The views from High Knoll Fort were amazing but it is not the highest point, that was left to Diana’s Peak. The Palladian Mansion is Plantation House where the British Governors have resided since pre-Napoleon times. There has been one lady Governor who is now working in Nepal.
The Governor residence is a very comfy place with nice views down to the water and they grow lots of their own veggies and have four nice long-lived tortoises for company. The oldest is Jonathan who is 189 years old and arrived in 1840 at the age of 8 just as Napoleon was exhumed and returned to France. Exchange is no robbery!
Our guides for the day were James and Jesse who each had a vehicle and we spent the day in James car. His mum and dad started a coffee plantation in Sandy bay Valley three years ago and are now virtually self-sufficient in delicious vegetables and coffee beans, as we found out when Debbie prepared lunch for the eight of us at her beautiful home just across the valley from where she grew up in her grandmother’s house. She and her family have lived all around the world with her husband’s job in banking, so it was like coming home and buying this house. The loaf she is slicing was spinach bread and it was delicious. The rock formations glowering over Sandy Bay Valley look like something from Tolkien’s mind. The plain you see shows the airport runway in the distance but is home also to the island’s only endemic bird the St Helena Plover or Wirebird and the next photos shows its nest with two eggs. Jesse found the plover’s nest and if the eggs are near hatching nothing short of lifting the little bird up will get is away from its eggs.
We called by Longwood House, Nap’s home for six years of his internment, and the manager said we could come back the next day as they’d just received their Covid clear results.
Nap’s Tomb was a peaceful place, requested by him if he could not be sent home after death. He used to walk nearby and drink from the stream. Water was taken back to Longwood for him to drink. He loved the quiet, sheltered valley with its willow trees.
So, we left our lovely Zoonie swaying about on her mooring in the immense swell yesterday and made our way to shore where I did a Tarzan’s Jane style leap for the shore clutching one of the knotted hanging ropes as the gap between the boat and concrete was swirling with water and I wasn’t going there!!
You can see how the house is on top of the island, constantly soaked with cool mist amidst the clouds and how this made it a very hostile place for ‘Boney’, as he was called and his entourage. We were not allowed to take photos inside for some very naive and baseless reasons no doubt, so I can tell you that it would have been like living in a corridor, each room passing into the next with no corridor giving privacy. Also, the rooms were mostly rectangular and so there was no comfortable orientation for the occupant. Feng Shui did not exist.
More details about Boney when we get underway; I just wanted to get the photos to you.
The house in the valley with the green roof is The Briars where Boney spent the first few happiest months of his stay on St Helena while Longwood was being prepared; he loved it there.
We visited the museum for a short while and the plover you can see in the photo is an exquisite carving with all the feathers shown in great details by someone who clearly loved the birds.
The Carpe Diem Yacht is moored behind us and her stern mooring line is now wrapped around her rudder with the risk of serious damage. But the owners know, so nothing more can be done.
The pussy cat belongs to Jane at Ann’s where we had a welcome lunch and he snoozed the while away.
Up the hill to the hospital for our Covid jabs and on to the Heart-shaped Falls through a young Gumwood Grove and on up and up. Next day I wasn’t sure if it was the jab or the walk that gave me calf ache!
Then back down again to visit Napoleon at the Consulate Hotel. It is possible to have a very grand stay at the Consulate but we visited just for a welcome lunch and a chat with Nap Old Chap, he preferred being tucked down in Jamestown and away from the cool misty hilltop where Longwood is located. I found out a little more about the plover and when we got back to Zoonie we explored the coast a little in the canoe, but the swell was big!
We are leaving here tomorrow, Saturday 10th on our long journey to The Azores. It looks like light winds after a few days and our best bet is to go west away from the west African coast where there will be no wind. So next we have the ITCZ to cross which contains the Equator and out the other side to where we cross our outward track in 2016. Plenty of reasons for modest celebrations on route!!
Written on passage…..
First of Two Letters from St Helena
So, we have emerged from our fortnight on St Helena equipped with our first Covid vaccination and a negative test result letter; modern armoury for entry to The Azores.
After four days of being moored to the substantial yellow buoy and unable to go ashore, but relishing the ambience, in the remaining 10 days we certainly made up for the slow start.
Our explorations began at the harbour area. Walking across the bridge over the moat, and through the arched town gate, the castle on the left is now used as government accommodation and offices, a group of substantial buildings lay to our right including the two oldest buildings which are still in use. One used to be an old theatre. Between them the 669 steps of Jacob’s Ladder ascended straight up the steep slope on the right and at the top donkeys would be harnessed to a turnstile and haul military supplies slowly upwards. Today of course it is a physical challenge to everyone who takes it on for fun. We never did get around to it, or should I say, up it.
