The Belmont
Golf Club, located nearby, offers small, elevated,
multitiered greens. The shortest of
Bermuda's full-size courses, it
has a par of 70 over just 5,759 yards.
While I played Riddell's and Belmont, my wife happily soaked up the
sun at Elbow Beach, now the island's premier resort after an
expensive, top-to-bottom renovation. Rooms are laid out in small
freestanding wings and cottages, terraced into the hillside,
sloping down to the sea. Elbow Beach's intimate charm comes with
all the facilities of a full-service resort: ample beach, spa, and
several restaurants, including the Seahorse Grill, the only
restaurant on the island that specializes in the "new Bermudan"
cuisine, with its extensive use of indigenous products.
I got back from golf in time to join my wife for one of the most
unique ex-periences we've ever shared. Blue Water Divers and
Watersports, at Elbow Beach, offers DPV trips for certified divers
and nondivers alike. On guided tours, guests use diver-propulsion
vehicles - the under-water sleds popularized in James Bond movies -
to tour the offshore Pollocksheilds wreck. No boat is needed; you
enter right off the beach and, as if flying underwater, zip out
through the reef to explore the ship. For nondivers, Blue Water
also offers a unique DPV-powered snorkeling trip to the reefs.
We moved down the road to sample the Fairmont Southampton Princess,
Bermuda's largest resort, with 600 rooms, numerous restaurants,
shops, and an expansive beach club. The Princess is the only hotel
on the island with its own course, an 18-hole, par-3 layout - not a
pitch and putt, but rather full-size holes ranging from 110 to 216
yards. Since we didn't have to take a cab and only needed two and a
half hours to get around the course, I was finally able to get my
wife out on the links.