Barbados TravelAdvisor

Port St Charles/Schooner Bay/Waterside
Hi, we're planning on going to Barbados soon to rent long-term. We've narrowed down our "ideal" place to one of the following: Port St Charles & Schooner Bay (both of which we know well) and Waterside (which we have visited but do not know as well as we know the others). The beach and swimming are both very important to us and we have no doubts about how brilliant this is at both PSC and SB. Can anyone tell me about the beach by Waterside (I think it is called Payne's Bay)? It looked good from the Waterside apartments but I didn't get a chance to swim there so don't know whether there are a lot of stones in the sea. Also, is it easy to walk along the beach to other neighbouring beaches? Thanks, Triana

Emma (uktripfan) will be back on soon and she has stayed at PSC and the St James, I think she will be able to give you all the help and advice you need.

The only trouble with Paynes Bay is that in the season, the cruise shop passengers are all bussed to that beach making it terribly terribly busy. A aquaintance of mine, sold his condo, where I live and bought one on that beach without a pool, so now he has nowhere to sunbath, --------------even the beach vendors complain about the beach being so crowded !!! Whether this Winter will be as bad, remains to be seen, but at present, a beautiful beach is being ruined.

All I can add is that Schooner Bay is in a beautiful quiet spot, & it gets busier as you go South, I seldom venture further down than Holetown. I admit I haven't been for a couple of years but I doubt if it has improved.

Port St Charles/Schooner Bay/Waterside
Hi, we're planning on going to Barbados soon to rent long-term. We've narrowed down our "ideal" place to one of the following: Port St Charles & Schooner Bay (both of which we know well) and Waterside (which we have visited but do not know as well as we know the others). The beach and swimming are both very important to us and we have no doubts about how brilliant this is at both PSC and SB. Can anyone tell me about the beach by Waterside (I think it is called Payne's Bay)? It looked good from the Waterside apartments but I didn't get a chance to swim there so don't know whether there are a lot of stones in the sea. Also, is it easy to walk along the beach to other neighbouring beaches? Thanks, Triana

Hi Triana, as Sue said we have stopped before at Port St.Charles and on Paynes Bay at the St.James. I have also visited Schooner Bay before as we were interested in stopping there at one point. Paynes Bay is a beautiful beach, as the others have said it can and does get very busy in cruise season, we have only stopped there in May before (out of cruise season) and believe me the days when cruise ships were in on a tuesday, when there is only 1 ship in was horrendous, I can't even imagine what it is like if there are 5-6 ships plus in! If you are going to be there between November-April I would not suggest stopping there. Also the beach outside Waterside is not so great and has a lot of stone/coral in the sea. You would have to walk further north up the beach towards the St.James to get the nice wide sandy bay area. My suggestion out of the 3 would be Port St.charles. It is a beautiful spot and when we visited in May it was very very quiet on the beach. It is great for swimming there and we have found it to be the best spot yet so far for snorkelling in Barbados. We stopped there last November and it was quiet then too. We loved the area and thought it was very nice to be able to use the yacht club at PSC. I must say I didn't like the location of Schooner as much and thought the beach was nicer at PSC.

I don't know if you have seen it but we rented our apartment at PSC, directly from a very nice guy on owner's direct, more than half the price of renting directly from PSC themselves.

Give me a shout if you have any more questions or want me to post any pics of the 2 areas, Emma

Triana,
I agree with Emma about Heywoods beach at Port St Charles, also the I think the snorkelling there is as good if not better than Folkstone park .

Hi Triana, I will go with the others on this, Heywoods is a nice beach and we have always found it very quiet. The snorkelling is amongst the best on the island too!
Viv

Thanks, everyone,for all your advice.

Emma: I haven't seen the owners' direct site but will have a look at it now.

I'd heard about taxis taking passengers from the cruise ships to the beach by the Blue Monkey and I guess I need to pay more attention to the impact of the cruise ships. I too like the Yacht Club at PSC - and of course both PSC and Schooners are near The Fishpot and Cobblers' Cove, both of which I like.

This year we noticed that many cruise passengers were taken by Mercedes buses to the East Coast - Bath Bay, Bathsheba, St Nicholas Abbey etc etc. I think this maybe because the roads have been improved so much.

We used to love taking a picnic to Bath Bay where the locals used to hang out at the weekends - I think we were the only tourists at the time!!!