The Anglican Church received its new spire just five years ago and opposite, nestling in the pretty Castle Gardens is Ann’s Place, a bar/restaurant immensely popular with yachties especially for many years and now run by Ann’s daughter Jane. Ann resides in a care home on the island. We patronised the bar many times as you can imagine and the internet there was good enough to send all my photos to you.
Further up the hill on the same side and amongst numerous shops, is the Consulate Hotel, where Napoleon stands on the balcony at present surveying the scene and looking decidedly peaky in the face. A remarkable place full with memorabilia and where one could have a very comfortable stay. Just beyond there the road splits and more shops, pretty painted homes, the bank and a couple more bars plus the market can be found. The town is well supplied with shops but as the growing season is slowing for the very few horticulturalists on the island, fresh produce is only brought in to town on a Thursday and distributed around the two supermarkets.
We came in early that day and had a great time gathering food for our long passage, including 2 dozen eggs, as rare as, well, hen’s teeth. Also, butternut squash, big tasty tomatoes, appropriately French beans, onions, potatoes, beautiful shiny aubergines, carrots and lettuce, all island grown.
Rob’s daughter, Charly, is about to have a little girl. Her due date was last Wednesday and she has a caesarean booked for two days before her own birthday on the 18th if little one doesn’t make an appearance before then! She will be about two months old when we see her and almost exactly a decade younger than our first granddaughter, Ruby!
One day while on our mooring buoy we inflated the canoe and went for a paddle along the cliffs near us. It seems everyone but us has been visited by the local whale shark, the world’s largest shark and quite harmless to man and we were hoping we might be lucky. He usually comes along the coast in the morning feeding off small fish near the cliff edge. We didn’t see one sadly; another reason apart from Jacob’s ladder to return one day. Their distribution is usually from Australia’s east coast right along to Cape Town so seeing them this far north is interesting.
The fish are plentiful around here. A red Spanish fishing boat drifted off St Helena for the days we were there because 8 of their crew had Covid and one had to be rushed ashore for emergency treatment. Another cruiser caught a massive tuna, much bigger than they could eat, so the skipper came around the moorings and gave each yacht a big chunk. We accepted because otherwise it would have gone to waste and it lasted us 9 days. But I’d rather he had left it in the ocean!
On Sunday we went ashore, our second sortie after the island opened up for us, and we chatted with Steve, Commodore of the Yacht club and Secondary School science teacher. We hoped to visit Longwood during our day tour, but the hitch was a French film crew who were in quarantine there while filming a programme to commemorate the bicentenary of Napoleon’s death on May 5th. Exactly 100 years before mum’s birth!
Another tiny crop on the island is coffee, which sells in Harrods at an extravagant price but can be drunk in the little café by the moat with it’s fabulous views at a reasonable price; so that was our experience of it, and very nice it was too, but then I’m no expert.
The highlight of this trip ashore was a buffet lunch at Ann’s Place for eight of us, the place you see in the photos with lots of flags overhead and red hangings, making it a really colourful and warm venue in both senses of the word. It overlooks the small castle gardens and there are some fine ficus trees nearby with their colourful birds, including the red cardinal, always busy from one tree to the next.
Covid Vaccination Controversy
Six of us walked the long way up the hill to the hospital on 6th April for our first Covid vaccinations and we were shown into a small cool room near the container which now acts as a vaccinations centre. I was in my doubts from the start that the Covid nurse who did our tests, and the Port Officer, were actually in a position to give offer us a free vaccination before the islanders had all had their second. The lady Senior Health Officer came out and tactfully suggested she would prefer to wait the few days it would take to vaccinate everybody on the island first; and I sympathised with her sentiments, but after the promise and the long hot climb up the hill, she was out voted and we got our jabs.
We didn’t play the ‘we’re British and our country supplied the vaccine’ card because we wouldn’t do that and because our friends were Dutch and South African.
Immediately afterwards Rob and I walked on up the valley beyond where the road curved around to the left, in search of the Heartshaped Waterfall, which was beautiful. The water falls over an overhang, so it falls through the air as a fine mist in which one can picture elfin figures just like we do with clouds. We relaxed in the shade on a wooden lookout before making our way back downhill through the very young gumwood plantation, the island’s attempt to replace some of the indigenous woodland.
