Rock star: The luxury Eden Rock Hotel perches on an outcrop over the beachI think St Barts must be the coolest, smartest, chicest holiday place on the planet. I'm surprised they let me in, at my age, in my old shorts. Even the waiters and waitresses look like models, which is not surprising as they are chosen from their photographs, not just their CVs, before they come over from France for the season.
As for the shops, they all seem to be designer boutiques. The visitors are wealthy but not noisy and flashy - or dripping with bling, as in some places I could mention (OK, Sandy Lane in Barbados). St Barthians prefer to be discreet, hiding themselves away behind modest yet tasteful exteriors.
I would never have known, if I hadn't been told, that a simple gateway beside an isolated, uninhabited beach was the entrance to what is said to be the most expensive private estate bought anywhere in the world last year, for £60 million.
Three guesses who has bought it. Go on, indulge me.
I was just as surprised to discover that in the hotel I was staying at, Eden Rock, there was a new villa that didn't look at all out of the ordinary from the beach but turned out to be probably the most expensive holiday villa to rent anywhere. At the height of the season, it costs £21,000. A night.
For that you get four main suites plus two other rooms, three butlers, maids, two pools, a recording studio and viewing room. Oh, and there's a Harley Davidson and Mini Cooper thrown in to help you get around - even though the island is only ten miles long and very hilly with lots of potholes.
When the young Russian couple who were renting it had left, I was invited into Rockstar, as the villa is called (hence the recording studio), and discovered it contains the mixing console which John Lennon used when recording Imagine. It's enormous, compared with the gear they use today.
They hadn't actually had any rock stars staying so far, as the villa had only recently been completed, so as biographer of The Beatles, I agreed to give a little talk about the band. Quite a few hotel guests turned up, as they were also being offered free champagne and a chance to poke around the villa, and there were some locals, including the President of St Barts, Bruno Magras, who also happens to be a keen guitarist.
St Barts is part of France. The language is French, the currency euros, and about 95 per cent of the 8,500 population white. It never had plantations, being too small, too hilly and without water.
The French, mainly Huguenots from Normandy and Brittany, arrived in the 17th Century. But the affluence of St Barts and its status as a top-class resort is all pretty recent. The first plane didn't land until 1947 and they didn't have electricity until 1962. Until then, most of the population was very poor, scraping a living.
Lunch date: Roman Abramovich with his girlfriend Dasha Zhukova on St BartsThe modern development has been done carefully, avoiding the mass market, and there are no chains or cheapo blocks. The biggest hotel has only 80 rooms. The airport is titchy, with the biggest plane carrying no more than 20 passengers. I got there via Antigua and an overnight stop at Jumby Bay resort, which has reopened after a multi-million pound redevelopment.
Despite St Barts being French and attracting the majority of its visitors from America or France, the owner of Eden Rock is English. David Matthews is from Yorkshire and was a motor mechanic before building up his own motor and coach business. In 1995 he was on holiday with his wife Jane in St Barts, thinking of buying a holiday home, when he saw that Eden Rock was on the market. It is built on a real rock, sticking out into the sea in the middle of the island's best and biggest beach, St Jean. In 1995 it was a small hotel of six bedrooms. David and his wife, without any experience of the hotel or restaurant business, decided to expand, creating more rooms, then buying an adjoining hotel on the beach.
These days it has 34 suites, cottages and villas and I think it is the most stunningly located hotel in all the Caribbean. I wouldn't stay in the Rockstar villa - the space and design, gadgets and facilities are overwhelming, unless you are used to such things - but the other units are mouth-wateringly attractive and different, each a little work of art thanks to Jane's artistic talents.
Roman Abramovich - new owner of that expensive estate (yes, you guessed it was him) - is a frequent lunchtime visitor at Eden Rock when on the island. He was there during my visit, sliding into the beach restaurant hardly observed at 2.30pm for a quick bite.
His new property is a 70-acre estate above Gouverneur Bay, once owned by the Rockefellers. I got a taxi driver to take me there, but first he insisted on taking me to another beach and stopping at Maison Nureyev, a beach cottage once owned by the ballet dancer.
I got out, knocked at the door and, from inside, a woman in a white gown wearing a surgical mask waved me away. Very mysterious.
The entrance to Abramovich's place is beside the little sandy car park at Gouverneur Bay - so not very private, and he doesn't even have his own beach. All the beaches on the island are public and all Roman has is his own little gate, leading on to the beach. It's a good beach though, very white sand, totally empty and undeveloped.
Personally, I always like one little beach caff for my rum punch. Or several.
I noticed a large launch moored about 100 yards out and on deck someone watching me through very large binoculars. Back in the taxi, I asked if that could be one of Mr A's minders, but the driver said no, it wasn't his boat. Perhaps they mistook me for Mr A. We do have similar tastes in beach and leisure clothes - ie, pretty crummy.
Toy town: Gustavia features immaculate buildings, expensive yachts, fancy restaurants and pricey shopsOn the way back to Eden Rock, we stopped at the local football ground where work was in progress, renovating and laying new artificial turf. One of the builders said the work was being paid for by Mr A - one of some 200 little football stadiums around the world he has helped, without publicity.
Gustavia is the capital of St Barts but it is more like a toy town with its immaculate buildings, painted fronts, expensive yachts, fancy restaurants and pricey shops. You could well be in the South of France.
In the harbour, a young French couple called Franck and Delphine had arrived on their little yacht with their two daughters, aged ten and two. That night, a handwritten sign announced, they were performing a Spectacle.
I went to it and it turned out to be a sort of acrobatic show, done on board, with them climbing up and down the rigging, twirling from the sails, dancing to music and doing silly things with buckets of water, all in mime, and very French.
They call themselves 'navigartistes' and have been sailing round the Med, the Caribbean and Canada doing their show since 2004. It all sounded absolutely mad - but ever so charming.
As for money, they get that by taking the hat round after a performance. So you see, you don't have to be wealthy to enjoy yourself in St Barts. Though it does help...
Getting there
Elegant Resorts (01244 897515, www.elegantresorts.co.uk) offers four nights' all-inclusive at Jumby Bay and three nights' B&B at Eden Rock Hotel from £4,525 per person, including return flights from Gatwick with British Airways and transfers, based on departures on January 15.
source: dailymail
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