Cobblers Cove

Cobblers Cove began in 1943 as Camelot, a weekend house for a sugar baron's descendant, built of coral stone and railway steel on the site of an old Quaker battery. The family who bought it in 1968 renamed it after the frigate birds in the bay, and still runs it. The house is pink, trimmed in white like icing, and its two turrets live up to the first name. Each holds a single suite with a roof terrace of its own, Camelot in one and Colleton in the other. Colleton adds a plunge pool under bougainvillea, which settles it. The other suites sit round a garden that guests share with a family of green monkeys, and a terracotta pool terrace with three flights of steps down to the sand. After the turrets, ask for an Ocean Front suite, which looks out over the beach umbrellas to the sea.

Recommended for couples, and families whose children are twelve or over, who want the Caribbean with some English habits kept up: afternoon tea at four every day, and long trousers for men at dinner in the Camelot restaurant, among starched white tablecloths and painted bamboo chairs. The round bar in the shade of the Great House terrace has no rule about trousers, and pours its rum punch to the Bajan recipe. The water sports hut lends paddle boards and small sailing boats free at any time, and once a day the hotel's boat goes out, at no charge either, to water-ski or to swim with hawksbill turtles. Children under twelve have to wait for Christmas: from 17 December to 7 January, the hotel takes families of every age.