The ocean horizon was seesawing. It had been for days. Fairy terns flittered like little ghosts above our deck as the island drew closer. After five days ploughing deeper into the mid-South Atlantic, St Helena’s appearance was accompanied by a realisation of what true remoteness meant. Not just a geographical feeling but a sense of isolation from the outside world where a tight-knit community flourishes against many odds.
That voyage was a decade ago. This British Overseas Territory 1,180 miles west of the Namibian coast now has an airport. My return to St Helena therefore is an easy five-hour flight from Johannesburg. The airport has ushered in change, but ever so slowly. Internet and mobile phones have arrived since I first visited, yet self-sufficiency and unqualified friendliness remains embedded in the community.
All roads throughout the rugged volcanic terrain lead to Jamestown. Its diminutive high street of Georgian and Regency architecture is shoehorned into a steep-sided valley. Jacaranda trees bloom purple and Union Flags flap in the Atlantic breezes that temper the subtropical heat.
Jamestown is bulwarked from the ocean by doughty cannon-lined fortifications, which since the 17th century have kept pirates and invaders at bay. From my hotel, I make a slow procession up a high street of grocery stores and British-style pubs, stopping to natter to locals, a few who remember me from previous visits.
Travel articles about St Helena typically comment on how it’s like stepping back into an old-fashioned version of Britain. The prices may be: in one of its pubs, I buy a round of four alcoholic drinks for £8.70.
Yet St Helena is not simply a microcosm of the motherland. Its rumbustious history has forged a distinctive character, quite literally written into the Saints’ (islanders’) faces. Martin Henry, Minister for Health and cycling guide, shows me a DNA search certificate on his phone.
He has numerous genetic markers reflecting a narrative forged from Irish farmers, British soldiers, French exiles, African slaves and Chinese labourers. “Our genes are a living record of 500 years of island history,” says Martin.
This history is teased out on a two-hour Jamestown walking tour with Michel Dancoisne-Martineau, the only Frenchman living on St Helena. He explains that the East India Company took possession in 1659, although the then uninhabited island was first discovered by the Portuguese in 1502. It was later absorbed into the British Empire in the 19th century when St Helena became a military stronghold with a population of around 6,000, a few hundred more than today.
“St Helena lost money for the East India Company, but it was essential to serve the trade ships returning from India and China,” says Michel. The cargo at times traded in human misery. “By 1792, it was decreed no more African slaves could be accepted here as they were outnumbering the ‘locals’, thus the island’s administrators brought in indentured Chinese labour.” It also became a penal colony for military and political detainees, including Boer prisoners of war and, as recently as 1961, three Bahraini dissidents. One detainee, however, stands above all others in infamy – Napoleon Bonaparte.
Michel moonlights as a tour guide because by day he is the island’s honorary French consul. Napoleon was brought ashore in 1815, exiled by the European allies after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. There are three standout sites associated with his exile here: Briars Pavilion; Longwood House; and his empty tomb.
Over time, Britain handed these sites over to France and it’s been Michel’s job to restore and protect them for over 30 years. The Napoleonic sites are within half-an-hour of Jamestown, amid emerald-green farmland around Longwood House, his residence between 1815 and 1821. The countryside’s fertility certainly didn’t impress Napoleon’s biographer, the Comte de Las Cases, who wrote: “The emperor abdicated his throne and placed himself in the hands of the English, who were now hurrying him to a barren rock in the midst of a vast ocean”.
Napoleon’s presence is palpable throughout the single-storey wooden building of Longwood House. It’s accessed via ornamental gardens he designed himself, which left me struggling to imagine this combative megalomaniac swapping manoeuvring troops around battlefields for planting beds of agapanthus.
During a tour, Michel chronicles Napoleon’s decline from optimism about returning to Europe to despair in captivity. The billiard room was where he once had documents sprawled open as he plotted a legal challenge for his release. The salon has a chaise longue of that era, with his greatcoat and tricorn hat laid out.
Beyond his bedroom is a copper bath where Napoleon increasingly retreated for long soaks as his apathy grew. His tomb lies in a sunken wooded dip, a short walk away.
Napoleon died in 1821; it’s said that, when French officials came here 19 years later to take him back to France for a state internment, his body was near perfectly preserved inside the lead-lined coffin.
