March 7 visit to Beach Limerz

[CintiPam]

Husband and I booked a Pay As You Go visit to Beach Limerz on Saturday, March 7, with owner Gail, who responded thoroughly and promptly to all our email inquiries. We were there from 11 am to 3 pm and enjoyed our visit very much (except for the two caveats at the end of this review.)
 

Transport:  Gail kindly arranged our pickup by Hilarie, and she was a lovely friendly person who drove an immaculate white van.  (The roads were terrible, as full of potholes, as I recalled from our only prior visit to Antigua, three years earlier, when we rented a car to tour Nelson’s Dockyard and its surrounds and then stopped at a beach on our way back to St. John’s.) We arranged for  Hilarie to return for us at 3 pm unless we called earlier, and she was right on time.  
 

Beach bar:  Very charming and immaculate.  Marvin gave us rum punches as soon as we arrived, and they were delicious.  (He showed us the chairs and umbrella he had prepared for us right on the beach and warned us not to put anything on the sand but rather on the rocks right behind us in case the water came up to our loungers, excellent advice.) Before we left to return to our ship, Oceania Riviera, I ate some fried shrimp and enjoyed an excellent pina colada while husband drank a Corona.  There were several customers at the restaurant then.
 

Beach itself:  We were the only beach guests that day. The Fort James or Fort Bay beach is lovely and less than 15 minutes drive from the port.  There was little-to-no falloff to get in or out of the water, probably the easiest of all the beaches we visited on our cruise (which included Eagle Beach on Aruba, Princess Margaret’s Beach on Bequia, and Jalousie/Sugar Beach on St. Lucia.). The water was a great temperature and the only people who came near us to swim during our entire visit were members (mostly preteens with adult coaches) of a local swim club.  They mostly swam a few hundred yards up the beach but at one point did some distance swimming near us back to their beach area.

 

Only negatives in my opinion:  

 

1.  The hard plastic beach chairs., although in excellent condition, were most uncomfortable on which to sit for more than a few minutes. This type of chair requires some kind of lounge cushion placed on top of it or a switch to those with plastic slats or that dense nylon netting that  have some give to them. 

 

2.  There were three stray dogs that insisted on laying all around my lounger, including underneath, for most of our visit.  I found this alarming because they would not move even a foot away.  At one point, they had a barking match with a fourth stray that approached.  

I am editing my review to give a special shout out to Marvin, who was so very hospitable and helpful in making our day at Beach Limerz a good one.  
 

Edited March 15, 2020 by CintiPam

[bunnyette]

Gail just posted on Facebook that Beach Limerz is closed while the Pandemic continues.  We were there in January & had a lovely peaceful day.   Please think of Gail and her staff during this crisis.

[Bobal]

Shout out to Beach Limerz. We were there last year and had booked to visit again a couple of weeks ago. Obviously our cruise was cancelled so I wrote and informed Gail. We had a refund (minus a small admin fee) this week. Apart from a hotel, this is the only refund we've received for 2 forthcoming trips - 2  cruises, flights, train tickets etc.

 

I will definitely use Beach Limerz again next time we visit Antigua.