So here I am back on St Helena, for my third visit — but not the last. Whereas, up until 2017, everyone arrived at Jamestown where the boats dock, nowadays, unless you are on a yacht, first sight of the island is always the airport, one of the more dramatic approaches in world aviation, I am sure. Behind is Great Stone Top, which I climbed in January last year.
Since I left Windhoek there have been only landscapes and fauna depicted on here — so on my last full day in Namibia let’s pay some credit to the fine people who have welcomed me in this country. My three guides have been particularly notable: Johannes in the Namib Desert; Veondjavi in Damaraland; and for the last three days, Samuel here in Ongava. The latter is seen here waiting with me for my plane to arrive: this is, in effect, the departure lounge of the Ongava airstrip.
Finally, I’m off. This evening, this vehicle constituted flight ET729 from Manchester to Addis Ababa, via (for some reason) Geneva: the service that saved the day back in January last year when everything went tits up due to a few snowflakes, but that is in the past. I like the Ethiopian Airlines logo, which gives it a suitably avian feel. This will be my last photo taken in the UK until 20th May.
My last day of the promised 11-in-a-row in Toronto. It’s been a worthwhile trip for sure, although that doesn’t mean it’s been all that eventful (Saturday night’s accident aside). But the necessary work has been done, and possibly I will be back in June. For now, the pre-flight ritual beer in the departure lounge, then home.
After eight days in a row in the house, a morning out — so I could have something stuck up my nose, and then be returned. Somebody, somewhere, thinks there’s a point to all this. (I will add that I had things stuck up my nose both before flying here, and on arrival, and have been in isolation since.)
The island has a verdant interior but the rim is very barren. Out by the airport sits “Bradley’s Camp”, a bunch of prefabs surrounded by barbed wire and personal security that is presumably where the local authorities stick the asylum seekers, people with a 0.0001% chance of having a currently fashionable communicable disease, and other undesirables. But at least it has parking facilities for visitors.
Is this working? Hmmm, seems to be.
OK then, I am successfully online on one of the world’s most remote islands, 1,200 miles from the nearest other land. The landing — on a bare airstrip perched on top of piles of volcanic cinder — was not as rough as I’d been led to believe it might be. Ten days of quarantine await, however; you and I both will have plenty of opportunities to inspect my accommodation between now and my release on Friday 19th.
I have never seen snow falling anywhere as early in a year as 17th October, but Iceland lived up to its name this morning and duly delivered, as my first flight home returned me to Keflavik. This seems even to have caught Icelanders unaware, seeing as it caused my second flight to be delayed two hours while we waited, seemingly endlessly, for the wings of our aircraft to be de-iced (“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking…. We are eighth in the queue for de-icing…. [45 minutes later] We are sixth in the queue….”). But I did get home in the end.
Flying reduces one to a platelet in a bloodstream, being pushed through a number of tin pipes and artificially-lit domains, with little sense of the outside world passing, particularly on a night flight at this time of year. I left Salatiga just after taking yesterday’s shot, so about 11.30am Indonesian time on Friday, and this shot depicts my arrival in Manchester on Saturday morning, having seen only darkness for about 18 hours since leaving Jakarta. The journey went well, though…. at least until I got to Manchester Victoria and Northern Rail took over. But that’s another (unending) story.
Artistic merit is one thing but the photos on here have to somehow epitomise the day, and as my journey home occupied the whole of the first ten and a half hours of 4/11/19, this was what had to be shown. It gets the ‘very early monring’ photo count up a notch, as well. Shot taken out of my window seat at 44K on the Jeddah – Frankfurt leg of my trek.
Our last day in Iceland was supposed to end around, oh, say 9am? And we were due home in Hebden Bridge by 2pm.
As you can see from this, this didn’t happen. In fact, we did not leave the airport until 9.30pm, after a litany of farce that I do not wish to begin to recount. Thus, another two hours after this take-off time was promised to us.
You can’t completely see the flight number to identify the budget carrier who inflicted this joke upon us (with no informational updates); let me just say they wear orange. A shame because otherwise this has been an excellent week in Iceland, if you get to visit it I highly recommend it.
Being 42 