Sailing around the World
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Wed 19 Jan 2011 23:56
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WEDNESDAY 19th JANUARY
2011
Skipper and Aileen went to see " Plantation House "
yesterday on our travels, a very attractive georgian house where the
Governor
resided along with his tortoises,
Meanwhile back in Jamestown, the remedial works on
the quay walls is impressive, and the size of the
cranes would impress
the owners of Libherr.. Of course we
had to walk past all this stuff every time we went ashore.
Our first visit today was a call to the " Briars
Pavilion " This was Napoleon's first residence for 3 months when he
arrived in ST, Helena.
he had to stay here while the "Longwood"
premises was being repaired and extended. He became very friendly with the
12 year old daughter
of the family who owned the Pavilion, the Balcome
Family. Betsy , even at 12 was a fluent french speaker and therefore hit
it off with the great Napoleon..
From there, we went to " Longwood " where he
resided for 6 years untill his death, the house was damp and cold and his
conditions
there were not good, In fact, his generals and
staff had much better conditions to live in......
The storey of his life is facinating, and we all
agreed that we would have to read the storey of his life at some
stage.
Another interesting fact is that the population of
the Island doubled from 3000 to 6000 after his arrival, creating a hugh buisness
bonus.
and has remained ever since,
We spent a long time wandering around the house,and
examining everything we could.the colours of
the walls were all primary colours,
Reds, Greens, etc,
After Longwood, we went just around the corner and
played 9 holes of golf,
This golf course is supposed to be the most remote
golf course in the world, no wonder, but then the fairways were more
like
paddocks than fairways, and the greensa were like
badly cut lawns........ but it was golf, and we enjoyed muddling around
the course.
when finished there , we travelled back to
Jamestown and Skipper returneed to the boat to do the blog and catch up with all
the emails.
the others went to Annies for coffee. and
eventually made their way back to the boat.
Later, thats after the washing was complete, and
the blog was finished, we relaxed for a while before going for a swim off the
back of the boat.
the water was cool , so the swims were brief,
brrrrrrrrrrr.
18.30 hrs, we all went ashore in the ferry , met up
with all the other boats , had a few pints of canned guinness before going to
the
Asian restaurant for the dinner. another good
night was had by all.
After some singing and general laughs, we wandered
back to the ferry and got a lift out to " A Lady " . the washing got hung out to
dry,
and other items got attended to before hitting the
scratchers.
It was great to meet the " Bubbly Bev " again
tonight, they arrived on Tucanon earlier today, and were happy to be
ashore.
Thats enough for today.
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (
Skipper )
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