (Red tape, for example, rules them out as a wedding venue, although honeymooners will enjoy the sheer sensuality of sun, sea, sand, and . . . sugar-cane juice, allegedly an aphrodisiac.) French is the main language, but Creole is widely spoken, a dialect with West African grammatical structures that even metropolitan French don't always understand. Since around 70% of visitors are French, speaking the language is undoubtedly a great advantage, and in Marie-Galante, where the first large hotel opened only in December, a phrasebook is a necessity for those with only franglais. A strong streak of francophilia is essential to make the most of a holiday here.

However, English is the second language taught in schools. Martinique and Guadeloupe became luxury tourist destinations in the 1960s, but are now popular for middle-market package holidays from France, and as a stopover for American cruise ships. In hotels, English is widely spoken. The Scots are historically great francophiles, and we all know that when there's a French connection, there's always great food. Why let the French keep their spice islands all to themselves?

We flew from Paris to the capital of Martinique, Fort-de-France, where nearly half the island's 400,000 people live. A colleague had heard that Martinique is the most built-up of Caribbean islands, rather like Basingstoke. Well, the industrial estates are as unlovely as they are the world over, but the shopping district's ramshackle French colonial style is more reminiscent of New Orleans. The glorious Cathedral of St Louis offers a cool refuge after a visit to the nearby market, where insistent saleswomen call you doudou and press you to buy vanilla pods, whole nutmegs, and baskets of spices to make the favourite colombo curry sauce. You can swig the juice from a green coconut cut open by a machete for 50p. And not a roundabout in sight.

The countryside is blanketed in sugar, banana, and pineapple plantations. A visit to a rum distillery is de rigueur, to investigate the distinctive characteristics of an export as cherished as whisky, and not unlike it in the making. The most popular tipple is Ti Punch (little punch), made with 18-month-old, straw-coloured paille rum, served with sugar-cane syrup and lime. It's very strong, very delicious, and drunk at any time of day. St James, which has an interesting rum museum, is the best-selling brand.

Another cheering feature to make Scots feel at home in Martinique is something resembling a local tartan - the ubiquitous, brightly-coloured check of Madras cotton, as worn in the national costume. Women wind Madras headscarves into perky little hats with one to four points signalling their romantic status, and wear them with white broderie anglaise blouses and lacey petticoats under a chequered skirt. When they begin the beguine in this sort of get-up it's nothing short of sensational.

The empire-style owes a great deal to Martinique's leading historical female celebrity, Marie Josephe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie - better known as Josephine, the name given her by her second husband, the slightly more

famous Napoleon Bonaparte. The La Pagerie sugar plantation at Les Trois-Ilets, where her family lived and where she spent an idyllic childhood, is now a museum with portraits and exhibits including her stockings, a lock of her hair, and one slipper. The legend goes that when she was bathing with the locals, a fortune teller, Eliama David - the Eileen Drewery of her time, perhaps - told Josephine that she would one day become plus que reine (more than a queen). The empire line of gown that coquettishly hugs and exposes the bosom led to the empress's death of vanity (she caught a chill while walking in the gardens of Malmaison with the Czar of Russia), but her style lives on. The colonial past makes Josephine an ambiguous figure for modern Martiniquais, however. She freed her old nurse in 1808 and gave her a pension, but it took 40 more years before slavery was abolished in 1848, and some

blame her for the delay. Her statue in Fort-de-France was beheaded in 1991, and stays that way. Part of the museum was torched in 1995.

Most communes, or villages, are small, and dwarfed by modern apartment blocks are traditional West Indies chattel houses, the wooden cabins that the French call gaulettes. Sometimes they house tilolos, little shops that sell a bit of everything - often desirable bags or clothes in Madras. (It gets compulsive. The Basingstoke colleague could not stop buying yard upon yard in different patterns, even though she was about to visit Madras itself.)

It's advisable to hire a car or take a taxi tour to appreciate the natural beauty of the islands. The rainforests of Martinique and Guadeloupe are breathtaking for any eco-tourist. Hiking trails are well-used and no wonder. The sheer exuberant fertility of the giant bamboo, tree ferns, mountain palms, teak and mahogany trees, and hanging creepers makes you scared to stand still for five minutes, in case something grows over you. And not for nothing is Martinique known as the Island of Flowers. Sulphur-yellow alamander, fragrant frangipane, royal palms - known as the traveller's tree for secreting water in their fans, they have a sculpted look, and the brown striated base makes them appear to have grown their own base. Mango-laden trees. Wild radishes, ''rose of India'', redden roadsides. Best of all, the flamboyant tree, aptly named for its blazing scarlet-orange blossoms. June is the month

to see the main mountain road lined with them in the national park in Basse-Terre, the forested half of Guadeloupe. Near Fort-de-France in Martinique, you can gasp at all manner of exotic specimens in Balata Gardens - ornamental bananas, lobster claws, plastic-looking anthuriums, tree orchids, porcelain lilies . . . flora we modest, crimson-tippet Scots consider ultra-chic grow in humble back gardens, like daisies in Basingstoke lawns.

