An invitation to the middle of nowhere…

It's not every day you get an invitation to go and stay in an out of the way place, off the beaten track and in the middle of nowhere (or, more accurately, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean). So when Nigel and Emma invited me to visit them in St Helena it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. They are there for three years on account of Nigel's work and given that he was previously in the Falklands it would appear that his employer thinks he has a thing for remote Atlantic islands. Either that or they are trying to keep him out of the way….

All I knew about St Helena previously was that Napoleon was exiled there after Waterloo by the British, and that because it is in the middle of nowhere (no repeat performance of his escape from Elba). Also that he eventually died there. The wonder of the internet has allowed me to dig a little deeper.

The Middle of Nowhere 

Over one thousand miles off the African coast, St Helena is a plug of dark and rugged volcanic rock thrusting out of the vastness of the ocean. It is apparently one of the most remote major islands in the world, although at just ten miles long by five wide I am not sure what definition of 'major' is being used here. It was uninhabited when discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, but with fresh water and fertile land it was to prove a useful - and for over eighty years a secret - stopping off point for their ships rounding Southern Africa en route to the Far East. It would be down to the British East India Company to eventually settle the island on a permanent basis some one hundred and fifty years later. They fortified it and built the capital Jamestown, laying down the foundations for what would become one of the United Kingdom's first overseas territories. 

At its peak a thousand ships a year would stop off at St Helena but now it is only the occasional cruise liner or yacht, the Suez canal and naval technology having undermined the island's maritime usefulness. Even the lifeline for the island is now provided by air via a once weekly flight to and from Johannesburg. Nevertheless, over four thousand people call the small island home, making a living from coffee, fishing and tourism.