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Things to do in St. David's

Why you should go

Ninety seconds on St. David's

The island at the eastern end, joined to the rest by causeway and airport, and settled by people who for centuries married among themselves and thought of themselves as St David's Islanders first. The American base held most of it until 1995, which is why the beaches and the reserves are so empty.

7 places on record

Things to do

7
  1. Carter House

    Museum · 30 min

    One of the oldest houses in Bermuda, dated to about 1640 and built by descendants of the Sea Venture's Christopher Carter, kept as a museum of St David's life. It survived the building of the airbase around it.

  2. Castle Islands Fortifications

    Ruins · 2 hr

    The earliest English fortifications in the New World, begun in 1612 on the islets guarding the old ship channel into Castle Harbour, and abandoned when the channel silted. They are reached only by boat and stand more or less as they were left.

  3. Clearwater Beach

    Beach · 2 hr

    A sheltered north facing beach on former American base land, with a lifeguard, a playground and calm shallow water. Turtle Bay next door is reached along the sand.

  4. Cooper's Island Nature Reserve

    Park · 2.5 hr

    The eastern tip of the island, closed to the public while NASA tracked spacecraft from it and opened as a reserve after the Americans left in 1995. There are four beaches along it, a boardwalk through the dunes and an observation tower on the old tracking mount.

  5. Nonsuch Island

    Island · 4 hr

    A fifteen acre island in Castle Harbour rebuilt over sixty years into a working model of pre colonial Bermuda, and the last refuge of the cahow, a seabird thought extinct for three centuries. Access is by permit on guided visits only, which is the point of it.

  6. St. David's Head

    Viewpoint · 30 min

    The cliffs at the eastern end of Bermuda, where the reef platform drops away and the next land is Africa. The battery on the point and the paths along the edge are open ground.

  7. St. David's Lighthouse

    Tower · 30 min

    A stone lighthouse of 1879 on the eastern cliffs, painted with a red band and built from limestone quarried on the spot. The Newport Bermuda Race finishes off it, and one of its two divisions carries its name.

Basemap Meridian · data © OpenStreetMap

Dispatches

1
The Bird Bermuda Ate, and Spent Seventy Years Getting Back
St. David's

The Bird Bermuda Ate, and Spent Seventy Years Getting Back

Bermuda's endemic petrel was clubbed and eaten into apparent extinction within about a decade of settlement, protected by a proclamation in 1616 that came far too late, and found again in 1951 on three bare islets in Castle Harbour. The colony has been rebuilt on Nonsuch Island one burrow at a time.

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