This creature generally seems to keep watch over the entrance to the Standard pub in Jamestown — though not very attentively, at least at this point in time. I like the colour co-ordination in evidence on this shot. The palate is certainly consistent between cat, walls and steps.
More greenery. It’s not much to look at here, but this was the sum total of the flow over the Heart-Shaped Waterfall on this May Sunday. However, at least it was flowing; usually it is wholly dry, but there was plenty of rain at the weekend which stimulated it into some kind of life. It’s a nice spot to walk to, at least, but close up it’s impossible to capture its drama in a single shot, unlike from a distance.
For various reasons St Helena is no agricultural paradise. Some types of fresh fruit and veg can be picked up fairly easily (tomatoes are currently easy to find, for example) but others are never seen. Potatoes, particularly. Ask for potatoes in a shop and you will either be laughed at or, as happened to me once, the shopkeeper will mutter, under his breath, “try me on Monday”, with a wink, as if you’ve asked for cocaine.
However, these beauties are currently growing happily on the tree in the courtyard outside my apartment. The landlord told me not to pick them off the tree, and I honestly haven’t. But they will, at some point, fall to the ground…. and at that point I consider them fair game.
Jacob’s Ladder has 699 steps, and rises 602 feet up from Jamestown to the fort above. It was originally built to transport goods, using carts and a mule-powered pulley system. Nowadays it sees traffic from the locals who breeze up and down it as if it were nothing more than a stairway at home, and the occasional visitor, like me, who thinks — yeah, OK, I really should give it a shot. But bear in mind there is only one escape point, at step 285: after that, you are committed. My time up this morning — 13 minutes and 45 seconds, not bad for an ageing geezer. But I am never going down it. Nope, not ever.
Believe me, the St Helena Yacht Club is not as posh a place as it sounds. But it is certainly the best place in town to watch the sun set over the Atlantic, and on Wednesday nights there is a regular food night of some description. In early 2023 it was Taco Night — nowadays it has morphed into Fish Night. Either way, I was there early, and the guy with the impressively pointy beard is still setting up.
I’m no botanist but banyan trees aren’t difficult to identify, with their multiple trunks and more on the way. This is the blog’s second, after the one seen in Brisbane (with the wife) back in 2013.
Anne’s Place in Jamestown is a St Helena institution and is the go-to spot for tourists and locals alike. Many of the former have, down the years, contributed the flags that now obscure its corrugated-iron ceiling. Some of these are fabulously obscure; the one with yellow and black checks near the bar proudly commemorates “Sutton United FC: Papa Johns’ Trophy Final 2022”. To not only have brought such an object all the way to St Helena, but to have, presumably, done so specifically to donate it: that’s commitment.
Telecommunications is why I have been coming to St Helena these last few years. To the left of this sign, down in the valley of Rupert’s Bay, the Equiano undersea cable now makes landfall on this little island in the middle of the South Atlantic. But it’s not like this is the first time ever that St Helena has been connected to the global network. This sign was made to be visible to ships approaching Jamestown and while I’m not sure about the exact missing words it’s basically a warning not to land or drop anchor east of this point because of the old telegraph cable that also made landfall at Rupert’s. When the Boer War broke out in 1899, within six weeks this cable was laid to connect the island to Cape Town. This compares highly favourably with the (at least) seven years that it took from the original application for the Equiano funding, to its half-hearted activation in October last year — giving the truth to the joke (made by an MP in Westminster in 1994, though he might have been quoting) that ‘The big tragedy of St Helena is that no one wants to invade it: if they did I am sure that overnight there would be much better ways of communicating with it’. And doubtless he was right.
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.
Another person’s art — and this time, with the artist. Sophia is depicted at the Friends of St Helena annual meeting, telling us about her inspirations, as a person born in Britain of St Helenian descent, and never having visited the island until earlier this year (in fact she was there in January and February when I was, but I don’t remember meeting her). The guy pictured is her grandfather, born on the island but left 78 years ago. Her art is really good, I don’t do it justice here, but I like the picture anyway.
Being 42 