While a long-time Canadian visitor is expressing alarm about the loss of pedestrian access along the West Coast shoreline, the Director of the Coastal Zone Management Unit (CZMU) says the boulders that have sparked the outcry were placed there legally – through planning permission – and cannot now be removed.
John Walmark, who turns 80 this year, has been coming to Barbados with his wife Pamela since 1998. The couple now spends the full month of November and the full month of April on the island each year. Last Friday he took a Sunday Sun team on a walking tour from the Paynes Bay Fish Market northward to show what he describes as a steady, five-year erosion of public access along one of the island’s most lucrative stretches of coastline.
“We could really walk from here all the way up to Sandy Lane five years ago and now you can’t,” Walmark said, standing at Paynes Bay Beach beside the fish market. “It started about five years ago and we notice that they are encroaching more and more on the beach.”
He said the situation worsened sharply after Hurricane Beryl tore through the island in July 2024, when several West Coast resorts whose seawalls were damaged, rebuilt with fresh rock armour along the foreshore. He singled out one resort – The House – as an example.
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