{"id":1477,"date":"2023-04-30T11:07:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-30T11:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oliverberry.com\/?p=1477"},"modified":"2023-11-27T15:14:38","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T15:14:38","slug":"st-helena-oliver-berry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oliverberry.com\/writing\/st-helena-oliver-berry\/","title":{"rendered":"St Helena"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"st<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cast adrift in the South Atlantic, St Helena is an island defined by its isolation. Experience the otherworldly landscapes, exotic wildlife and warm hospitality of Britain\u2019s most far-flung territory  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There! To starboard!\u2019 shouts Captain Craig, pointing into the choppy Atlantic\nswell. His passengers don snorkels and drop into the water, and I follow with a\nsplash. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, there\u2019s nothing but ocean: endless, hazy with plankton, dazzlingly\nblue. But then, something materialises from the depths. A mouth. A gigantic\nmouth. A gaping, cavernous mouth, large enough to swallow a car. A mouth\nswimming straight towards me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a kick of my fins, I swim sideways as the mouth glides past,\npursued by a dorsal fin, a white-spotted flank and a mighty tail, snaking from\nside to side. I\u2019ve just brushed fins with the planet\u2019s biggest fish \u2013 a whale\nshark – but as I haul myself back into the boat, Captain Craigseems unimpressed.\nLast week, he tells me with a grin, he saw a school of thirty in this very spot,\nand this time next month, I\u2019d probably find myself swimming face-to-face with a\nhumpback whale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quite why the tiny island of St Helena has become a favourite breeding\nground for the world\u2019s whale sharks and humpbacks remains a scientific mystery,\nbut it almost certainly has something to do with the island\u2019s astonishing\nisolation. Apart from the similarly pint-sized islands of Ascension and Tristan\nda Cunha, the nearest landmass of note is Africa, 2000 miles to the east (South\nAmerica is even more distant, 2500 miles west). Just five miles wide and ten\nmiles long, floating like a piece of flotsam in the middle of the South\nAtlantic, St Helena isn\u2019t simply a long way from anywhere: it\u2019s one of the\nremotest places on Planet Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You can\u2019t really get more isolated than St Helena,\u2019 admits naturalist\nStedson Stroud, as we rumble along the island\u2019s west coast in his battered old\nLand Rover. \u2018But the isolation is what makes the island so fascinating, at\nleast in terms of natural history: we have plants, insects, birds and animals\nhere that you won\u2019t find anywhere else on Earth. We\u2019re an oasis of biodiversity\nin the middle of the South Atlantic.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dressed in khaki fatigues and a floppy safari hat, looking like a\nSouth Atlantic Crocodile Dundee, Stedson is an expert on the island\u2019s flora and\nfauna. He\u2019s taking me on a safari to spot one of St Helena\u2019s rarest creatures:\nthe St Helena plover, or wirebird, the island\u2019s only endemic bird, brought to\nthe edge of extinction by hunting and habitat loss, now gradually recovering\nthanks to conservation efforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With an ominous splutter, the truck shudders to a stop, and we step\ninto a landscape that\u2019s almost lunar in its strangeness. A plain of red rock\nsprawls around us, speckled with spindly clumps of aloe and bulbous prickly\npears. Bubblegum-coloured boulders are strewn around like meteorites. Tangerine\nhills loom in the distance. A topographical mash-up of desert, mesa, volcano\nand moonscape, it\u2019s a view not\nentirely of this world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Bingo!\u2019 whispers Stedson, spying something scurrying between the\nrocks: a black-banded head, a white breast and a bundle of brown feathers, perched\non spindly, matchstick legs.  \u2018It might\nnot look like much, but for twitchers, that\u2019s pretty much the Holy Grail on St\nHelena. The wirebird\u2019s on our coat-of-arms, after all!\u2019 Stedson says, as we\njudder back down the pot-holed track towards his house, watching the sun sink\nover an Atlantic so blue, it\u2019s almost fluorescent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I drive back along the spine of the island, zig-zagging through\nmisty cloud forest, barren plateaus and black volcanic valleys, I\u2019m struck by\nthe utter strangeness of this tiny island\u2019s topography. But there\u2019s something\nelse about St Helena that\u2019s even stranger than its landscape: the fact that it\u2019s\nBritish, and has been for the last 360 years. Though it was discovered by the\nPortuguese in 1502, St Helena has been a British territory since 1659, when the\nEast India Company installed the first Governor here; famously, St Helena is\nalso the island where Britain exiled its arch-nemesis, Napoleon Bonaparte,\nafter the Battle of Trafalgar in 1815 (he never left, dying on the island six\nyears later).