Horseshoe Bay on Bermuda’s south coast is widely called the island’s most beautiful beach
PHOTOGRAPHS: PIETRO CANALI/SIME/4CORNERS, TM & © TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION
Tickled pink in Bermuda
Castaway tales have a long pedigree in Bermuda: in 1609 a ship bound for the new English colony in Virginia was wrecked off the island with all aboard making it safely to shore, and it’s thought the story helped inspire Shakespeare when he wrote The Tempest the following year. Though the island is no longer the wilderness those early settlers found, its famed pink-sand beaches are the stuff of every desert-island fantasy. The rosy tinge comes from the crushed shells of microscopic sea creatures, and deepens in hue towards the water-line. Horseshoe Bay is Bermuda’s stand-out example – a gentle crescent a third of a mile in length – and there are more than 30 other beaches to choose from. Many locals give the sea a miss in winter; for context, low water temperatures here are about the same as a record summer in Cornwall. Bermuda shares many similarities with Caribbean islands, but lies closer to North Carolina, so December here counts as low season, unlike beach destinations further south. Other attractions that are no less appealing in winter include Unesco-listed St George – the earliest English town in the New World – and the Crystal Caves, whose forest of stalactites are refected in a clear blue pool below.