Where to stay and what to see
It was the American Lawrence
Rockefeller who started the tourist
development in Virgin Gorda when he
built the luxurious Little Dix Bay Hotel
in the 1960s. The island’s superb lure is
its beaches and lagoons. In the N of the
island it’s fairly hilly whereas in the S it’s
quite flat by comparison. In the past it
was in the S that the sugar cane
plantations flourished, these days
replaced by market gardens and real
estate development. In the uncultivated
parts the ground cover is mostly cacti
and succulents, making inland Virgin
Gorda look a bit like Central America.

Spanish Town
The settlement has only a few streets
which converge near the dock, where
there are some shops and small
restaurants. The tourist and water sports
areas are further N around St Thomas
Harbour where the ferries from
neighbouring islands dock, but this
marina also caters for most tourist needs.
The small airstrip nearby is served by air
taxis.

Around the island
There’s a road running from N to S of the
island connecting with a few driveable
tracks.
In the S, close to Coppermine Pt, you
can see the remains of an old 16th
century mine once exploited by the
Spanish. All the way from N to S the wild
and more rugged windward coast is
unprotected from the Atlantic swells. As
a result it’s pretty untouched by tourist
development. It’s on the leeward coast
that you’ll find one of the finest natural
sites, The Baths. It’s a vast heaping up of
granite boulders forming a natural maze
within which you’ll find small emerald
pools with white sand bottoms. It’s a
busy spot and the smart move is to visit
as close to first light as you can manage,
before the day’s sea-borne and landborne
crowds start to arrive.
In the island’s N all of the hill country
has also been placed within a National
Park and offer walkers fine viewpoints
from the hilltops at over 400m. Walking
the footpaths, in addition to the goats,
you should come across some fine
iguanas, a protected species here.
To get to the N coast the road system
doesn’t offer much choice and only partly
serves the huge Gorda Sound area. A
goodly part of the watersports and hotel
developments here are therefore only
accessible by sea, either by boat or ferry.