The best places to eat and drink in English Harbour
Most of the ocean rowers have endured six whole weeks or more without alcohol. They may want a beer. Here are my favourite Antigua watering holes
By the end of the week, those arrivals will start trickling into English Harbour. Safe to say that Row4Cancer are going to be the first boat to benefit from the advice in this post – although I’m sure Mark Slats is already familiar with the watering holes of Antigua, having rowed there twice already!
Whatever has happened during the row, arriving into Nelson’s Dockyard is a moment no one taking part in World’s Toughest Row will ever forget. Any arrival time will be special, day or night, but The Mothership was extremely lucky to time our row in to perfection.
Earlier on in the week, we had finally accepted that we won’t going to win the Murden Trophy (so called after the first woman to row across the Atlantic solo – and given that Victoria Murden set off on 3 December 1999 and arrived 81 days later in 2000, this year marks a 25th special anniversary for her). Our rivals One Ocean Crew had nipped directly in front of us, and we were chasing their coattails for the final few days.
So we decided the next best thing to winning would be to arrive for cocktail hour on Friday night. We were perhaps a little late for a Sundowner - my husband commenting that we could have made it 15 minutes earlier, as we had a most beautiful row along the coast as the sun set, but it was dark by the time we turned into English Harbour.
It was the most beautiful thing I’ve seen. The lights on the yachts made it feel like Christmas. We rowed past a restaurant playing We Are The Champions. Everywhere was so busy and so along with our own friends and family, we were cheered in by holidaymakers and Antigua residents, as (I think) the 234th, 235th, 236th and 237th women to row an ocean.
Anyway, I digress (as usual). It’s the nostalgia, it gets you. Here is my list of top watering holes!
Top five places to eat and drink in English Harbour
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