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Below: How to spend seven days exploring the nature-filled island of St Helena Meet the Millennium Forest: A unique tropical island reforestation project Reburies liberated slaves with full honours Tortoises hold key to keeping cells young Why the island of St Helena is a photographer’s dream Remote British island hoping to see more visitors Island where isolation is part of everyday life Whale Sharks may live up to a century, Cold War bomb dating reveals Dot in the Atlantic St Helena: An island apart

How to spend seven days exploring the nature-filled island of St Helena

By Emma Thompson, published on www.nationalgeographic.co.uk, 8th November 2022{1}

Moments of seclusion, vast stretches of lush landscapes and wildlife found nowhere else on the planet all go hand in hand in St Helena. Here’s how to spend a week making the most of this South Atlantic island.

An emerald fleck floating in the blue orbit of the South Atlantic Ocean, St Helena is one of the most isolated islands on Earth and serves up an unmatchable mix of raw nature and a laidback dose of old-style Britannia. Finally unlocked after the pandemic, the British Territory offers that rare thing: a chance to remember the sweet silence of life without the tring of mobile phones and glare of white screens. A place where keys are left in car ignitions, the dramas of rolling 24/7 news seem a world away and people still greet each other in the street. A place where days can be spent tracing rugged walking trails, meeting the world’s oldest living land creature and snorkelling with leviathans. A stress-free escape where even the locals - the descendants of settlers, soldiers and slaves - are nicknamed ‘Saints.’ Come to unplug and reconnect with wildlife found nowhere else on the planet.

Day one-two: hiking and walking

Criss-crossing the island’s mist-laced peaks and fields of swaying flax are 11 footpaths and 21 Post Box Walks, each of which concludes with a box containing a collectable ink stamp that visitors like to mark in small notebooks. Distances range from a gentle one-mile stroll to a 3.5-hour, seven-mile hike. Favourites include ascending though the cloud forest to Diana’s Peak, St Helena’s highest point, or the challenging trek out to The Barn, a volcanic bluff. Other unmissables are the Heart Shaped Waterfall, Longwood’s rainbow-hued hills and the phallic wind-hewn pinnacle known saucily as Lot’s Wife. Alternatively, pit your calves and lungs against Jacob’s Ladder, a flight of 699 steps - nicknamed after the biblical stairway to heaven - scaling the western slope of Jamestown’s deep valley and all that remains of a cable railway built in the 1800s.

Day three: endemic wildlife

Ever since St Helena erupted from the sea some 13 million years ago, it’s been totally isolated and as such is home to more than 500 species found nowhere else on Earth. Peel back ferns and study black cabbage trees on Diana’s Peak to spot blushing snails and golden sails - one of 22 endemic types of spider. Spy the long-limbed endangered St Helena plover, or wirebird - the island’s only surviving endemic land bird - emerging from burrows amid the dry pastures of Deadwood Plain, and meet the world’s oldest living land animal, Jonathan, a 190-year-old Seychelles giant tortoise who’s grazed the grounds surrounding Plantation House, the governor’s residence, since 1882.

Day four: culture and cuisine

Here, friendliness is a vital part of island life. Drivers wave to every car that passes and islanders send messages to each other via SaintFM. Their seclusion brings quirks, too. Stroll down Jamestown’s high street and you’ll hear musical ‘Saint speak,’ a South Atlantic English patois where locals don’t ask ‘How are you?’ but rather ‘Wa now you awrigh?’ Isolation has inspired invention. When food imports are delayed, Saints have learned to rustle up unique local delicacies. Try the beloved bread and dance, tomato-paste sandwich, and comforting plo, a one-pot curried meat, vegetable and rice dish. Locals also grow and brew the world’s most remote coffee - keep an eye out for the Midnight Mist Coffee Liqueur, made with beans grown on the island.

Day five: Napoleon

Trace the final years of St Helena’s most infamous resident: French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Exiled here in 1815 by the British government following his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon spent his days under house arrest inside elegant Longwood House, in the eastern inlands, until he drew his last breath in 1821. Rumour has it his demise was hastened by the house’s arsenic-laced green wallpaper. Afterwards, a farmer used the emperor’s bedroom to house sheep, but the property was sold back to the French government in 1858 and subsequently restored. Visit the gardens he designed, the billiards table he spread maps on and his canopy-cloaked bedroom. Nearby, stands his modest iron railing-guarded tomb.

Day six: underwater adventures

Book with either Dive Saint Helena or Sub-Tropic Adventures and submerge yourself in the fecund waters surrounding the island. St Helena’s volcanic base pushes up a lifeline of nutrients from the deep, attracting a riot of marine life. Between June and December, migratory humpback whales pass through, pausing to calve in July. Visitors also include bottlenose, pantropical spotted and rough-toothed dolphins as well as green and hawksbill turtles, while the rocky, wreck-strewn reefs shelter 10 species of endemic fish, including the bastard fivefinger and St Helena dragonet.

Day seven: Dark Skies

Come nightfall, lay beneath St Helena’s incredibly sparkly skies. More than 1,000 miles from the nearest major landmass and with a total of just 4,400 inhabitants, there’s virtually zero light pollution and the island’s location near the Equator means constellations belonging to both the northern and southern hemispheres, such as the Plough and the Southern Cross, can be seen. St Helena is in the process of applying for International Dark-Sky Association status and early measurements suggest the island’s night skies are significantly darker than Sark, the first island in the world to be accredited.

More information

For more information, visit sthelenatourism.com

This content is brought to you by St Helena Tourism. It does not necessarily reflect the views of National Geographic, National Geographic Traveller (UK) or its editorial staff.

Our Comment: See our own page What To Do for our Top 20 Things To Do.

See also: Visitor Information ⋅ Walking St Helena ⋅ Endemic Species ⋅ Fishcakes, and other food ⋅ Napoleon ⋅ Diving ⋅ Astronomy ⋅ Blue Hill ⋅ Sandy Bay

Meet the Millennium Forest: A unique tropical island reforestation project

By Jeremy Hance, published on news.mongabay.com, 2nd November 2022{1}

• A two-decade reforestation project on the tropical island of St Helena in the southern Atlantic Ocean has not only restored trees found nowhere else in the world, but has also involved nearly every member of the island community in the effort.

• The Millennium Forest, as it’s called, has struggled with invasive species and irregular funding, but has still managed to thrive, adding new plant species - several of them threatened and two thought to have gone extinct. The growing forest is attracting animal species to its habitat, including St Helena’s only endemic bird.

• Ocean islands pose special challenges for forest restoration, since many plant species evolved in isolation on remote islands, and saw drastic population crashes to the point of extinction, or near-extinction, when people and invasive species arrived.