I suspect Napoleon’s ego would’ve taken a dent to learn his thunder nowadays has been stolen by a giant tortoise called Jonathan. This is not any old tortoise, however: Jonathan is 192 years old, born not long after Napoleon’s death, and the world’s oldest, deposited on the island by sailors in 1882.
Jonathan mows the serving British governor’s lawn at Plantation House, which I reach in charming fashion in Colin Corker’s 1929 Chevrolet Charabanc taxi, which runs as sweet as the day it left the factory in Detroit. “I’ve been driving her for 50 years,” says the septuagenarian.
Debbie Yon guides visitors around the governor’s residence. It’s an extravagantly furnished 18th-century house of teak bookcases and framed photographs of royalty set in parkland grounds. There are antiques collected from the East India Company’s rule and portraits of past governors appointed by the British government.
Yet I find myself distracted, peering out of the Georgian-era windows scanning for Jonathan, who is resting under a shady tree on a hot day. He takes visitors and selfies in his slow-paced stride, poking his long neck out to sniff the air before retreating inside a carapace weighing the equivalent of a half-tonne vending machine. “So much world history has passed while he’s been alive,” muses Debbie.
Nights in town are generally sedate. There are a few takeaways where you can buy the local speciality, fishcakes and chips, and the pubs are homely and friendly.
In The Standard, I sip gin and a coffee-liqueur produced by the island distillery. Wednesday evening’s big gathering is fish-fry night at the Yacht Club on the seafront. Locally caught yellowfin tuna and conger eel are grilled on a sizzling barbecue out-smouldering the huge orangey Atlantic sunset.
I return quayside the following morning to join Craig Yon on his small vessel. Tourism to St Helena has previously been a genteel exploration of its past but its future may lie in attracting adventurers, not least divers. St Helena is surrounded by a 200 nautical-mile Marine Protection Area that permits only sustainable use of the ocean’s resources.
The marine life is so rich it was recognised in 2024 as among the most biodiverse on earth with the accreditation of Mission Blue Hope Spot – a designation created by the world-famous marine biologist, Dr Sylvia Earle.
Back in 2018, Craig took me on a magical 25-minute snorkel with a whale shark. It wasn’t the season for them this time, so we head towards Egg Island, offshore of tall cliffs around western St Helena. “The blue water dives here blow people’s minds,” said Craig. “Once my boat was surrounded by 16 whale sharks coming right alongside.”
Within 15 minutes, pantropical spotted dolphins are racing our bow, flipping themselves acrobatically above the ocean surface. Craig thinks a bait-ball of fish is attracting their frenzied activity. “They are thrashing the water to stun the fish,” he says.
Seabirds are also diving in for their fill, arriving from nearby Egg Island, where hundreds of black and brown noddies nest on guano-streaked ledges. The sea is too choppy to snorkel around there, so we visit James Bay where four shipwrecks rest in crystal-clear water.
I snorkel along the Papanui, a New Zealand passenger cargo vessel that caught fire at sea and was deliberately run aground in 1911 to save the crew. A kaleidoscope of small reef fish swirls brightly around the twisted rudder as I swim along the wreck’s 430ft length.
On dry land the volcanic landscapes, sea cliffs and cloud forest are best explored on foot or cycling. Martin Henry has just introduced e-biking; one afternoon we ride across the island towards Jamestown from Blue Point’s sea cliffs. Over four hours, we rise and descend along empty roads and I need every volt of battery power to crest the steep climbs.
Likewise, St Helena’s network of ‘post-box’ walks are another intimate way to get close to an unusual flora and fauna, which amounts to one-third of the UK’s endemic biodiversity. A popular hike is to the Millennium Forest where degraded land is being replanted with native cabbage trees and gumwoods.
Nearby is Deadwood Plain where the dreadlocked Eddie Duff of the National Trust takes me to see endemic ground-nesting wirebirds. Working with farmers to improve their grassland habitat, Eddie says their population has now tripled from 200 in 2006. “They call them wirebirds because of their spindly legs,” he adds.
My most dramatic hike is a clifftop trail called Lot’s Wife’s Ponds. Kicking up maroon-hued dust, the route traverses beneath a ridge of volcanic eruptions eroded into soaring pinnacles. It leads to a cliff descended by a knotted rope down to lava dykes that have formed ‘ponds’, natural swimming spots with bright Sally Lightfoot crabs surrounded by the surging aquamarine sea.
