Patrice Wymore, the relict of Errol Flynn, complained recently of the lack of elegance in Jamaica. Announcing her decision to put her seaside plantation on the market for a handsome £33 million, she explained: 'I'm not abandoning this place for some holiday chain to vandalise. It's a crying shame how glamour has vanished, so only someone who agrees to my plans can have it.' The plans include a polo ground, a world-class golf course and villas.
Well, while not wishing to gainsay the redoubtable Mrs Flynn, who has, after all, lived on the island since the late Forties, I don't think she really need be quite so doom-laden about Jamaica's prospects. For there is always the equally redoubtable figure of Chris Blackwell, heir of one of Jamaica's oldest families, founder of Island Records and a man who clearly likes to promote the notion of luxurious living.
The hotels that comprise his Island Outpost group, which includes properties in Florida and the Bahamas as well as Jamaica, are founded on the principle that small but beautiful is best.
First stop is the Caves at Negril. Turn left out of Montego Bay and keep driving. It's actually only a two-and-a-half-hour drive, but as this journey is along a road that loses nothing in comparison with the very worst roads in the middle of Iceland, you arrive with a severe case of 'Jamaica arse', having been bucked up and down, side to side, front to back. (Memo to Jamaica's Minister of Transport - Tarmac is commonly available at very reasonable rates, is not at all difficult to apply and adds pleasing, long-term results to travelling.)
After this jarring transfer, thank heavens, then for the Caves, a grouping of low-rise wooden and thatched-roofed buildings perched on a cliff edge, above a series of caverns. With accommodation for about 12 people at a time, you're never going to feel the oppression of holidaying with your fellow man, for which I offer up heartfelt thanks.
While not actually styling itself as all-inclusive, it is made quite clear that if you want a drink at any time of the day, it is more than acceptable to help yourself.
The accommodation is chic colonial - mosquito nets, elegantly plain furniture, blues, yellows, ochres, ceiling fans - the service equally elegant and understated. My room in the two-bedroom cottage, Moon Shadow, also boasted an outside shower. It further boasted but 15 yards from my bed the constant, booming basso profundo of the ocean crashing around one of the caves. Not exactly a lullaby. Nor was the crab which tip-tapped on my bedroom window at three in the morning, but armed with a wet towel and nerves of steel, I dispatched it deep into the undergrowth.
Spa facilities are available for those who think that going on holiday means endless manicures, pedicures and facials. But frankly, why anyone should wish to waste their time on such treatments when there is a sea to be swum in, meals to be eaten, drinks to be taken, books to be read, more sea to be swum in, is beyond me.
Just down the road from the Caves is the Pickled Parrot, which was once voted one of the top 10 bars in the world by Newsweek. Also perched on top of a cliff, this open bar, while not only serving the best jerk chicken I ate in Jamaica, also offers up one of the more curious sights you're ever likely to see; namely the libertine inmates of Hedonism 11 resort indulging themselves. A catamaran takes these pleasure seekers along the coast to the cove off the Pickled Parrot site, where clad in nothing but orange life vests, they disport themselves in the briny. Clambering on board the catamaran after their frolics, you are witness to the long and the short and the surgically enhanced in all their ghastly variations. Not a pretty sight.
From Negril on the north-west coast to Treasure Beach on the south coast involves another bout of Jamaican arse and a complete change of landscape. After the relative lushness of Negril, this is quite a transformation, as is the next Island Outpost hotel, Jakes.
Again based around 10 one-bedroom units and one two-bedroom cottage, Jakes is altogether more relaxed. It has none of the cool elegance of the Caves, but has an altogether earthier charm, with its ramshackle buildings, bar and restaurant. Some of the buildings remind one of cut-down Deep South plantation houses while others have a distinctly North African appearance. Everywhere are dazzling mosaics - in the swimming pool, in the paths, in the showers, up and down walls.
From Jakes, it's a short striking distance to two of Jamaica's more noteworthy attractions, the YS Falls and the Black River. The Falls are reached, via tractor and trailer, through some of the lushest meadowlands imaginable, dotted with plump, prosperous red-poll cattle, like England at its most bucolic, except for the 60-foot tall bamboos.
The Black River is one of the weirder sights you will see, the peat river bottom giving the impression that you are travelling through a big bottle of Quink. Add a smattering of crocodiles and a mangrove swamp and you have a bizarrely attractive destination.
It was at a stopping-off point on the Black River that I found an astonishing fly-poster. Advertising a preparation called Ebbo All Purpose Drink, it claims to be efficacious of cases of 'pressure, stress, cold, cramps, fever, arthritis, pull muscle, pile and sexual drive'. Four tablespoons for adults, two tablespoons for children should do the trick.
Further east, past the capital, Kingston, are the Blue Mountains, home to Strawberry Hill, the first Island Outpost hotel, and clearly the jewel in Chris Blackwell's group. Found 3,000 feet up, atop a tightly winding road through mangrove and banana trees, Strawberry Hill is quite simply the finest hotel I've ever stayed in. Completely rebuilt after Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, this was once a fairly ordinary plantation house; now it is plantation chic at its very apogee.
Again, the essential Blackwell requisite of a limited occupancy is maintained. I stayed in Mountain View Two, a two-bedroom 'cottage', with a large sitting-room, kitchen, extra bathroom and veranda. The bedroom itself was dominated by a huge mahogany, four-poster bed, which really needed a mounting-block to ascend to, with mosquito net. It came complete with an electric blanket. Well, it is 3,000 feet up and apparently Jamaicans think that at night it can become a little cold. After Negril and Treasure Beach, the evening chill was a blessed relief.
A mahogany-floored veranda ran the length of the bedroom, complete with planter's chairs, canvas shades and a white cotton hammock in which to watch the sun go down over the coffee plantations.
No expense has been spared - from a top-class chef to an infinity-edge swimming-pool, from where you look down on Kingston, which is the best place and distance to see it from; a library; a most splendid and airy bar, complete with an expansive barman; and grounds which have been exquisitely landscaped. They even lay on long-tailed hummingbirds, a rarity in Jamaica, which perform marvellous acrobatics through the jade vine which fringes the swimming-pool.
If ever anyone asked me if I had found Paradise, I think I could easily say that Strawberry Hill is it. And if anyone could persuade Patrice Wymore to pay a visit, I don't think she would be at all downhearted at Jamaica's supposed loss of grandeur and elegance.
