At Bathsheba the boulders stand on stems. They are blocks of fossil coral, fallen from the cliffs behind onto a shore on the Atlantic side of Barbados. Every one is narrower at the bottom than at the top, which is the first thing you notice. The ocean that makes all the noise here did not do that cutting. Small marine animals did: they graze algae off the stone at the waterline, rasping the base back year after year until the block is left standing on a pedestal. Walking out among them at low tide, when sand channels and reef basins open between the rocks, you can get right underneath. At the foot of each block a groove runs all the way round, and every groove sits at the same height — the waterline, and the only place the grazing happens.
The hill behind the village is the same rock in a staircase. Each terrace stepping up from the coast is a dead fringing reef that grew to the sea surface of its day and was then lifted clear. Coral cannot grow above sea level, so each one tells you where the sea stood at the time. Out in front, Atlantic swells cross a shallow reef shelf and rear up into the Soup Bowl. The winter groundswells from November to March bring the size the barrels are famous for, and the Independence Pro is surfed on it in early November. Almost nobody swims. The currents take people, so the only water that makes sense for you is the row of shallow basins in the reef, which fill, swirl and drain as the sets come through. Everything else here is watched rather than entered — from the sand, or from the picnic lawn above it where the coconut palms all lean the same way, pushed inland by years of trade wind. That lawn is the point of the place. Bridgetown families used to ride a sugar railway out to it for pennies on a Sunday, and the village still comes out to sit there and look at the sea.