Volcano-baggers may wish to tackle the 1397-metre Mount Pelee, whose head is perennially swathed in rainclouds (if you see it without, it's said, you will return to Martinique. Unfortunately, like Buchaille Etive Mor, it always is.) Pelee's most memorable outburst in 1902 caused

the deaths of 26,000 people in the nearest town, St Pierre. The sole survivor was Cylbaris, a drunkard flung in a cell for failing to return from a night's leave to go to a dance.

Near the museum of vulcanology you can see the ruins of a splendid theatre, and nearby, the dungeon that saved him from the sulphur. Guadeloupe's countryside is more rolling than mountainous but the rainforest has such attractions as the Cascade aux Ecrevisses (Langoustine Waterfall), where young people love to swim.

Slavery is the painful past that crops up again and again. On the beautiful Anse Cafard beach sit 15 hulking contemporary statues in memory of hundreds of Africans drowned when their ship went down off the coast in 1830, when slavery was abolished in Europe. Only women and children survived because the men were chained up. The memorial is near the Rocher du Diamant, held by the British for 17 months in the early eighteenth century. British ships still salute ''Her Majesty's Diamond Rock'' when they pass it.

In Fort-de-France the baroque ironwork library is named after Victor Schoelcher, an Alsace china salesman who returned to Europe after visiting the islands to promote the abolition of slavery. He eventually became governor of Guadeloupe and there is a museum dedicated to him in the commercial capital, Pointe-a-Pitre. Every town seems to have a street named after him. However, there is a silver lining to the barbaric legacy. The slave-owners knew how to live in style, and the modern tourism industry has turned this to its advantage by transforming fine old plantation buildings into hotels and restaurants. The Plantation Leyritz at Basse Pointe, Martinique, has an excellent restaurant and beautiful grounds. The Habitation Lagrange hotel, set in the rainforest at Le Marigot, is private, romantic, stunning, luxurious, and with four-poster beds, a fabulous honeymoon destination. On Marie-Galante,

the stately 1850s Chateau Murat has been under restoration for 10 years but is even now worth a visit for its rolling landscaped estate, walled herb garden, and stunning views across a blue bay to Domenica. You reach this little button of an island by ferry from Guadeloupe, taking in views of Domenica and Saint Anne as you go. A relaxed hotelier said the way of life in the Caribbean is best described by the verb siroter, to sip or savour; he was heading to Marie-Galante for a weekend's fishing and sirotage. Everyone knows everyone else and stops to shake hands, ox-drawn wagons trawl sugar-cane leisurely along, and anywhere is 10 minutes from the sea. The ''island of windmills'' has

30-odd left, the Moulin de Bezard fully restored to crush sugar cane. You can watch workers strip the cane with machetes at the only factory, the Grand'Anse cannerie. Outside its craft museum, little girls sell delicious coconut tablet (another taste of home). Another popular purchase is sirop batterie, which goes into the Ti-Punch and is just the thing to flambe bananas. The brand-new four-star La Cohoba hotel is stylishly designed with a spectacular pool, empty beach, creole-style bungalows, and self-catering suites for families. Best of all, people are tres sympa and seem to be as sweet-natured as the sugar

they grow.

The most memorable meal of our trip was eaten atop a beautifully-embroidered tablecloth in the family parlour at the Habitation Grand Bassin in Marie-Galante. After delicious little deep-fried fishballs (accras), we had bebele - tripe soup with breadfruit, bananas, and dumplings; blood pudding, conch pastries, and lobster-stuffed tomatoes; followed by baked red snapper with cinnamon and lime, yam rissoles, christophine (a mild radish-like vegetable) au gratin, goat stew colombo (curried), home-baked brioche, and a spectacular passion fruit

mousse cake. Tip: don't go swimming after sampling this table d'hote menu. Now's the time for sirotage.

On the ferry back from our all-too-brief sip of this laid-back island to catch the plane home, one of the party saw a beautiful young Guadeloupean girl eating a milk-chocolate Bounty bar. Was she dreaming of an impossibly non-tropical life in roundabout-ridden Basingstoke? I doubt it.

Info file

Harlequin Worldwide Travel offers a two-centre fortnight package of a week in Martinique and a week on Guadeloupe in October for #1739 per person, including Air France flights via Paris, private car transfers, and internal flights, staying at the Habitation LaGrange in Martinique and La Cocoteraie in Guadeloupe. Tel 01708 850300.

Club Mediterranee has hotel/villages with private beach at La Caravelle, Guadeloupe, and St Anne, Martinique; one week from #881 in October, flying from Heathrow. Tel 0171 225 1066.

Sunset Faraway Holidays offers seven nights

b # b at the Hotel Bakoua, Martinique, flying Air France via Paris, for #940; in Guadeloupe, seven nights at the Auberge de la Vieille Tour, #833, or La Cocoteraie, #1020.

Sunsail offers a 35-foot yacht for four people for two weeks from #870.

Gites and villas are available for rent on both islands, and on Marie-Galante. Write to the French Tourist Office, 178 Piccadilly, London W1V OAL (enc #1.45 in stamps for p&p) or tel France Information on 09068 244 123 (calls charged at 60p per min).

Air France flies daily from Orly to Fort de France and Pointe-a-Pitre, twice a week and three times a week respectively from Charles de Gaulle. Economy fares start at #440.70 for Pointe-a-Pitre, #443.60 for Fort-de-France.