Bermuda

Think Bermuda and images of tidy pastel cottages, professional gents in ties and shorts, pink-sand beaches, and quintessential British traditions like cricket matches and afternoon tea spring to mind. For once the stereotype matches up to reality.

North Americans visiting the island to be quaintly British; the Brits, on the other hand, tend to consider the island highly Americanised. It is, of course, uniquely Bermudian - a product of nearly four centuries of British colonial history and an equally long reliance on American trade.

You may be somewhat disoriented if you thought Bermuda was somewhere in the Caribbean. The island is, in fact, situated in the western Atlantic Ocean, nearly 600 nautical miles off the coast of North Carolina.