• As a result, island reforestations typically can’t match original forest composition, but must mix both native and non-native species. The Millennium Forest project has now become a legacy that the current generation is handing down to upcoming ones, according to project founder Rebecca Cairns-Wicks.

Birds were probably the first colonizers to arrive. Some likely carried seeds, perhaps stuck to their feathers. Most of those seeds didn’t survive. Some did. Insects followed. And for 14 million years or so, the tiny island of St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, located midway between Africa and South America, was left to the whims of nature. Hundreds of species evolved here, suited solely to the little island’s surprising number of habitats.

There was vegetation to the waters’ edge, teeming with invertebrate, bird and marine life. Taller and bushier vegetation in central peaks, and then shrubbier, low-growing vegetation in drier areas, says Martina Peters, the head of terrestrial conservation at the Saint Helena National Trust, describing the island as it looked when humans first arrived.

Covering just 122 square kilometres, an area smaller than the New York borough of Brooklyn, the island once supported at least five distinct ecosystems and more than 79 plant species found nowhere else, along with 420 invertebrates. Its remoteness - 1,950 kilometres west of Africa’s southwestern coast, and 4,000 kilometres east of Rio de Janeiro - protected its native flora and fauna.

In 1502, everything changed. Humans discovered the little island and introduced goats, rats, cats, rabbits and other invasive species; prior to this, the island had no mammals, reptiles or amphibians. Some 150 years later, the

British set up the first permanent colony, and cut down every tree they could reach. Denuded, the island began suffering from erosion, while the plants that did thrive were often non-native. Less than 1% of St Helena’s original ecosystems survived the centuries-long onslaught.

Enter Rebecca Cairns-Wicks in 1999: The island [population] was invited to submit ideas for how to celebrate the millennium on the island, so that was the impetus for its first major restoration.

Cairns-Wicks, who was then the environmental coordinator for the St Helena government, proposed an idea both ambitious and community-oriented: What if the Saints (as the island’s 4,500 inhabitants call themselves) came together to reforest a portion of the island once known as the Great Wood with native species? That project was one of just two selected for the island’s millennium celebration.

Today, the Great Wood is slowly returning, notes Cairns-Wicks, now coordinator at the St Helena Research Institute, as formerly bare and eroding soils are cloaked by a thriving forest that boasts numerous native species. Although small in size (about 16 hectares), and with the slow-growing trees reaching only 1-2 meters after 20 years, today’s Millennium Forest punches above its weight as one of the world’s most unique reforestation projects due to its rare native species found nowhere else on Earth.

The forest’s uniqueness arises partly from its island locale. Forest restorations on remote islands often pose problems not encountered in mainland projects, with the ocean isolation of plants over many centuries often resulting in the evolution of species found nowhere else. So, when endemic island plants are cleared by human colonizers and invasive species brought in, native species can vanish fast, with remnant specimens and replacement seeds hard to find. In St Helena’s case, one formerly dominant tree was thought to be extinct until 1980, when two shrubby individuals were found clinging to a remote cliff. A volunteer lowered by rope collected their seeds, saving the species from oblivion. This tree, the St Helena dwarf ebony (Trochetiopsis ebenus), grows in the Millennium Forest today.

A forest by and for the community

The tropical island of St Helena marks the craggy summit of an inactive shield volcano sitting atop the mostly submerged Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Colonized by Britain in the mid-17th century, this remote igneous rock claimed its 15 minutes of world fame when deposed French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled here until his death under the watchful eye of the British after his 1815 defeat at Waterloo.

John Turner, the editor of an island information site, says living on St Helena today is very much like living in a U.K. village, except that the next village is 700 miles [1,130 km] away, and the nearest big town is 1,500 miles [2,400 km] away.

The Millennium Forest as originally envisioned was first and foremost a natural oasis intended to benefit this little community, according to Cairns-Wicks, becoming a place where locals could hike, walk their dogs, or simply enjoy the views. Although biodiversity and carbon sequestration were always goals, the people of St Helena came first.

St Helena, once colonized, never had any forests that were just public spaces for pleasure, for conservation, beyond the traditional conservation areas, Cairns-Wicks explains, noting that conservation areas existing in 1999 were not accessible to the populace, given the island’s extreme topography. St Helena is characterized by deeply etched valleys, where most people live, and highlands, rising steeply to 820m above sea level.

The Millennium Project would be different - with road access and easy mobility.

It’s about doing something that the public could participate in, and take ownership of, and create a space … to enjoy and basically be part of creating, Cairns-Wicks says, adding, A legacy.

The site was chosen for a number of good reasons: First, it was part of what had been historically known as the Great Woods until settlers cut it down for timber and firewood. It was also close to a couple of populated areas, had freshwater access, and was relatively flat on an island of extreme slopes.

It’s one of the few fairly level expanses, so it means that it’s accessible for all, Cairns-Wicks says.

At the start, the project focused solely on planting St Helena gumwood (Commidendrum robustum), a tree once common to the island, including at the Millennium Forest site. Found nowhere else on Earth, this gumwood, categorized as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List, is descended from the sunflower family and became rare after colonization. The choice of gumwood was also practical, as it was one of the species that we could [successfully] grow [at the time], Cairns-Wicks says.

Locals initiated the planting of 3,000 trees, with nearly everyone on the island at the time participating. But planting wasn’t easy.

Cairns-Wicks notes that the site was incredibly eroded.

In fact, there wasn’t soil. [In] most places it was really quite rocky, and we actually used [mechanical diggers] to dig some of the holes. It was a very, very neglected area next to the island’s waste-disposal site.

Once launched, the project made the St Helena gumwood locally and globally famous (at least among botanists). Today, the species thrives not only on the island, but is prized in botanical gardens in France, the U.K. and the U.S.

It brought the gumwood into people’s hearts and minds, because actually, it was a species that most people didn’t know and didn’t recognize, Cairns-Wicks says, noting that surviving St Helena gumwoods at the time only stood on remote cliffs or peaks.

In 2002, the management of the Millennium Forest project was given over to the St Helena National Trust, the island’s biggest conservation group.

Funding and expansion

After an exciting start, the initiative has since matured in fits and starts.

It’s not like other projects where you can grow [plants] really, really quickly, Cairns-Wicks says, noting that the gumwood is an extremely slow-growing tree. And you can’t cover large swaths and talk about millions of trees planted, because it’s a much more organic process of growth without big funding.

Still, over the past 22 years, the project has added more native species, including a number of endemic shrubs: the already mentioned St Helena dwarf ebony (Trochetiopsis ebenus), as well as St Helena rosemary (Phylica polifolia), St Helena tea plant (Frankenia portulacifolia) and the boxwood (Mellissia begoniifolia), which was thought extinct until a surviving plant was discovered in 1999. The first three species are all listed as critically endangered. There are also several endemic and threatened tussocks, succulents and flowers found in the resurrected forest.

