Everything on Bequia seems incredibly charming, evoking the quintessential old-fashioned and slow-paced Caribbean.
No better an example of this than St Mary's Anglican church, built back in the 1800s in a simple colonial style of volcanic rock boulders and inner wood frames. I dropped by a couple of times, and it was always calm, quiet and cool inside.
A few plaques and memorials described the lives of British settlers who lived on Bequia and surrounding islands, including the Hazells who had a plantation covering the island of Mustique and whose descendants still live in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
On the Sunday that my ferry left for Canouan, I managed to get in a service. It was given by an elderly vicar, who was supported by a lady with a powerful, but out of tune, singing voice and a boy in cassocks who kept relighting candles which were repeatedly blown out by a breeze. A handful of smartly-dressed women sang their hearts out, while their children (who looked exceedingly bored) barely got through the service!