On the way back we joined Henk and Marjolein from Jori, on the balcony at the Consulate with Boney (affectionate historic name for Napoleon) for lunch and a cool beer.
The next morning my calves were on fire and I determined it was the walk and not the jab.
The Spasmodic Ferry Service.
When we first arrived our ferry boat skipper told us proudly that the ferry operated from 4.00am to 8.00pm which we thought was brilliant. But when we tried to call for a 7.00am ferry ashore we were then advised by the skip that they don’t run until 8.00am! They can be easily distracted too by such as a trip along the shore to collect some fishermen, the perambulations of the Covid Nurse who needed to get her samples to the lab by 9.00am and of course a break down, which happened just before we left and the radio commentary went something, i
“Ever Hopeful, Ever Hopeful, harbour ferry” (Fictitious name)
“Harbour ferry this is Ever Hopeful”
“Ever Hopeful please tell other cruisers, ferry is broken down and spare boat has just dropped its prop. Diver is on his way!”
Which is not what you want to hear when you have been stuck aboard on the mooring for 8 days and have just received a negative Covid test result.
The ferry boats are interesting. Many of the craft in the small boat mooring field are very old and wooden, including the robust little ferry boats, thick with protective grey paint. The skipper pointed out to me the little craft used to take the Queen and Prince Phillip ashore for their 1957 visit, and another craft that was over a hundred years old. It looked very much like the traditional Azorean whaling boats, little more than skiffs with a mast and single sail, and it still had the rowlock holes from when it was propelled by oars.
Letter from St Helena Two
Out and About with Boney
There was a typical one metre swell at the stone wharf, surging up, down and along, shining the rocks and swirling the green weed, as the British pinnace from HMS Northumberland approached containing a small contingent of officers, his secretary and personal servants and its distinguished prisoner, fallen Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. It was the 17th October 1815.
Boney as he was nicknamed, more from affection and admiration than disrespect, leapt across the watery gap onto the slippery steps as the shadows of the evening grew longer and darker around him.
His new prison island awaited him. Since then, those steps have been encased in concrete forming a strong and durable wall and a series of low concrete stages laid at different levels to try and ease the landing process, but the swell is unchanged in this corner of the Bay, sheltered from the wind and tucked beneath the rocky cliff face topped by James Fort.
Two hundred and six years later, our little contingent of visitors arrived on a boat no bigger and used the hanging ropes suspended from a bar above the stage to swing across that watery gap.
We supped the famous St Helena coffee at the little café by the dry moat and I wondered through which small gate Boney had entered the castle to spend his first night in a highly undesirable house for him, because it looked out over the street and folk could peer in through the windows to catch a glimpse of their new significant visitor. The porch of the little gate can still be seen from Ann’s Place looking across the Castle Gardens.
Perhaps St Helena would suit this reclusive man, or as with his confinement on Elba, did he yearn for his freedom more.
The eight of us divided up between two vehicles, Henk, Marjolein, Rob and me with young conservationist James and Janneke, Weitze, Christo and Nana with James’ partner, Jesse in a hired and not very reliable vehicle.
Winding our way up the hillside away from Jamestown James pointed out the house with the green roof, perched on a grassy level area in the pretty watered valley and sheltered from the swirling clouds that often cap the highest peaks of the island.
Boney rode a horse the next morning out to inspect Longwood and on his way back spotted the original house, (demolished in 1947) called The Briars and requested to remain there, in a folly Cottage called the Pavilion, twenty metres from the main house, until Longwood was ready. It was very near the Heart Shaped waterfall I mentioned and for Boney to stroll the shaded banyan tree avenue listening to the birdsong and return to watch the four Balcombe children playing and squabbling in the grounds of the main house was music to his ears after his long campaigns and two gruelling months at sea.
The Pavilion is where he was happiest, with the secluded and luscious location amidst people who sympathised with him, and the building can be visited today. We didn’t make it there either; another reason to return.
Our first stop involved a lengthy climb up narrow roads so bendy that longer vehicles than ours would have to enter a bend, stop and back up to a better position before continuing. Much easier on a horse!
High Knoll Fort was built in 1798 and observers from its ramparts would have spotted ships in the offing 50 miles away. Beneath its robust walls is Donkey Plain, where the hard-working donkeys would rest and graze when they weren’t hauling up goods and equipment via the 699 step Jacob’s Ladder from Jamestown.