All this was made possible due to the island’s creation of seed banks and gene banks for threatened flora over the past couple of decades through the government’s Terrestrial Conservation Section and supporting groups.

We have the ability now to propagate a much greater range of species, Cairns-Wicks says.

The forest itself is attracting and adding more than plants. The habitat has become important for the St Helena plover or wirebird (Charadrius sanctaehelenae), a small wading bird only found on the island and IUCN listed as vulnerable. The growing forest has also become home to the gumwood leafhopper (Sanctahelenia decellei), an endemic insect now living there in large numbers.

The biggest, most pressing issue facing the forest’s future is a lack of consistent funding, says Martina Peters, with the St Helena National Trust.

There has been a number of projects delivered [here]. However, once they end, then so does the funding, which means a loss of staff (capacity and skills) and a lack of maintenance. She adds that most funders don’t want to support long-term funding, which is what successful forest restoration projects require.

Peters says funding currently comes partly from the St Helena National Trust’s core budget, the John Hellerman Foundation, and the local government. The latter has provided funds as mitigation for the recently built airport, the first on the island.

Plantings have continued sporadically over the years: visiting tourists can pay to plant a tree, while Cairns-Wicks says most St Helena children also visit at some point during their schooling and plant a tree. There have been a few large plantings since 2000, including some that may have added up to 600 trees in one day. The forest is growing - just not as quickly as many hoped.

It’s been a very slow progression, Cairns-Wicks says.

Maintaining the forest requires support and vigilance. Given the dry conditions at the site, each plant is drip-irrigated for its first three years. This water supply is gradually reduced so that eventually the plants will fend for themselves, Peters says.

As with island restoration projects the world over, invasive species are probably the most difficult, continuous and costly problem. Rabbit-proof fencing and traps installed are expensive, time-consuming and require ongoing maintenance, but these help to reduce losses, Peters explains, adding that workers also regularly need to clear invasive plants.

Cairns-Wicks describes the Millennium Forest as a generational project. The gumtrees could eventually rise as high as 8m, but the canopy isn’t near that goal yet.

It does look more like a shrubbery than a forest, but it’s getting there. So, you can stand in places in the forest now and you can only see [just] trees … It’s starting to take on a forest persona of its own, she says, adding, My hope was at the beginning, that one day, it’s big enough that people could get lost in it just like they used to get lost in the Great Wood.

‘An island in recovery’

The whole island of St Helena is undergoing a process of vast change. For centuries, free-ranging goats ruled the island - first left there by sailors to provide meat on sailing vessel stopovers - destroying vegetation everywhere they could reach. The last free-range goats were removed from most of the island by the 1980s, leading to explosive vegetative growth.

Basically, it’s an island in recovery, says Cairns-Wicks.

But it’s not turning back into what it was pre-discovery; instead, it’s becoming something new.

[We’re] seeing massive recovery - rewooding and rewilding - but not with native species, [but] with a lot of the introduced species. So that we’ve got an incredibly dynamic ecology going, says Cairns-Wicks, adding that with the goats gone, introduced rabbits are now the main deterrent to plant survival.

What’s very, very obvious is how quickly the island is greening, and so I think it’s very easy to imagine a rich and lush landscape with rich and fertile soils and forests, given that it had millennia to develop and we are just witnessing what’s happening in a few decades.

Of course, most of this greening will look very unlike pre-discovery St Helena. But the Millennium Forest isn’t the only project that’s working to preserve a portion of the island’s original native flora. There’s also the recently started multimillion-dollar St Helena Cloud Forest Project, seeking to preserve and expand the island’s cloud forest, an ecosystem that contains 250 species found nowhere else on Earth. This cloud forest, located on the island’s peaks, is also essential to the island’s freshwater sources.

Escalating climate change poses a major threat to the world’s island ecosystems, and St Helena isn’t immune. As temperatures rise and precipitation patterns change, forest species isolated by oceans - on flat Pacific atolls, for example - may not be able to move to safer climes. But with its near-adjacent lowlands and highlands, drylands and cloud forest extremes, St Helena could be blessed, allowing climate-stressed plant species to reseed and move about the island in tune with a fast-changing and warming world.

I’d like to think that one day the island can change the scale at which it works to restore lost dryland habitats, like the Millennium Forest … rewilding the island with more of its native and endemic species, Cairns-Wicks says. There’s growing interest and capability. The seeds of a vision and interest are there and when the time is right it will happen.

The Millennium Forest is a model that larger restorations on islands could emulate. The most exciting thing here, says Cairns-Wicks, is the people’s sense of ownership of the forest - a community-based pride that could be transplanted to other places and projects.

They’ve been able to see what their contributions have done, she says, noting their wide breadth of ownership over the Millennium Forest.

Parents and grandparents can take their children there and say, ‘I planted this tree.’ … It’s a legacy of who was here, and the commitment that they’ve made. They’ve had the vision to contribute their effort to … a forest [that] they’ll never see the full advantage of, Cairns-Wicks says.

But future generations really will. And for me, that’s the exciting thing … Future generations will realize the benefits that this generation has created.

See also: The Millennium Forest ⋅ Endemic Species

St Helena reburies liberated slaves with full honours

By Michael Binyon, The Times (UK), 7th September 2022{1}

Almost 200 years after they were released, the remains of 325 liberated African slaves have been reinterred with full honours on St Helena, the British territory in the South Atlantic that has the biggest slave graveyard in the world.

The reburials of men, women and children who were traded mostly to Brazil in the 19th century, were interred in a new burial ground in Rupert’s Valley, near Jamestown, the island capital. They join more than 8,000 other slaves who were rescued by Royal Navy ships patrolling the ocean in the long campaign to stamp out the slave trade.

The bones were exhumed in 2008 during excavations to build an access road to the new airport on St Helena. They were examined by archaeologists who were able to say where the slaves were captured from their teeth and bones and what diet they had. Most were young men but women were also captured to sell as breeding stock. Children’s remains were also found, together with amulets and sacred objects.

The bones were kept in a box in a storehouse next to the island’s prison while debate raged on how they should be honoured. Many on the island wanted a Christian ceremony but it was argued that this was inappropriate because none of the captives were Christians.

The remains were buried, each in an individual casket fashioned by secondary school pupils. Each set of bones was positioned next to the other found when exhumed. Solemn ceremonies were held on August 20 and 21. The British government paid for a memorial and interpretation centre and signage to commemorate St Helena’s role in stopping the slave trade.

From 1840 to 1872, 450 slave ships, mostly owned by Portuguese traders, were intercepted and taken to St Helena, a vital refuelling station for the Royal Navy and commercial sailing vessels returning from India. More than 25,000 liberated Africans were offloaded, with most sent to a quarantine centre.