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowadays, St Helenians (or Saints, as they refer to themselves) are\nBritish citizens, and the island still follows the UK\u2019s lead in many areas of\nlife, from health and education to the legal system. Touchstones of Britishness\nare everywhere: in the road-signs, roundabouts, fire engines, post boxes and police\ncars, in the Union Jacks fluttering from balconies, in the Britishisms that\npepper people\u2019s conversations (albeit in an accent that sounds like Bob Marley\ndoing an impression of Blackbeard the Pirate). And with its Georgian houses,\ngreengrocers, pubs and copper-spired Anglican church, the island\u2019s capital, Jamestown,\nfeels bizarrely like an English seaside village circa 1950 – or at least it\nwould do, if it weren\u2019t for the red volcanic cliffs looming above town, the\nwhite-tailed tropicbirds fluttering around in the treetops and the bulbous cacti\nsprouting along the roadsides like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Everyone\u2019s proud to be a Saint, of course, but being British is part\nof our identity too,\u2019 explains businesswoman Tara Wortley over a cup of island\ncoffee near the wharf in Jamestown. As the youngest woman elected to St\nHelena\u2019s council, she\u2019s had plenty of time to contemplate her island\u2019s\ncomplicated cultural identity.  \u2018We drive\non the same side of the road, we use the same currency, even our sense of\nhumour is British. But we have this islander mentality too. That duality is\nwhat makes Saints who we are.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tara is also one of a new generation of young Saints who\u2019s managed to\nresist the lure of the motherland; thanks to the advent of the internet,\nentrepreneurship and educational programmes, and not least the construction of\nthe island\u2019s brand new airport, it\u2019s becoming possible for young Saints to make\na life for themselves on the island in ways that simply weren\u2019t possible in the\npast. Marco Yon is one of them: like many young Saints, he moved to the UK in\nhis twenties, working as a helicopter engineer in the Royal Navy, but recently\nreturned home to guide hikes and bushwalks around the wild island where he grew\nup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Like most Saints I wanted to see the outside world, but I always knew\nI wanted to come home one day,\u2019 he says, as he leads me on a dawn trek beneath\nthe slopes of Sugarloaf, a rugged mountain on the island\u2019s north coast. \u2018Things\nhave really changed on St Helena since I was a kid. New people are moving here,\nthere\u2019s progress, development, which can be seen as a positive or negative,\ndepending on your point of view. Personally I think it\u2019s a good thing: we need\nto find our place in the world, and also hold on to what makes this place\nspecial, too.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We pass through a thicket of prickly pears, and Marco shows me how to\nharvest the fruits, using a rock to brush off the spines, revealing the sweet\nred flesh inside; it tastes halfway between a lychee and a mango. \u2018We call this\nthe tungi,\u2019 he says, splitting another fruit. \u2018In the old days sailors planted\nthem on the island so they\u2019d always have a supply of Vitamin C to stave off\nscurvy.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We reach the coast and stop on the battlements of an abandoned\nwatchtower, gazing out over the flat blue Atlantic. On one wall, a date has\nbeen etched into the stone: 1794. I wonderwho the soldier who carved it\nwas, the epic journey that brought him here, and whether he ever made it home.\nI\u2019m still thinking about him as I follow Marco down the coast towards the\nrooftops of Jamestown, listening to the boom of the Atlantic against the\nisland\u2019s black cliffs, and the lonely cackle of fairy terns wheeling in the\nmist. St Helena may not be quite as faraway as once it was, but it still feels like\na long way from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St Helena:\nMake It Happen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting\nThere<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is currently one weekly flight to St Helena\u2019s airport from\nJohannesburg every Saturday, with a brief stop for refuelling at Windhoek in\nNamibia. A second mid-week flight on Tuesday was also trialled in early 2019.\nFlight-time to the island is around six hours, but the airport\u2019s exposed\nlocation means that bad weather sometimes causes delays, so be prepared. Return\nflights from the UK to Johannesburg start at around \u00a31733 with South African\nAirways (flysaa.com), including an overnight stop in Johannesburg and an onward\nconnection to St Helena with Air Link.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Activities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are several accredited operators offering snorkelling trips to\nsee whale sharks and humpback whales, contact Dive St Helena<\/strong> (00290 61400; craigiyon@helanta.co.sh<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hiking guides on the island include Marco Yon<\/strong> (00290 61557), Remi\nBruneton <\/strong>(00290 67446; remi.bruneton@gmail.com<\/a>) and Val Joshua<\/strong> (00290 22235;\nVal.J@helanta.co.sh)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For 4×4 jeep tours, contact Aaron\u2019s<\/strong>\nAdventure Tours <\/strong>(00290 61597).