Field Journal

A Destination Guide to St Helena
Written by Daniel Neilson // Photography Courtesy of St Helena

Four new Post Box Walks on the South Atlantic island St Helena offer even more opportunities to explore one of the most remote and biodiverse islands on Earth.

St Helena is located at 15°56′S and 5°45′W. Draw a line on a map from Land’s End directly south and, once you’ve hopped over the Iberian Peninsula and West Africa, you’ll (eventually) scribble a mark through St Helena, one of the most remote islands on the globe. Its population is around a third of Penzance’s. There’s no major landmass within 2,000km. Its nearest neighbour is Ascension Island, 1,298km away. And until its airport opened in 2017, the only way of reaching the island was a five-day journey by sea on RMS St Helena (a Royal Mail Ship) from Cape Town. St Helena, until recently, was not an easy place to reach.

Yet its remoteness, adrift in the South Atlantic Ocean, was directly related to its strategic importance. It was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502 – completely uninhabited – and only settled by the British in 1659. Today, it is part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. At its height, 1,000 ships a year would stop in its natural harbour, a mid-Atlantic shipping port.

It was a stop on the transatlantic slave trade and, later, during the abolition of slavery, a venue for slave ships captured by the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron. It was home to the exiled Emperor of the French Napoleon Bonaparte, who died on the island, and Edmond Halley (of the comet fame) who built an observatory there to catalogue the southern celestial hemisphere. For an island only 121 km2 in size, its place in history is remarkable.

Today, there is one key reason most people visit: a diverse and near-unparalleled tropical beauty. The ocean shallows around the island are replete with whale sharks and dolphins, subtropical terrain rings the island, and farther inland, through the cloud forest, are sharp mountain ridges protecting its 500 species of endemic flora and fauna. To explore St Helena is to explore a microcosm of a tropical environment. And the best way to do so is by following its Post Box Walks: 24 hiking routes criss-crossing the island, designed to explore every aspect of life on St Helena, from its history to its nature.

Post Box Walks

The Post Box Walks are 20 guided routes ranging in difficulty, distance, and time, set up by the St Helena Nature Conservation Group in 2002. Each has a ‘post box’ at the end of the route or the summit where you can record the walk with an ink stamp and leave a note in a visitor’s book. Together, they showcase all aspects of St Helena: its history, its nature, its dramatic landscapes, waterfalls, lofty peaks, and cliffside paths.

For the most recent St Helena Festival of Walking, four new Post Box Walks have been launched to allow visitors to explore even more of St Helena.

One of the new routes, the Gill Point Walk, is one of the longer Post Box Walks. It involves a two-hour ascent along cliffside paths, some of which have ropes for safety, and takes in views of the airport. It’s one for experienced walkers.

To explore some of the many relics from St Helena’s past, Banks Battery and Buttermilk Point is a route with breathtaking coastal views, and Banks Battery – the northernmost fortification and one of the dozens around the island built by the East India Company in the 18th century. The trail also takes in Buttermilk Point, where, under the water, there’s a chance to spot Moray eels, trumpetfish, and St Helena butterflyfish.

Saddle Battery and Samson’s Battery is another 1.5-hour walk that starts in the capital Jamestown and explores the batteries – in this case still with the original cannons and views over the capital.

Another new walk is one of the shorter Post Box Walk. Mackintosh is a 1.5km woodland loop perfect for families.

These five walks add to a range of Post Box Walks showcasing everything St Helena offers. Heart Shaped Waterfall takes in one of the loveliest sites on St Helena, a, yup, waterfall that falls through an unmistakably heart-shaped rock formation.

Lot’s Wife Ponds, a 5km route along the coastline, leads you through some fascinating rock formations and a nesting seabird population. A steep, rope-assisted descent leads to rewarding natural rock pools, teeming with fish, ideal for a post-hike dip.

St Helena is for the intrepid, for those whom the beaten path is to be avoided. It’s a destination for time and contemplation for those who not only walk, but want to dive, to be part of a narrative unlike anywhere else on Earth.