Many were in extremely poor health, diseased and emaciated after being shackled for weeks in the holds and many died soon after liberation. The Royal Navy also removed the bodies of those already dead in the ships and they were buried in a mass grave.

Most slaves who recovered were sent on to the Caribbean or America as free labourers. Some remained on the island. Only a few were returned to Africa. Nobody spoke their languages so no one knew where they had been captured. Most of the Portuguese slavers were put on trial in St Helena.

The reinterments were held before the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, August 23. The issue is deeply emotional for the islanders because many can trace their ancestry back to slaves rescued from the ships or brought to St Helena before slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire.

The burial site will be marked by donated red steeple stone. The ceremonies commemorated the slaves’ suffering in poetry, history and song.

See also: The Slave Graves ⋅ Attacking the Slave Trade

Tortoises hold key to keeping cells young

By Tom Whipple, Science Editor, The Times, 24th June 2022{1}

When Jonathan was five, Queen Victoria was crowned. When he was a sprightly sexagenarian he was photographed with Boer War prisoners{3}. As the tortoise from St Helena approaches his third century he’s a bit creaky but, his vet recently said, he has a tremendous libido and still enjoys the ladies when the sun is out.

A new study of tortoises has found that in many cases they hardly seem to age at all. The findings challenge human understanding of ageing and point to tantalising ways that we too might defy it.

We will never be immortal, said Fernando Colchero of the University of Southern Denmark. What we might be able to do, though, is find ways to reduce considerably the increased risk of death with age.

His research strongly implies that there are biological mechanisms that can keep cells youthful. We just have to find them. In humans, a 65-year-old is about 100 times more likely to die in the next year than one aged 30. By the time we reach 100 our chance of seeing our next birthday is worse still - roughly a coin toss. For a paper in ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’, Colchero and his colleagues looked at a database containing 25,000 members of 52 species of tortoises and turtles and found that, for them, this pattern did not hold. In many, ageing was very slow. In some, it appeared to be non-existent.

It wasn’t that their health was perfect. Jonathan may still be vigorous in some respects, but he is also blind. But the chance of dying in any one year did not increase with age.

Colchero says this fits with some ideas in evolutionary theory. Humans have gone for a strategy in which we reproduce soon after we reach maturity. In our past, chances were we would die early of injury or disease.

But tortoises and turtles keep growing once they reach maturity and can be better at reproducing as they age. Safe from injury behind a shell it makes sense for them to play the long game.

There are trade-offs in how much energy you can allocate to survival and how much to reproduction, Colchero said. We choose reproduction, a tortoise chooses survival.

See also: Jonathan the tortoise

Why the island of St Helena is a photographer’s dream

By Craig Williams, published in National Geographic, Travel, 17th March 2022{1}

I used to take what I had in my backyard for granted. St Helena - a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic - is where I’ve lived my whole life. Perhaps because of this, I never thought that much about all the island has to offer; I failed to see its unique beauty, with its volcanic valleys and lush, tropical centre.

Growing up in the island’s St Paul’s district, I’ve always been surrounded by trees and vegetation. When I started taking photos, I began to appreciate the beauty of my surroundings and wanted to give something back. I bought a drone; first a DJI Phantom 2, and then a Mavic 2, and was able to see the island from a totally different perspective. It was breathtaking.

What I love the most is capturing top-down images of the steep, striking coastline - constantly smashed by ocean swells - plus historic fortifications such as High Knoll Fort, which towers over homes from its perch on the crest of a hill. Then you have Diana’s Peak, where the path to its summit is often shrouded in low fog - a pathway to the sky, if you will. My favourite locations to photograph are dotted around the island, but if I had to choose one, it would have to be the seaside on the outskirts of Jamestown, the capital of the island. Sunsets there are never the same, from the warming colours of the sky to the beautiful Georgian buildings with history spilling from their walls.

No visitor to St Helena will ever be disappointed - from history enthusiasts and nature-lovers to photographers and younger people looking for a fun night out. Take it from me, this beautiful island deserves to be on your bucket list. For keen hikers, there are endless routes to places like our famous Heart Shaped Waterfall, and the challenging Sharks Valley.

Above all, no matter where you go on St Helena, there’s always a photographic opportunity. Since I started using my drone, I go out every day to fly, and to find new locations. St Helena, I’ll forever be grateful for the views, the perspectives and the beauty you offer - and the fact I have all this in my backyard. I’m very lucky indeed.

Craig’s top three St Helena experiences:

1. Diana’s Peak Post Box Walk

   Standing 2,700ft above sea level, Diana’s Peak is the highest point on the island, with panoramic views stretching across this tropical paradise. The peak has gained the name Cloud Forest because of its thickly forested slopes, often wreathed in mist.

   [See Diana’s Peak.]

2. Sunday ride followed by an ice cream from Uncle Bob

   Aside from the popular attractions, for me, a traditional Sunday ride around the island, finished with ice cream from Uncle Bob’s ice cream truck, is a must. Bob is a fun, friendly, down-to-earth guy who’ll share stories about local Saints, while you watch the sun slowly set at the seaside - an experience to remember.

   [See Driving in St Helena.]

3. Jacob’s Ladder challenge

   Climb the 699 steps of Jacob’s Ladder, the same ladder that was used to transport goods hundreds of years ago. Be warned, this is a real challenge, but it’s incredibly rewarding if you’re brave enough. Plus, there’s also the opportunity to get some close-up images of birds swooping around the ladder.

   [See Jacob’s Ladder.]

See also: Photography ⋅ Saints

The remote British island hoping to see more visitors

By Anne Cassidy, Business reporter, BBC News, 21st October 2021{1}

Alasdair and Gill Maclean say they felt a bit guilty having spent much of the past year happily living on a beautiful, tropical island, untouched by Covid‑19.

The English couple had been sailing around the world prior to the start of the pandemic, when they arrived at the British Overseas Territory island of St Helena, in the middle of the south Atlantic.

We had been due to leave 10 days later, and we ended up spending just over eight months, says Mr Maclean.

He adds that he and his wife were conflicted about updating friends back in the UK about their good fortune. How do you tell them you’re having a lovely time, freely going to restaurants, and partying when they’re all in lockdown?

Located some 1,200 miles (2,000 km) west of the African nation of Angola, and 2,500 miles east of Brazil, St Helena has a population of around 4,500 people, and is 47 sq miles (121 sq km) in size. To put that into context, it has about the same landmass as Jersey in the Channel Islands.

St Helena’s claim to fame since March 2020, is that it remains one of only a handful of places on Planet Earth to have not reported a single case of coronavirus.

This meant that when the UK government introduced its Covid traffic light system back in May, for countries (and overseas territories) that people could visit, St Helena was always one of the few on the green list - meaning you wouldn’t have to quarantine upon your return.

The island hopes that this spotlight has encouraged more potential tourists to visit.

