Dickenson Bay is the beach most people picture when they picture Antigua: a long curve of soft white sand on the northwest coast, water the colour of a swimming pool, and a sunset every evening because the whole bay faces west. It’s also the beach our homes sit on, so we know it in a way a guidebook doesn’t.
The water
The bay is sheltered, which is why it’s the island’s swimming beach. The sand shelves gently, the water is clear and rarely more than shoulder-deep for a long way out, and a line of buoys marks the swim zone so boats and jet skis stay on the far side. It’s warm all year, somewhere between 79 and 84°F depending on the month. Early mornings are glassy; a breeze picks up in the afternoons, which is when the kitesurfers appear further along the bay.
Antigua Village has its own stretch of sand in front of the homes with thatched umbrellas and loungers, and the sea is a few steps beyond a low hedge and a white picket gate. From the terrace of Villa 26 the view is umbrellas, then water, then the horizon.
A day here
Coffee on the terrace before the beach fills. A swim before breakfast, when the water is at its stillest. The middle of the day under an umbrella with a book, or in the pool in the gardens behind the homes if the sand gets too hot. Lunch on the beach at one of the restaurants down the bay. A walk along the sand in the late afternoon as far as the point. Back for the sunset, which is the reason the terrace faces the way it does. Dinner either at the kitchen table or, again, on the sand.
That’s it. It’s a beach that rewards not doing much.
Eating on the bay
You can walk to dinner along the beach, which is one of the best things about staying here. The names change occasionally, so ask us for the current list, but the ones we keep going back to are Ana’s on the Beach for a long lunch with a glass of wine and Mediterranean plates, and Coconut Grove at Siboney Beach Club, an open-air restaurant with tables in the sand that does fish and lobster well and turns candlelit after dark. There are beach bars along the sand for a rum punch at sunset, and the bigger resorts on the bay have restaurants that take outside guests if you book.
On the water
Kayaks, paddleboards and small sailboats can be rented on the beach, and several of the catamaran day-sail operators pick up from Dickenson Bay, so you can walk down the sand in the morning and be snorkelling on Cades Reef by eleven. There’s a floating water park in the bay in high season that children lose entire afternoons to. Kite and windsurfing happen at the breezier northern end.
The village
Antigua Village is a community of 94 privately owned condos in low white buildings with red roofs, set in gardens along the beach. There’s a pool, a small shop, and a team that keeps the grounds, the pool and the homes in order. It’s quiet: no entertainment programme, no music by the pool, no wristbands. The neighbours are a mix of owners, long-term winter residents and guests like you, and the atmosphere is closer to a beachside neighbourhood than a resort.
Our three homes are here: Villa 26 on the beachfront, and Studio 36A and Studio 42B in the gardens a minute from the sand.
Nearby
St. John’s, the capital, is ten minutes by taxi: the Saturday market, the cathedral, Redcliffe Quay’s shops and cafés, and the cruise ships on a port day (check the schedule and go on a day when there aren’t any). Fort James, ten minutes the other way, is a long local beach under an 18th-century fort with a lively beach bar on Sundays. Epicurean, the supermarket, is a few minutes inland on Friars Hill Road. And the airport is twenty minutes, which matters more than it sounds on the day you leave.