Arnos Vale
Arnos Vale Road meanders through the greenery towards Arnos Vale, one of the few former sugar plantations to keep its land, part of which is taken up with a resort hotel, which has long been in decline and has now closed to the public, as has the adjacent waterwheel and museum, which you can just see through the trees from the main road. Arnos Vale Beach is very pretty, though the crumbling hotel buildings behind add a very Marie Celeste air, and the snorkelling just offshore is some of the island’s best; however, its secluded nature and lack of security mean that robberies have occurred here, so unless you’re in a big group it’s best visited as part of a boat trip; many day-cruises stop here for snorkelling.
Black Rock
Northeast of Pleasant Prospect, the main road narrows as it swings through Black Rock, a busy, friendly village with a couple of nice rum bars and a sprinkling of grocery stores. On the western outskirts of town, where Old Stonehaven Road loops back up from the sea, is a signpost for Fort Bennet, a still-intact stockade built by English mercenary Lieutenant Robert Bennet in 1680. During the plantation era, the fort was expanded by British troops, who built a brick oven to heat up the metal used to make cannonballs and placed two cannons here to defend the bay against US privateers during the American War of Independence. There are benches and a couple of gazebos, and the views – over Stonehaven Bay and down to the Pigeon Point headland to the west, and over Turtle Beach to Plymouth to the east – are spectacular, particularly at sunset.
Buccoo
The seaward turn-off from Shirvan Road at Buccoo Junction runs past a small supermarket and into BUCCOO village, haphazardly built around the calm and beautiful bay that shares its name. Fishing remains a major industry here – the day’s catch is cleaned and sold next to the beach when the boats return in the late afternoon – but this close-knit community is best known for the weekly Sunday School shenanigans and for the annual Easter goat races, now held at a smart purpose-built track and pavilion behind the new Buccoo Integrated Facility, a rather incongruously large concrete complex just back from the beach which encompasses a dancefloor used for Sunday School, an upstairs seafood restaurant, craft vendors’ booths, a rather desultory tourist information kiosk and a big car park.
The beachfront immediately in front is primarily the preserve of fishermen and not really a place to swim, but the undeveloped, palm-lined western fringe of the bay is gorgeous, with clean water and plenty of shells and coral fragments to collect. Trees and mangroves separate the beach from the Bon Accord Wetland, and if you walk right to the end of the sands and clamber into the bush, you can explore the remains of the house that Britain’s Princess Margaret stayed in during a Tobago sojourn in the late 1950s. Note that many of the coastal trees here are toxic manchineels; offenders have a white strip painted around the trunk.
Mount Irvine
The swaying palms and shaven greens of Tobago’s first golf course herald the outskirts of MOUNT IRVINE, the next coastal village north from Buccoo, a scattered community of luxury villas around the golf course that’s centred around its gorgeous main beach, home to Tobago’s surfing scene and one of the nicest spots in the southwest to spend a day by the sea. Beyond the golf course, the hitherto hidden Caribbean Sea coast swings spectacularly back into view; yachts bob on the waves and craggy volcanic rock formations bordering Booby Point make an arresting backdrop to the west. There’s a lovely section of undeveloped beach known as Grange or Mount Irvine Wall behind a low concrete bulwark just past the golf course; it’s very popular with locals who often sit chatting in the emerald-green water.