Matthew Joshua, the St Helena Government’s head of visitor information services, says this already appears to be the case. We’re getting an increase in inquiries. It has put St Helena on the map.

But how exactly do you get to St Helena? Prior to the opening of the island’s airport in 2016 the only way to reach the island was by sea.

Then for the first year of the airport’s operation it was unusable due to safety concerns about high winds over the approach to the runway. This led to the facility, which cost the UK government £285m, being dubbed the world’s most useless airport.

However, after a number of trial flights, the airport was eventually passed as safe to use, with the first commercial flights starting in October, 2017.

Mr Joshua says the issue got unfair press coverage. We don’t have tropical storms like you do in the Caribbean, but there is wind.

Before the pandemic, St Helena was served by weekly flights from Johannesburg and Cape Town, but these routes are still on hold due to coronavirus restrictions in South Africa.

Instead, St Helena is currently served by Titan Airways charter flights every three weeks to and from London Stansted Airport.

For many people, St Helena is best-known as the place where French military and political leader Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to, and where he died in 1821.

Visitors to the rocky, steep-sided island can see the house where he lived, which is now a museum. Other attractions include sea fishing, diving, hiking, the colonial era streets of the capital Jamestown, the warm weather, and exploring the fauna and flora - the island is home to more than 500 species of plants and animals not found anywhere else.

Back in 2019, St Helena had 5,135 overnight visitors, plus the odd day-visit by cruise ships. This number then fell to 2,071 in 2020, mostly before the end of March, and then down to 696 from January to July of this year.

Currently all visitors have to quarantine for 10 days.

The island has just two hotels, which remain closed. Sasha Ella, communications manager for the largest - Mantis St Helena Hotel - says that times have been tough, and they will only return to normal when the world puts coronavirus behind it.

It is our feeling that when access and frequency of the flights to the island, and relaxation to the quarantine restrictions, take place, only then will a positive effect be felt on the island, she says.

St Helena also has a number of private guest houses.

Another very remote, and Covid‑19-free British island that was permanently on the UK government’s green list, is South Georgia. Located in the south Atlantic, some 800 miles south east of the Falkland Islands, it is 1,362 sq miles (3,528 sq km) in size.

Only accessible by sea, the island has no permanent human population. Instead there are two government officers, and two dozen or so staff from the British Antarctic Survey, the UK’s polar research institute.

Like St Helena, South Georgia is now waiting for tourists to return. Prior to the pandemic, it would be visited by cruise ships going to and from the coast of Antarctica.

In the summer of 2019/2020 (its summer is during winter in the UK) it had 12,568 visitors, but this fell to just two people in 2020/21.

In a normal year, tourism accounts for around 20% of our income, says Ross James, visitor management & bio-security officer for the Government of South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands.

The island has no overnight accommodation available for visitors, who instead only stay for a few hours, and have to follow strict rules during their visit designed to safeguard the natural habitat.

Prior to their arrival people are also encouraged to watch a video guide to the region, narrated by David Attenborough.

All cruise firms that travel to South Georgia are members of the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators. Amanda Lynnes, the organisation’s director of environment & science coordination, has this advice for visitors: Use your experience to be an ambassador for South Georgia’s continued protection.

South Georgia has dramatic snow-topped mountains for visitors to see amid cold temperatures - even in its summer months it struggles to go above 6C.

By contrast, St Helena enjoys highs of 34C. Yet Mr Maclean says it is not just the pleasant weather that makes it special. St Helena is up there as one of the friendliest communities in the world, he says.

See also: Visitor Information ⋅ Yachting

The island where isolation is part of everyday life

By Mike MacEacheran, 7th August 2020{1}

Geography has shaped the way of life and culture of far-flung St Helena for centuries. Now, cut-off from the world again because of Covid‑19, how is the tiny British Overseas Territory surviving?

St Helena is the other side of British life, the one that very few travellers ever see.

It is a place of unimaginable extremes with sub-Saharan savannah, Jurassic rainforest and English country gardens. It exists in a bubble, a headache-inducing distance off the coast of southwest Africa in the middle of the South Atlantic. Go farther west and you are on a coconut-fringed bay in Brazil. Neighbours here aren’t easily won.

St Helena came to tourism only in 2018, when direct flights from South Africa made it easier to get to and from Europe. The resulting connections, via Johannesburg and Cape Town, saw visitor numbers sharply rise. Last year, more than 5,100 arrived for wildly-remote hiking, scuba diving and out-of-this-world stargazing.

Even so, Covid‑19 has abruptly stopped all that. The island remains cut off - lock, stock and barrel - with international flights not expected to resume for some time from the new terminal at Bradley’s Camp. But that’s just the beginning of the problems for the island’s fledgling tourism industry. St Helena is already one of the most isolated islands on earth, but it’s also one of the last places with zero Covid‑19 cases. Currently, ‘welcome’ is a dirty word.

Struggling to stay afloat

For Colin and Marlene Yon, who run The Town House guesthouse amid the historic swirl of island capital Jamestown, the local industry could take years to recover. As much as we want the virus kept away from the island, it’s a real drain for the business, says Colin. The last time we had a booking was back in March. No one is making any money here right now.

The field has never been truly level for St Helena and there is a definite sense that the future is fragile. To survive, the Yons have repositioned the hotel as a takeaway. We’re doing curries, fishcakes, tuna, wahoo - the market is flooded with fish right now because there’s more than islanders could ever eat, says Colin. But there are also real food shortages and shopkeepers are enforcing rationing. Potatoes and rice are like gold.

Considering how isolated St Helena is from the rest of the world, the global pandemic continues to have a knock-on effect on daily life. Covid‑19 remains absent, but social distancing was in full effect until recently, with islanders - or Saints as they’re also known - acting as if the island was in the throes of an epidemic. Which is just as well: because with its elderly population, any outbreak would be devastating. Health resources on the island are finite.

Plenty of other tourism businesses are feeling the impact too. South African-born brothers Keith and Craig Yon, who run diving and deep-sea fishing operation Into the Blue, have also moved into the food business. Until March, however, their Whale Shark snorkelling tours were wowing wide-eyed visitors. Now? Nothing.

The story is the same right across the island, says Shelley Magellan Wade, St Helena Tourism supervisor. We remain open and we are accepting visitors, but any travel here is classified as non-essential. So it’s come to a complete halt. As a safety precaution, local government restrictions continue to enforce two weeks of quarantine, barring time spent at sea.

Unexpected guests

Two British sailors who did arrive, however, have since decided to stay longer than first planned. They anchored for a two-day stopover, but have been here for three months now, says Shelley. They planned to sail onwards to Brazil, but instead have integrated into island life, renting a house and helping out in the grocery store.