In 1811 some of the soldiers on duty in the fort mutinied because they wanted more alcohol and six of the ringleaders were hanged as a result. Today the fort is home to a host of rabbits, six thirsty ghosts and odd human visitors who camp there, maybe on treks around the island. Serious for a moment; life for the garrison soldiers on this remote island, so far from home, was often boring and bleak, up there in the clouds with little of any purpose to occupy them and the suicide rate was high.
After a bracing few minutes soaking up the views, we headed off to The Governor’s residence at Plantation House, in use for the same purpose since before Boney’s time, having been built in 1792.
It’s a fine Georgian Mansion facing the sun’s passage and overlooking a generous lawn, kept short and neat by Jonathan who arrived in 1882, the world’s oldest reptile aged 189 and his entourage of Frederika, who appears in the photo with him and was once thought to be a male until she was examined by a vet, and two other reptilian lawn mowers. Beyond the lawn is a vast and carefully tended vegetable garden and I could not understand why, with the perfect climate and fertile soil there weren’t many more of them; but at least we were to see two on our day out.
Debbie showed us around the ground floor rooms with great pride. Like Jonathan she has seen the coming and goings of the Governors, working out their four-year terms before moving on, including the first Lady Governor Lisa Honan (nee Phillips). She talked about the local lad who went away to learn the art of furniture restoration and now has plenty of work on the island. The white painted planter is one of the three in the house once used to render down whale blubber and the chandelier in the dining room has had an additional layer of crystals added because the ceilings here are much taller than in Longwood from where the chandelier originated.
Upstairs the white and airy room in which Princess Anne slept during her visit in 2002 has a view to delight one from the north facing window, and it is good to know the house is still very much lived in and used for the pleasure of visitors and islanders alike.
Our visit ended with a glass of chilled juice and home-made biscuits and mini samosas which set us up well for the drive south, over the island to Sandy Bay where James’ parents live in the late 18th century mansion house, they have restored on Wrangham’s Estate. This Debbie was born and bred in a little house across the valley belonging to her grandmother and in which relatives still live. Debbie married Neil, from England and they have lived around the world because of Neil’s career postings. James was born in Africa and has been back on the island working on conservation projects, taking a day off to be our excellent guide. He will be off again soon, to England with Jesse so she can have her baby in Portsmouth, her home town.
The scenery here was green and abundant with steep hillsides covered in small pastures and woodland. Ridges on the hillsides told of past grazing by sheep and cattle.
Debbie has taken just a few short years to transform the area around the house into a productive garden and even grows coffee beans on a small scale for home use. It was mellow and fruity. She is developing the house into a B & B with a separate self-contained unit under construction.
We were fortunate enough to be invited to one of her special luncheons where the food was all home grown and cooked and the spinach bread was delightfully different. Coconut milk panna cotta with passionfruit rounded off the culinary experience. Being welcomed as complete strangers into her lovely home and fed with such carefully prepared food was an unexpected and very special experience.
Up amongst the Plovers was our next stop and we had to be very careful where we walked as we looked across the open heathland towards the airport runway. James’ passion is wildlife, after Jesse of course, and he couldn’t wait to show us these dainty little birds, St Helena’s only remaining endemic species. They ran away from us of course, challenging the skills of the best photographers, not including me, but I did manage to get a picture of one’s nest with its two eggs, laid on shallow hollows on the open ground, hence having to be careful.
“She’ll soon come back to her nest when we move away and if the eggs are ready to hatch the only way you’ll get her off is to lift her!” James explained.
Jesse told me how scared she was on her first landing on the island, which is 47 square miles, roughly 6 x 8 miles.
“We were just a few metres above sea-level it seemed, about to touch down and we still couldn’t see any land.” The pilots are limited in the times they can circuit the island before landing before they have to turn back to somewhere in Africa to re-fuel. See how the end of the runway drops off the cliff! I’m glad we came in on Zoonie.
Next stop was for a brief look around Longwood as it was on route and was all we could manage since the house was closed because of Covid.
One can look across directly towards High Knoll Fort and to Diana’s Peak (820m ish) both being kissed by cool clouds when we were there and it was easy to see how bleak and exposed was Boney’s ‘prison’ like the Westcountry Moors on a grey day.
We meandered to the gate and a man near the house spotted us and came towards us with his friendly dog, both were smiling. “We’ve just received our Covid test results and we’re all negative. So, if you’d care to come back tomorrow at 11.00am, you’ll be welcome to take a look around the house!” Well, that was agreed then and on we drove to our last stop, Boney’s Tomb in the Sane Valley.