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where to\nStay<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The island\u2019s only hotel, Mantis\nSt Helena, <\/strong>sits in a prime location in the middle of Jamestown. Converted\nfrom three historic merchant\u2019s houses, it offers spacious, comfortable\nair-conditioned rooms; the best have teak floors and shuttered windows\noverlooking the town square. There\u2019s also an excellent restaurant (doubles from \u00a3175, mantissthelena.com). <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are also several B&Bs around town, including the Townhouse<\/strong>, which offers homely\naccommodation in a lemon-yellow Georgian house (doubles from \u00a3140 per night, townhouseaccommodation.com<\/a>). Another\noption is the Blue Lantern<\/strong>, in a\nmodern building located on a backstreet behind Jamestown\u2019s church (doubles from\n\u00a3100, accommodationsthelena.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you prefer to base yourself further out of town, Richards Travel Lodge <\/strong>is amodern bungalow in the island\u2019s main\nsettlement of Half Tree Hollow, with a pleasant garden and cracking views of\nthe coast. Owner Derek Richards also runs island tours (doubles from \u00a390, islandimages.co.sh<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where to\nEat<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For traditional island food such as tuna fishcakes, plo (stew) and\nfish and chips, the preferred locals hangout is Anne\u2019s Place<\/strong>, a breezy island-style bar in Jamestown (00290 22797; mains around\n\u00a38-10). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Classier French-inspired dining is on offer at Bertrand\u2019s Cottage, <\/strong>housed in a building that once belonged to\nNapoleon\u2019s aide-de-camp at Longwood (3 courses from around \u00a315; bertrandscottage.com).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mantis\nHotel<\/strong> also has an excellent fine-dining restaurant, with dishes like tuna\nspring rolls and swordfish steak (mains from around \u00a314, mantissthelena.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further\nReading<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comprehensive information on the island is available from the St\nHelena Tourist Office (sthelenatourism.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind the\nScenes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A rite-of-passage for every visitor to St Helena (including me), the\nvertiginous staircase known as Jacob\u2019s\nLadder<\/strong> was originally built as a railway to connect Jamestown with Ladder\nHill Fort. Its 699 steps, 640 feet of ascent and incline of 44\u02da makes it a\nformidable proposition for even the fittest hiker; the current record ascent is\nheld by Graham Doig, who reached the top in 5 minutes, 16.78 seconds in 2013;\nit took me a rather less impressive 20 minutes to slog to the top. If you do\ncomplete the climb, don\u2019t forget to pick up your congratulatory certificate\nfrom the Museum of St Helena in Jamestown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Costly\nCoffee<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

St Helena\u2019s sub-tropical climate is ideal for coffee-growing, but most\nislanders grow just enough to supply their own needs, so there are only a\ncouple of commercial plantations. This makes St Helenian coffee, gram-for-gram,\namong the most expensive in the world. On the island, a bag of 100g retails for\naround \u00a310; the same bag in Harrod\u2019s costs nine times as much. Tours of Rosemary Gate Coffee <\/strong>can be arranged\nthrough the tourist office, or you can buy direct from their caf\u00e9 by the\nharbour in Jamestown\n(sainthelenaisland.info\/coffee.htm)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Napoleon on\nSt Helena<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Famously, St Helena\u2019s isolation made it the perfect place to exile\nBritain\u2019s arch-nemesis, Napoleon Bonaparte, after the Battle of Trafalgar in\n1815. He never left, dying on the island six years later; his final home at\nLongwood is now St Helena\u2019s most visited tourist attraction. You can also visit\nhis tomb, although the Emperor is no longer there; his remains were repatriated\nto France in 1840.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Oldest\nSt Helenian<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

St Helena\u2019s most senior citizen is Jonathan, a giant Seychelles\ntortoise, who was given as a gift to the Governor in 1882. He was thought to be\naround fifty when he arrived, which puts him at about 187 now \u2013 and makes him,\nas far as we know, the oldest living land animal on the planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cast adrift in the South Atlantic, St Helena is an island defined by its isolation. Experience the otherworldly landscapes, exotic wildlife and warm hospitality of Britain\u2019s most far-flung territory   \u2018There! To starboard!\u2019 shouts Captain Craig, pointing into the choppy Atlantic swell. His passengers don snorkels and drop into the water, and I follow with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1478,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSt Helena | Oliver Berry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"St Helena is an island defined by its isolation. 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