Cambridge Beaches

Description:

• Discreetly but relentlessly upscale, the much-restored Cambridge Beaches attracts rich honeymooners, old-money families, and Vanity Fair couples who seek privacy, pampering, and plenty of facilities. It's one of the most deeply respected resorts in Bermuda, with dozens of clients who return year after year to an aggressively unflashy physical plant that's almost deliberately quiet and subdued. If you're a first-time visitor, the clubby atmosphere may make you feel like an outsider. Cambridge Beaches remains high in snob appeal. Persons 17 and under are in most cases not particularly appreciated, and raucous 20-somethings would probably not fit in.

  On a peninsula overlooking Mangrove Bay in Somerset, the colony's 12 hectares (30 acres) of semitropical gardens and green lawns occupy the entire western tip of the island. The colony centers on an old sea captain's house which over the years grew into a compound of lounges, bars, dining rooms, and drawing rooms. Tastefully furnished with antiques and a sense of old, seafaring Bermuda; the dominant feeling here is that of a conservative country estate. Scattered throughout the gardens are nicely furnished pink-sided cottages, some of which are nearly 300 years old and much-restored, others of which are relatively recent. All of the cottages (a few of which were once private homes) are conservatively furnished -- nothing too ostentatious, nothing too flashy -- and come with sun-and-breakfast terraces, generally with unobstructed views of the bay and gardens. A cottage can comfortably house four. The less expensive units have land rather than ocean vistas, and balconies and terraces which in some cases are a bit too close to immediate neighbors.

  Dining is in the excellent and very pricey Tamarisk Dining Room, or beneath the covered veranda of Breezes, attractively positioned beside one of the resort's five beaches, where barbecues are sometimes held. There's also an informal lounge, the Port O' Call Pub, whose dark beams and roughly textured plasterwork evoke a 17th-century inn somewhere in the U.K. Live entertainment is presented frequently during the high season. Relatively new on the agenda of this resort is a rotating series of lecturers offering insight into relationship building, sexual healing, and advice on how to enrich a sense of intimacy, either with your significant other or with the world at large. Within a self-contained building on the property is the small but well-equipped Ocean Spa, which has developed a roaring business with long-term island residents.

• © Frommer's 2013

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Very Highly Recommended 2010