Two of James’ colleagues had been waiting in their vehicle to give him the gate key and we walked a mile or so down a grassy track into the most beautiful valley of flowering plants, ferns and tall trees dripping with moisture.
Boney was entombed here in four coffins one within the other, made of different materials. In 1840, nineteen years after his death, a distinguished group of Frenchmen arrived to exhume him and take him to his final resting place at Les Invalides on the banks of the Seine in Paris amidst his beloved French compatriots.
As the final coffin was opened and the remnants of the white veil removed from his face his near perfect preservation caused his loyal rescuers to shed yet more tears. The books say his ashes were taken to Paris, but whether ‘ashes’ is a synonym for remains I am not sure, if so then he must have been cremated on the island.
Letter from St Helena Three; At Last, to Longwood
I know, I said two letters but I felt the need to do Boney justice. On the morning of our Longwood House visit we both had to do Tarzan and Jane leaps to the shore from the ferry boat clasping the knotted ropes as the water not only surged between boat and harbour landing it raced along pushing the two apart; there was no best time to make the leap. But we made it and went off to gather our bounty of food that had been brought fresh from the fertile uplands that morning. The minibus driver was perfectly happy for us to cart it on to his van.
Not so happy was Boney on the morning of the 10th December 1815, his small cart loaded with personal effects and a few goods from his previous more privileged times; fine Sevres porcelain, a small library of books and maps, some folding military camp beds and bed linen of the best French quality and of course, his bathtub and I am completely with him there. With his entourage of twenty; officers, secretary and servants they made their way from the Pavilion at the Briars, where he had spent a few pleasant months, to the house on the fog-capped hill.
We were politely asked to wander in the gardens for a few minutes until the hour before midday when the door would be opened into the, newly built for Boney, billiard room, effectively the reception room, the one facing the lawn and painted green outside.
The garden has been lovingly restored to how it was in Boney’s time when he wandered along sunken grassy paths. He had them all lowered so the locals outside the walls would not be able to see him. Being a caged lion was enough, he didn’t want to be a spectacle as such. Having British soldiers around constantly annoyed him as he felt overlooked with no real peace to enjoy.
High Knoll Fort was in one direction atop the distant hill, you see in the photo with the flag on the left, but it was the view from his veranda with its green painted trellis that provided his best entertainment. He could watch the activities of the various British Battalions that were camped there, on the Deadwood Plains over the years and always had the best relations with the soldiers. As they came and went many of the soldiers were of the mind, they would like to take Boney home with them and set him up in a pretty English Country Cottage, he would have liked that too.
Even more fun were the bi-annual horse races held on the Deadwood Plain that was once a 1500-acre endemic gumwood forest before all the trees were cut down for firewood. The races were watched by most of the island’s inhabitants and gave rise to many horsey stories. One Archille Archambault got himself into a state of inebriation and proceeded to gallop down the track in support of the two Longwood horses, Dolly and Regent. He was whipped soundly by a steward who was unaware he was employed by Boney!
At last, we were allowed in to the sacred sanctum of the great man. Big disappointment came when we were told by the staff that no photography was allowed and they then watched us like hawks, as we stopped at each numbered exhibit to listen to the account through our headphones. These mini talks were excellent, full with information and given in a light way by various speakers. They totalled around two hours of learning of which I did around 1 hour 40 minutes.
Being a man to make the most of his time Boney set to writing up the histories of past military campaigns under various leaderships using his books, maps and the conveniently large surface of the billiard table in the first room one enters. His billiard table, two side tables and two big globes, one celestial and the other terrestrial have recently been restored and the globes were beautiful.
The next room, another oblong, was his plain bedroom with its small canopied bed, still there and depicted in the museum picture photo, as his death bed. The other rooms are directly linked from here with no external passage, so it seems he lived in a corridor, which must have felt uncomfortable.
The only room that felt feng shui was the library, square in shape and well lit. The dining room was very dark, nice for evening entertainment I guess but like a mausoleum the rest of the time. He deserved better.
After a testing six years and an attack of painful hiccups he died in the evening on the 5th May 1821 and was taken into the billiard room and laid on a table for the autopsy the next afternoon. His father died of stomach cancer and so did Boney, maybe it was hereditary and or lifestyle related. Understandably his consumption of French Brandy was not modest. He did have traces of arsenic in his hair but then so did many of the French population and it is very unlikely it was intentionally administered through poisoning. A real possibility was the presence of arsenic to create the blue colouring in wall paper, commonly used in France at the time and probably in his system before he arrived on the island.