By Peter Woodman
Most people go to Antigua to get brown, but now the islanders are keen for visitors to go green. So environmentally conscious has the island become that a new eco-friendly hotel has opened - the Verandah Resort & Spa on Long Bay; it’s neat, low-rise buildings surrounded by 30 unspoilt acres on the eastern coast and overlooking a powder-soft, sandy beach.
It was 10 years since we had last visited Antigua and after our comfortable Virgin Atlantic flight we were eager to renew our acquaintance as we touched down at the small and quiet VC Bird International airport.
Too familiar with the horrors of Heathrow and other large UK airports, it's easy to forget just how quickly you can clear overseas terminals and get started on your holiday. As so often happens abroad, the taxi driver we had for our journey out to the Verandah was more tour guide than cabbie.
He was proud to point out a most beautiful cricket ground that has been created within the airport complex. Complete with floodlights, the ground was staging an inter-island Twenty20 competition as we passed.
Heading across the island we passed the main cricket Test ground too, named in honour of the island's most famous player, Sir Vivian Richards. Possibly because Antigua is a small island, boasting only around 76,000 people, everyone seems to know everyone else. You speak to the taxi driver and he knows Sir Viv, you chat to a waiter and find he went to school with another former giant of West Indies cricket in its golden era of the 1970s and 80s - the fast bowler Andy Roberts.
Our first impression was that everything had smartened up since we were last here. Maybe the worldwide property boom has helped in the meantime - what we remembered as run-down shacks back in the 1990s have been given a good lick of paint and looked rather cosy as holiday boltholes.
Roads in the Caribbean are never going to get you anywhere fast, but even so we managed to reach Verandah within an hour of touching down, which locals reckoned was pretty good going.