22 January 2011
World Arc organised a free tour of the island. Mia from the yacht club and Melissa from the tourist board were our guides. To fully appreciate this island one day is really not enough but it did allow a "flavour". This is the first place we have visited I can recall where there are no mobile phones. It is so completely unspoilt being relatively untouched by tourism. Of course when the new airport is built which it will, all that will change. It has a near perfect climate, sub tropical with no hurricanes. Leaving Jamestown, it was a revelation for within a few minutes, the harsh landscape that surrounds the town, suddenly reveals a softer, greener side. Tropical plants start to appear in cottage style gardens with well tended vegetable plots. Agapantha is growing wild in abundance by the roadsides. White or fairy terns flit around amongst the trees, but the wire bird, which features on their national flag remained elusive.
St Helena is all about Napoleon. Our first stop was at The Briars Pavilion where he spent the first seven weeks of his exile while improvements to his permanent residence, Longwood House, was being carried out. It is said they were his happiest weeks of his entire time spent on St Helena due to the fact that he formed a very close relationship with the Briars owners, the Balcombe family, and in particular their twelve year old daughter, Betsy, who could speak fluent French. Looking somewhat out of place and almost next door was the Cable and Wireless Station. Television only came to the island in 1995. We drove on to Longwood House situated in a prime position, high up on a plateau in the centre of the island. The property and surrounding grounds are owned by the French government, and have been excellently restored and maintained. A real museum piece in every way, it had exact replicas of many of the furnishings and furniture, the walls lined with the most beautiful pictures, depicting the life of Napoleon during the time of his exile. He died in his early fifties, after living there for only five and a half years. The French would have it that he was poisoned. but the very British view is that he died of stomach cancer, a fate suffered by many of his close relatives. As our guide explained, arsenic was in the wallpaper and the house being very damp, released the toxic chemicals into the atmosphere therefore it was wholly unsurprising that his body should have had traces of it. After lunch we visited his tomb. A half mile gently sloping walk, through an avenue of leafy cork, pine and eucalyptus, brought us to this lovely serene spot. He chose Sane Valley as his place of burial in the event that orders were given for his body to remain on the island. He came across it on one of his walks and was delighted with the peaceful landscape and plants that grew there. He certainly couldn't have picked a prettier place for as I cast my eye around, I could see busy lizzie, nasturtium, plumbago, bourgainvillea, arum lilies, in addition to many others I was unable to name. His body was returned to Les Invalids, in Paris, nineteen years later. Now the road climbed to the 'rooftop' of the island, and at High Peak we saw rolling hills and valleys of green. The island's interior is all so lush and fertile. Beautiful cattle grazed on the rich pasture lands, and one field had four of the healthiest, plumpest donkeys I have ever seen. Normally these animals make for such a sorry sight, used as 'beasts of burden'. Then on over to Sandy Bay Ridge for the best view of two volcanic plugs, Lot with the smaller one, Lot's Wife in the background. Our guide Mia summed up the scene as 'emerald set in bronze', for these two towering peaks stood out conspicuously amongst the brown, barren rocky coastal cliffs. Skirting around the perimeter of the national park, we stopped to view the five giant tortoises, originating in the Seychelles, in the grounds of Plantation House, the governor's residence. The eldest, Jonathan, is now aged 179 years. Returning to Jamestown, we stopped at the top of Ladder Hill, the scene of yesterday's arduous climb, before descending the precipitous road winding its way down a series of tight hairpin bends, a journey not for the faint hearted. We scratched around the mini markets for the last of our provisions for we were leaving the next day. In the museum there was an exhibition with a ballot for the new national flower, between the ebony bush, only to be found on St. Helena and the arum lily. We cast our own vote. Out of curiosity more than anything else we popped into the local distillery. Paul Hickling invested a huge sum of his own money in the equipment hoping for a good return when the new airport is built. We had a tasting of all five of his products and bought two, the spiced rum and a gin from elderberry. The bottles which he had made especially by an Italian glass company were based on the steps of Jacob's ladder and a collectors' piece in themselves. The day ended with a rather mediocre meal ashore with Jenny and John, Irene and Dick and Jean and Mike.
The other great tourist attraction on this island is the walking. We bought a book, The Post Box Walks of St Helena. In it, it describes a series of 21 Post Box walks of varying difficulty to places of outstanding beauty and interest around the island. At the end of each hiking trail a wooden post box contains a unique ink stamp and visitors book. We had intended to do at least two of them but sadly we did not have the time. One more good reason to jump aboard that mail ship!
Susan Mackay