As for the future, St Helena Tourism is working on a new post-COVID 19 recovery strategy, including creating a virtual tour so the rest of the world doesn’t forget about the far-flung outpost.

What is also new is the attitude: islanders once resistant to change are now full-heartedly embracing an outward-looking approach, After two years of regular flights, we stopped feeling so isolated, says Shelley. We’ve become used to a constant supply of visitors and goods. All those little things that we took for granted are sorely missed now.

Oh, and there is another silver lining: the island has grown far closer as a community, with the buzz words being solidarity, connectivity and communal goodwill. The distilled essence of St Helena - the warmth and hospitality Saints are famous for - is a singular reminder that this remote outpost will survive, as it has done since the 16th century. For me, our isolation has been our saving grace, concludes Shelley. Now, there’s more appreciation for what we have and it’s made us realise how fortunate we are.

St Helena’s allure is to witness a different way of life and the island’s pipsqueak size helps pare down that relentless holiday urge to see everything. Here, you really can do it all.

Plus, fair dues to the Saints. To build a tourist industry at the end of the world takes guts. And it’s going to take far more than a global pandemic to stop them from doing that.

Our Comment: More about the island’s response to the pandemic on our page Covid‑19.

See also: Saints

Whale Sharks may live up to a century, Cold War bomb dating reveals

By Liz Langley, nationalgeographic.com, 6th April 2020{1}

Whale Shark Rhincodon typus
TYPE:	Fish
DIET:	Carnivore
GROUP NAME:	School
AVERAGE LIFESPAN IN THE WILD:	70 years
SIZE:	5.5m to 10m
WEIGHT:	20 Tonnes
POPULATION TREND:	Decreasing
IUCN RED LIST STATUS:	Endangered

Beautifully patterned with white spots and stripes, the 5.5m to 10m long Whale Shark is the largest - and one of the most striking - fish in the sea. Though it’s beloved by ecotourists and native to temperate oceans the world over, very little is known about these behemoths - including how long they live.

Recent investigations into other shark species have revealed astounding life-spans: The Greenland shark, for example, can live nearly 300 years, longer than any other vertebrate on Earth. (Many more sharks, such as the great white, near the 100-year mark.)

Those discoveries are largely because of advanced methods for determining a shark’s age, such as tracing carbon-14, a rare type of radioactive isotope that is a by-product of Cold War-era bomb detonations, in shark skeletons. Measuring amounts of this element can tell scientists a shark’s age more accurately than the previous approach, counting tree-like growth rings on Whale Shark vertebrae. That’s because how much time each ring represents has long been a subject of dispute.

Now, researchers using radiocarbon dating have identified the remains of a Whale Shark that lived 50 years, the most ever for that species, says study leader Mark Meekan, a fish biologist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

He adds that it seems possible that these really big sharks could live to be about a hundred years old.

Meekan says his study, published April 6th in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, is crucial to the conservation of these endangered species.

That’s because the Whale Shark’s longevity makes the species as a whole more vulnerable to threats such as legal and illegal fishing, warming ocean temperatures, and ship strikes.

Bomb analysis

From 1955 to 1963, atomic bomb testing in the United States and other countries doubled the amount of carbon-14 naturally in Earth’s atmosphere. That excess was absorbed into the ocean and taken up by everything in the food web - including cartilaginous Whale Shark skeletons.

By comparing the amount of carbon-14 in the oceans during certain years with the amount of the isotope captured in successive vertebral growth bands, the researchers could discern a shark’s age.

Basically what we showed is we have a time stamp within the vertebrae. We count the bands from there, and they appear to be annual, Meekan says.

Meekan and colleagues took vertebral samples from two shark skeletons, one that had been caught legally in a Taiwanese fishery in 2005 that had 35 growth bands; and another from an animal that was stranded off Pakistan in 2012. That one had 50 growth bands.

Because the 50-year-old Pakistan shark was only 10m long, and the animals can grow to double that size, bigger Whale Sharks undoubtedly are older than the two tested, he says.

‘Real data from real animals’

This study is really important because it gets rid of some of those questions about the age and growth patterns of Whale Sharks, says Taylor Chapple, a research scientist specializing in sharks at Oregon State University.

Conservationists need to know the growth rate of a species, he says, because a slower-growing species is more susceptible to extinction than one that reproduces quickly. The Whale Shark’s global population has fallen by more than half over the past 75 years, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Having real data from real animals, he says, adds a really a critical piece of information to how we globally manage Whale Sharks, for example by trying to minimize Whale Sharks caught accidentally while fishing other animals, which is known as bycatch.

Beyond being a vital part of the ocean ecosystem, Whale Sharks also support the ecotourism industry, which in many places offers opportunities to see or snorkel at a safe distance from the animals. In some locations, however, such as in Oslob, Philippines, shark-watching is controversial because of the practice of feeding or getting close to the animals.

Ecotourism keeps a lot of people out of poverty in many developing countries around the world, in particular in Southeast Asia, Meekan says.

We have a responsibility not just to the sharks, but also to those communities to make sure they’ve got a future.

Liz Langley is the founding writer of National Geographic’s Weird Animal Question of the Week.

See also: Whale Sharks ⋅ Dolphin watching

A dot in the Atlantic

By Will Appleyard, Oceanographic Magazine, 1st March 2020{1}

The landscape looks arid, mountainous and with a partially grey sky only occasionally revealing green peaks in the distance. The climate feels something like the Caribbean, warm and exceptionally humid although windy. The ocean is a richer blue than I have seen anywhere else in the world. I’ve just landed on St Helena Island, a dot in the south Atlantic and a place that I have fantasised about exploring for several years. It’s a place that I want to capture from every perspective; atop the waves, beneath them, from the air and chasing landscapes.

Local people have come to watch our plane land - it’s a popular pastime here, I later learn. The island’s airport has been in operation for three years and before its completion one would have needed to arrive and depart by sea, a fabulous sounding journey of at least a week. Only pilots trained for an unusual landing approach and unusual local weather conditions are qualified to land here.

Jamestown, which is in the north of the island and my base for a week looks out to the ocean from a deep laceration in the surrounding cliffs and feels to me the warmest part of the island. It can be baking hot here yet cool. Sometimes it rains on the south side but not enough rain to sustain decent agriculture - most of the island’s food is imported monthly.

Currently, Internet connection on the island is received by satellite only and is expensive to use, so with pleasure I leave my mobile phone in my hotel room for the most part.

On the map I can see plenty of wrecks to visit around the island. I’m looking for the Chilean devil ray, Whale Sharks and anything else passing by that falls into the megafauna category. St Helena is a mere mark on the navigational chart I’m studying over coffee; the nearest continent is around 1600 miles away to the east, and to the west? Eventually one would find South America. This is one of the most remote populated island destinations in the world.

