What I did on my holidays in 1998

In March 1998 I went to Barbados for 10 days, primarily to watch England play a cricket match against the West Indies. I went with Alveley Cricket Club, a cricket club from Alveley, a small, pleasant village just west of Birmingham in central England. Most winters the cricket club organise a trip to see England play a match, and because someone dropped out I got to go.

The cricket match was OK if you like that kind of thing. I can take or leave cricket, but the atmosphere at the matches is always pretty good and you can drink beer, and at the ground in Barbados eat a tasty macaroni cheese concoction. As for the match, Mark Ramphrakash made his first century for England and England nearly won the match, but ironically the last day was rained off and the match was declared a draw. A day where it rains all day doesn't happen very often in Barbados, so the West Indies really got lucky there!!!

Apart from watching cricket I had a nose round the island. The scenery is nice rather than spectacular - on the east coast there are some rocky outcrops, cliffs and more waves whilst on the west coast there's no cliffs and lots of long sandy beaches. The capital, Bridgetown, is a bit of a dump and the best place to have a night out or a meal is probably St. Lawrence Gap which is very close to Bridgetown. There seemed to be an awful lot of beggars about when I was there and a lot of beggars were quite persistant - some followed me round for example. If you're not expecting this than it's a bit of shock! And what the best course of action is I never worked out.

Right, enough reminiscing and onto some photos. Underneath are satellite images made when I was in Barbados. The satellite images were generally all made at quarter past midnight GMT, which in Barbados is the late afternoon/early evening local time the day before (ie about 6 hours behind GMT).  Most of the time the weather was fine - daytime temperatures reached the low 30's Celsius most of the time and generally the weather was a mixture of broken cloud (cumulus - the fluffy, cotton wool/cauliflower type of clouds) and sunshine. I think there were a few showers on one day, and of course it rained pretty much all day on the Monday!
 
1800ish local time, Mon 9 March - flew from London to Barbados and had some pina coladas 1800ish local time, Tues 10 March - lounged about in the sun
1800ish, Wed 11 March - went horse racing at Garrison Savannah. And lost. 1800ish, Thurs 12 March - 1st day of the test match
1800ish Fri 13 March - 2nd day of the test match. Sadly I couldn't find sat pics for the 3rd and 4th days of the match, but by the end of the 4th day England had a chance of winning!! 1800ish Mon 16 March - 5th and final day of the test match. Incredibly in rained all day and the match was declared a draw! You can see the rain cloud that might have cost England victory over the eastern Carribean.
1800ish Tues 17 March - lounged about 1800ish Wed 18 March - drove round the island and later got robbed. Annoying.
0600ish Thurs 19 March - discovered I'd been robbed and later flew home. 0600ish Friday 20 March - nearly home by the time this picture was taken!!

The satellite images were obtained from Unisys Weather Image Archive

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Dan Suri, 28 July 2001