The Epic Hike

On our first full day on the island we wanted to climb up Diana's Peak, the highest point on the island but we landed up doing much more! We started by walking along the narrow twisty roads through the pastoral fields of the interior. We then climbed up through the tropical forest of the central mountain. As we climbed up Diana's Peak we were in mist but when we got to the summit the cloud lifted and we had marvelous views in all directions - from the newly built and yet to open airport runway with precipitous drops at either end, across green fields to rock fortifications and down to the volcanic pillar of Lot on the south coast. These views inspired the epic hike that followed circumnavigating a good portion of the island. This tiny little island, in the middle of the Atlantic and thousands of miles from any land, packs in a wide variety of biomes and we must have hiked through them all in this one day.

St. Helena has many endemic plants that are barely hanging on in the face of the introduced and invasive plants such as flax that was a main industry on the island for many years. I, of course, was excited to see the weird and wonderful plants of tree ferns, he- and she-cabbage and several more besides.

St. Helena has a long history and on this day we visited many site of historic interest. The Boer War POW camp and Boer Cemetery; Longwood pavilion where Napoleon stayed in exile; and coastal fortifications.

From Longwood we hiked out across the grasslands of Deadwood Plane in search of the endemic wirebird and quickly found it scurrying amongst clumps of grass and flying with its gangly long legs trailing behind. There are only 300 or 400 birds left in the world and they are only found in a few isolated spots on the island.

Then it was on up to Flagstaff peak and views down the precipitous cliffs to the sea 2000ft below. From there we walked along a ridge top down to sugar loaf peak past a desert valley full of prickly pears peppered with purple fruit.

Onward we hiked, contouring around the coastal cliffs from valley to valley on old military tracks that use to connect the headland forts.

And finally we had the long climb back up Jacobs Ladder and the steep roads above back to our lodgings and a well deserved beer.