Apart from us few visitors from the air, several sailors stop here to resupply. A sailor I meet at the hotel tells me of her recent rough Atlantic crossing from South Africa, and how she’s here to gain internet access before making for Brazil; every visitor I meet has an interesting story to tell. I spend an afternoon sailing around the island with a resident French seafarer who gives me a different perspective of the island from further out to sea, amplifying its remote location.

The weather changes frequently over the island - I feel like I experience three warm seasons in the space of a day. On morning two, as I walk down to catch a boat, the weather shifts from light rain, black cloud then breaking away to bring sun. I am heading out to sea to free-dive with Whale Sharks. These giants patrol a specific spot east of the St Helena’s wharf and it’s thought that they come here to breed. This theory is based on the island’s marine biologists collecting records of an almost equal number of both males and females. It’s believed that this is an aggregation seen seldom anywhere else in the world, if at all to date. Tagging and monitoring programs are in progress here, and the Whale Shark is one of the islands key species, according to Rhys Hobbs, the local marine conservation officer with whom I spend some time with while on St Helena. His team started the Whale Shark research alongside Georgia Aquarium around six years ago.

This is one of the most remote populated island destinations in the world

Sea conditions are rough and windy as we pass the lea of the island and eventually we spot an animal close to the surface; a long and wide grey shadow eventually shows a dorsal fin, breaking the surface like a submarine’s periscope. The skipper puts the engine into neutral and I roll off the boat with my camera. This individual, approximately seven metres long swims toward me for a closer look, which surprises me at first. They have small eyes in comparison to their body mass and I need to continue swimming in order to keep out of its way. Eventually the boat becomes more of an interesting subject for the creature and we part company. The encounter lasts just minutes, but now it is ingrained in my mind.

As well as the shortage of potatoes I hear spoken about quite frequently around the town, there’s also much talk of the fishing issue. Rhys fills me in.

The fish population is generally very healthy. The fisheries are an artisanal small fleet and only fished using one-by-one methods (rod or hand line, no long-lining) with a landing average of tuna of around 300-350 tonne a year, he explains.

The main issue around the fishery is the ability to process the fish once it is landed. The current fish processing plant has been run by the UK government for a long period of time but due to its age and overheads it has failed to break even or return a profit for a number of years.

He adds: Given that St Helena relies heavily on UK aid, the UK and St Helena Governments have decided that it is no longer the best use of public funds to maintain the processing plant and have attempted to invite investment into the industry. Apparently, discussions are still going on.

Underwater, I explore caves that hold most of the smaller marine species. Big eyed soldier fish peek out of the dark from an overhanging shelf yet the brave or fool hardy buttery fish in shoals of perhaps thousands go about their business in the open. My dive guide believes that Chilean devil rays have been seen feeding on the buttery fish here from time to time and Rhys tells me later that the rays are seen here all year round. The geology underwater here is spectacular; stair-like rock formations that look man-made stop abruptly where furrowed black and white sand begins. Grey trigger fish swim back and forth along sheer rock faces. The water clarity is insane.

A couple of days into this island adventure and I’m descending on the wreck of the Bedgellett. The boat was a British salvage vessel in its working life, but now sits 16 metres below the surface, upright on the seabed and repurposed as an artificial reef. From the blue, two grey green shapes grow larger as they approach - I am halfway along the dive boat’s anchor rope when the ballet begins. I learn from local divers that Chilean devil rays seen in groups of three or more tend not to hang around for divers, only briefly gliding past, but at this moment I count two and they begin a perfectly dance, supported by their remora fish companions. Opportunistic trevally fish join the stage during the final moments of this matinee performance before they turn for a final revolution and fly past in formation over the shipwreck and away into the blue.

Stair-like rock formations that looks manmade stop abruptly where furrowed black and white sand begins

Between diving and sailing, I walk the island’s trails. Trails that either finish on high vibrant green peaks covered with endemic and invasive plant species or stop abruptly at cliff edges and pinnacles overlooking the ocean. I take a challenging drive down to Sandy Bay, one of the island’s few beaches, wending my way down skinny, wet and steep roads.

At the beach, black volcanic sand meets with an tumultuous Atlantic ocean, red crumbling cliffs and steep, deep valleys, the wind too stiff to fly the drone. Walking close to the shoreline, I assume the crunching beneath my feet is the result of broken shells on the sand, but I later I discover that they are all pieces of plastic. There is hardly any discarded litter on the island and so I take a guess that this waste has probably arrived from elsewhere in the world, broken down over time by the and deposited ashore. It’s a sad scene, especially in a place where such pristine wilderness meets great biodiversity both in the ocean and on land. Once again, for me this confirms our failure to be able to reduce, reuse and recycle this product responsibly and this scene now greets me at every destination I visit - globally.

The wreck of the Darkdale is broken in two resulting from a German torpedo strike by U-68 in 1941. Until divers drained the ship’s oil tanks to prevent environmental disaster, she continued to slowly leak oil until 2015. It’s said that she still does to a degree. The wreck’s location demonstrates how quickly the seabed drops off into the deep around St Helena. We are only 30 seconds ride away from the wharf by boat and already we’re floating over the wreck that sits on its side in approximately 45 metres of water. We meet the hull at 33 metres down and my guide disappears into the centre of a huge tornado of circling trevally. The shoal races laps around him for several rotations before dispersing to reconvene in the deep.

I leave St Helena on schedule; the plane lands on the island in good weather to take us back to ‘the outside world’ as the islanders call it. Although I have been on the island for just a week, I feel like I need easing back in to the fast pace of society as I know it.

St Helena is special and unlike any other place I’ve visited, although I visualise the pace of life for the island perhaps changing in the near future should they receive the broadband cable so often discussed by its residents. This kind of connection does of course have its benefits, but at the time of writing, I see people sitting and talking to one another in cafés, bars, restaurants and even out on the street. Rarely do I see a person gawping at a mobile phone. There is something deeply magnetic about this tiny piece of south Atlantic rock and I’ve still more of it to explore, both on land and at sea.

There is something deeply magnetic about this tiny piece of South Atlantic rock

See also: Visitor Information

St Helena: An island apart

By Dominic Medley, www.thearticle.com, 5th February 2020{1}

St Helena is being billed as The Secret of the South Atlantic. The 200th anniversary of the death - on the island in May 1821 - of the exiled French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte should bring a much-needed increase in tourists. Tourism is also supposed to boost efforts towards the island becoming more self-sufficient and less isolated. If this can drag the island out of an economic slump, then so much the better.

Since discovery in 1502, until the start of commercial flights in October 2017, the sea route had been the only way to reach St Helena. At its peak more than 1,000 ships a year visited on the way to and from India and the Far East via the Cape of Good Hope. That declined after 1869 with the opening of the Suez Canal.