It’s here, under the beating sun with my senses overcome by the roar of the infinite Atlantic, that St Helena feels refreshingly far from the craziness of the outside world.
St Helena at a glance
Although little more than the size of Edinburgh, this tiny island packs a lot to see and do across its contorted volcanic landscapes. There are now year-round weekly flights from Johannesburg and, in peak season, from Cape Town, but to get anywhere close to covering its historical and natural highlights, you’ll need at least a week to do the island justice. Most stays are based in the capital Jamestown, from where activities can be arranged and inexpensive taxis chartered.
Jamestown
The island’s only town is a charming and beautiful place. The high street hosts much of the island’s accommodation – notably the most luxurious property, The Mantis St Helena, and the oldest, The Consulate. Try the Jacob’s Ladder challenge, a punishingly steep 699-stepped stairway out of the valley which will reward you with magnificent views.
For more genteel excursions, arrange a tour to Rosemary Gate Estate to see how the island’s rare and expensive coffee grows.
South of Jamestown
Leaving Jamestown, you ascend onto a rugged, yet greener plateau dotted with numerous historical attractions. At the top of James Valley is the island’s signature Heart-Shaped Waterfall, which is near
Briars Pavilion, where Napoleon first stayed upon arriving on St Helena.
The now derelict High Knoll is a military fort built in the 1870s with sweeping ocean views. To experience staying outside Jamestown, Farm Lodge is a beautiful 17th-century property.
Longwood
Longwood district is one of the island’s most fascinating. It’s best known for Napoleon’s remarkable residence at Longwood House, which is open most days. Pushing out towards the airport are stark, denuded coastal slopes where the inspiring Millennium Forest project is re-establishing native flora in this area.
There’s a couple of spectacular post-box walks around here along the coast, most especially to a daunting coastal promontory called The Barn.
Central Peaks
Lusciously green, misty, damp and forested, the highest ground of St Helena is a series of peaks swathed in cloud forest, which is biodiversity rich with over 200 species of invertebrates endemic to the island.
There are trails to reach Diana’s Peak (the highest point at 2,690ft), Cuckold’s Point and Mount Actaeon but they must be attempted with a guide and have been closed for the last year to deal with an invasive pathogen. Check once on the island to see if they are open.
Sandy Bay
Sandy Bay is utterly beautiful, with forests and coffee plantations sweeping south from the central peaks down to the dramatic coastline. It’s where coffee grows best, amid an impressive volcanic landscape featuring teetering basalt pinnacles.
The finest way to take it in is on foot along a dramatic coastal path called Lot’s Wife’s Ponds. Visit the lovely Wrangham’s for high tea and coffee grown on their small estate.
Blue Hill
Some of the most aesthetically pleasing landscapes for walking are around the less-visited Blue Hill district in the island’s southwestern corner. Of the best post-box walks, the one to South-West Point takes in rolling farmland with great views out to Speery Island and Black Rocks.
The Blue Point hike takes walkers around the volcanic Gates of Chaos and past multicoloured bare earth plains and hills, while Peak Dale is a more demanding hike.
Northwest Coast
There are shipwrecks, dive sites, dolphins and whale sightings all around St Helena, but most marine activities are concentrated around the northwest coast via short boat rides from Jamestown.
Whale shark sightings are prolific from December to March, as well as seabirds nesting on the cliffs. I
t’s rare not to see great numbers of dolphin, with three species regularly sighted off this coastal stretch. One of the best sub-aqua dive sites here is Long Ledge.
Need to know
Getting there: Airlink runs a-weekly service from Johannesburg year-round, plus peak season weekly flights from Cape Town, to St Helena.
Getting around: Most travellers either rent a car or hire a taxi to get around – both are inexpensive. The local tourist office and accommodation can advise on small vehicle tours.
Best time to go: Weatherwise, there is no bad time to visit but the whale-shark snorkel is a highlight between December to March.
Where to eat: Local fish is ubiquitous, and the coffee is a unique blend unchanged since 1733. Island specialities include a rice dish called plo and spicy bread ‘n’ dance. Most opportunities to eat out are in or around Jamestown. There’s finer dining at the Mantis hotel, while Anne’s Place champions local dishes. Listen out for the fish fry midweek evening on the wharf, which attracts crowds of Saints.
Where to stay: Among limited options are a couple of international standard small hotels and B&B rooms.
Further information: sthelenatourism.com
