Choose these laid-back islands when you simply want to surrender to the Caribbean’s slow pace, colonial traditions and unspoilt natural scenery. When you’re veering away from adrenaline-rush water sports, glamorous spas and fashionable nightspots and thinking more along the lines of bird-watching in the mountains, morning strolls along the beach and sociable evenings in antique-strewn plantation houses.

Indeed, eighteenth-century great houses that have been lovingly converted into hotels pepper these islands and are truly idyllic bases from which to explore their uncrowded beaches and rugged mountain scenery. Intimate, full of character and highly personal, they are conducive to leisurely days around the swimming pool and relaxed evenings on candlelit dining terraces. And if they are not directly on the beach, you can be whisked there in just minutes, secure in the knowledge that you can be back in time for croquet on the lawn or a home-baked afternoon tea.

Of course, the exception to the plantation-house rule is the sprawling international resort that is the Four Seasons. Here all the impeccable standards of one of the world’s finest hotel companies can be anticipated, duly enhanced by an 18-hole championship golf course that is ranked as one of the Caribbean’s very finest.

YOU REACH NEVIS VIA ANTIGUA (REGULAR FLIGHTS WITH BRITISH AIRWAYS FROM GATWICK AND A FRIDAY FLIGHT WITH BMI FROM MANCHESTER) SO SPENDING A WEEK ON EACH ISLAND IS ALWAYS A TEMPTING IDEA. NOT ONLY DO BRIEF SHARED CHARTERS OR LIAT FLIGHTS PROVIDE THE LINK, BUT THERE IS ALSO QUITE A PLEASING CONTRAST BETWEEN THE TWO ISLANDS.