In February 2018 the famous Royal Mail Ship RMS St Helena, that also carried passengers on a five-day voyage to the island, ceased operations after 28 years. The replacement MV Helena calls every month but with limited passenger berths. Visitors to the island now use the weekly Johannesburg flight (and from December 2019 to the end of February 2020 a Cape Town weekly flight was added).

The new £285 million airport, that took five years to build, had an infamous start and test flights. It was dubbed as the world’s most useless airport due to high winds and difficult landings. (My flight, the first of 2020 direct from Cape Town, unfortunately turned back due to a cracked windshield. It made the front page of one of the two newspapers on St Helena).

With a population of around 4,300 - and up to 18,000 linked abroad - St Helenians, or Saints as they are often known, wave and say hello to visitors. As I listened in a supermarket to SaintFM, one of the two radio stations on island (as they say), I heard Sir Simon McDonald, the head of the UK’s diplomatic service visiting the island for three nights, say at a press conference (all 15 minutes broadcast in full on 13th January 2020): You can fall in love with St Helena in less than 24 hours.

St Helena is a volcanic outcrop and its varying nature from semi-arid desert to jungle, to rolling green hills, is beautiful. The wildlife is unique: you can swim with docile Whale Sharks, watch the endemic Wire Bird and visit Jonathan, the 187-year-old tortoise, the world’s oldest-recorded living land animal, who since the new year has had his own Twitter account (@Jonathan_onStH).

The fascinating history of St Helena stretches from Portuguese discovery, to East India Company ownership, to the celebrated exile and death of Napoleon on the island.

The Napoleon connection was my main reason for visiting. After his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815, Napoleon was exiled to St Helena and arrived in October 1815. He died and was buried there in 1821. In 1840, his body was exhumed and returned to France.

Undoubtedly for history buffs, walking in the footsteps of Napoleon is a must. The honorary French consul who’s lived on the island since 1985 maintains all the three key sites. A German tourist from a visiting cruise liner wrote on 9th January 2020 in the visitors’ book for Longwood House where Napoleon spent his exile: The best prison of the world/nice place.

I also walked into the archives at the government offices in Jamestown and asked to see the burial register for May 9th, 1821, when Napoleon was buried. An archivist had the book in a cupboard by her desk and after donning white gloves was able to show me the entry beginning: Napoleon Buonaparte, late Emperor of France…

There are high hopes now with the airport operational and fibre-optic cable due in 2022. McDonald said the island is at an inflection moment and these two events would shape the economy for the foreseeable future. He said there were also a lot of very promising leads in high-end green tourism.

Governor Dr. Philip Rushbrook, who arrived in May 2019, backs that up. The task now for St Helena is to make the most of the airport. This has to be by attracting more people to come to the island, be they expatriate Saints, adventurous tourists and innovative investors. In time, more flights will come, too. Access through the airport is a key driver to increase economic growth, tourism and foreign investment.

He adds: The challenge is to get international tour operators to learn about and promote the variety of our tourism opportunities and to encourage a sustained number of tourists to come to the island.

The aspirations could still be very tough. At the moment, a weekly flight can bring in a maximum of 98 passengers. There are grand plans online, open for public consultation, for Trade Winds, an 18-hole golf resort and hotel plus 140 to 150 luxury villas with tropical oceans views. But the developer is insisting only a direct flight from Europe will make the concept viable.

In 2019, St Helena also experienced its lowest rainfall since records began in 1977 - 286.2mm recorded for the year. On January 22nd, this year, the island’s government reported that water stocks were dangerously low at 40,000 cubic metres or 35 per cent, and that the island had become reliant on water extracted from bore holes.

Tour guide Aaron Legg also pointed to the historical problem of people leaving. Of his GSCE year in 2000 only 28 out of 128 were still on the island. Average wage from full-time employment fell by 4.8 per cent to £8,410 in 2018/19. Many on St Helena go overseas for work (especially to the Falklands, Ascension Island, and the UK) and often return to renovate or build properties and retire.

Be careful for what you wish for, Legg said, warning that the island may not be ready for the much-needed tourism boost. The three main hotels have just 56 rooms between them.

On the flight to St Helena I met the honorary French consul, a man from Glasgow in to fix the Jamestown swimming pool (successfully done with press release published in the local papers), two French engineers in for a six-month project to install preventative rock fall netting, South African tourists, an American woman (who also has Somaliland and Russia to tick off this year for her more than 200 places visited so far), a woman working for the St Helena National Trust, a London couple in for a three-month stay to help relatives set up high-end campsite, and returning Saints.

One Saint was back for a visit for the first time in 45 years. His first walk up the main street had taken two hours with all the greetings and questions. He found it easier to sit outside his guesthouse so he could catch up with the well-wishing passers-by. Governor Rushbrook said: I always say to prospective visitors, ‘come to St Helena now before others discover us’.

See also: Visitor Information

Older items are here. You could also check out the various sources listed on our page Related Sites.

World Book Day

UN World Book Day on 23rd March is sporadically celebrated on St Helena with events organised by and at the library in Jamestown. The UK ‘World Book Day’ is on the and where different this date is also sometimes used.

For more annual events see our page This Year.

Customer to Librarian: Please can you tell me where to find books on paranoia?
Librarian (whispers): They’re right behind you…

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Article: Historical Fiction Novel Inspired by Boer POW Artefact, Based on St Helena

By Andrew Turner, SAMS, published in The Sentinel, 25th October 2018{1}

First-time author Michelle Pretorius visited St Helena last week to conduct research for her upcoming novel that is set on the island.

The book, ‘The Box from St Helena’, follows the story of a man who moves from England to teach on the island. He falls in love with a Saint and the couple have a daughter.

Michelle Pretorius and the box, crafted out of Gumwood by a Boer Prisoner of War on St Helena, that inspired the upcoming novel

As the daughter grows up and also becomes a teacher, she meets and falls for a Boer Prisoner of War; their romance takes place across well-known locations on the island.

A third of the book is very much about St Helena, Michelle told SAMS Radio 1 last week.

Michelle was born in South Africa but now resides in the UK. She first became fascinated by St Helena and the Boer connection when, as a child, a neighbour gave her a box that was handmade out of the local Gumwood by one of the Boer prisoners on St Helena.

Last week, after spending 116 years overseas, the box returned home to St Helena.

In the last two years I retired and I had this box sitting on my desk and I thought ‘I owe someone a story about this,’ Michelle said as she sat in the SAMS studio with the artefact.

Over the last two years Michelle has been thoroughly researching for the book, reading all about the island online before finally making it to the island herself.

It felt like I had been here all my life, she said. I knew all the street names, I knew where to go; I just needed to walk the walk and feel the atmosphere of the place.

The book is yet to be published, but Michelle is hoping to have the book published later this year, either through a publisher or through the Kindle store.

Early copies will be donated to the Public Library.