Beyond Tortola: The British Virgin Islands Most Visitors Never Reach

Tortola gets all the press and most of the charter boats, but the BVI’s real character lives on the quieter islands scattered across the Sir Francis Drake Channel. Each rewards a bit of effort to reach, and none of them requires sharing the beach with a flotilla of day-trippers.

Anegada

Anegada is genuinely different from every other island in the BVI. It sits 15 miles north of Virgin Gorda, and it is the only coral island in the group – everything else is volcanic. The island is flat, ringed by a horseshoe reef that has sunk more than 300 ships over the centuries, and surrounded by water so shallow and impossibly clear that visitors regularly stop to check it is real.

Fly from Tortola on BVI Airways (Twin Otter, 20 minutes, multiple daily flights, around $50 USD each way) or take the ferry from Road Town (about an hour). Loblolly Bay on the east side has shallower water and a coral garden a short wade from shore. The Flamingo Sanctuary holds one of the last wild flamingo colonies in the Caribbean; morning visits before the midday heat are best.

Cow Wreck Beach Bar and Restaurant serves grilled lobster at honest prices. Anegada lobster has a sweeter flavour than Tortolan variety – a product of the shallower, warmer reef water. Lobster season runs September through March; the Anegada Lobster Festival in November is the annual celebration. Almost no ATMs: bring cash.

Bittersweet Boutique Hotel has twelve rooms with direct ocean views; book well in advance for peak season.

Virgin Gorda

The Baths, the famous cluster of enormous granite boulders at the southwestern tip, deserve their reputation. The passages between the boulders form grottos, pools, and dark corridors to work through in swimming gear. Arrive before 9am or after 3pm to avoid the tour boat rush.

The north end is what most visitors miss. Drive through Spanish Town and continue past Gun Creek to Leverick Bay; keep going and you reach the North Sound area, accessible only by boat from Gun Creek. The North Sound is a near-perfectly enclosed body of water with shallow sand banks and low-key beach restaurants. Copper Mine ruins on the eastern headland – Cornish miners worked this copper deposit in the mid-19th century – are worth a 30-minute detour.

Jost Van Dyke

Jost Van Dyke has a permanent population of around 300 people and no traffic lights. White Bay is the beach people come to see, and the Soggy Dollar Bar there is famous for the Painkiller cocktail (rum, coconut cream, pineapple, orange, nutmeg) – swim ashore, buy a drink, understand the name. Skip it between 11am and 2pm in peak season. Ivan’s Stress Free Bar at the far end of White Bay is quieter and better value; Ivan Chinnery has been running it for thirty years and it shows.

Ferry from West End, Tortola: about 25 minutes. No cars for hire; the island is small enough to walk.

Norman Island

Norman Island is uninhabited except for staff at Willie T’s, a floating restaurant and bar moored in the Bight anchorage. The food is better than it has any right to be. The caves at Treasure Point are reputed to have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (historians are divided). Snorkelling inside at low tide delivers shafts of blue light through the water. The Indians, a cluster of four pinnacle rocks offshore, have recovering coral and good fish life.

No public ferry; arrive by charter boat or water taxi from Road Town (around 45 minutes).

Practical Notes

Interisland ferries run by Smith’s Ferry, Speedy’s, and Native Son. Schedules change seasonally. Card payments work at most marina restaurants; cash expected at beach bars. USD accepted everywhere (BVI dollar is 1:1). Best anchorages and beaches are quietest on weekday mornings before the charter fleets move.