St Helena 2
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Mon 15 Feb 2016 06:14
Here is police HQ:
And the Main Street:
The town as a whole:
Note the utterly barren nature of the valley sides. The entirety of the island up to about 250-300m is almost unbelievably rugged - bare volcanic rock looking as if the volcano only stopped erupting yesterday.
And below, the famous steps (originally a donkey driven inclined plane) connecting Georgetown in the valley with Laddertown at the top (prior to the inclined plane it was a rope ladder!). Now it is 699 steps at an average of 11 inches each according to the Royal Engineers who built it, making over 200 metres:
The locals used to slide down the handrails. Here is a guy who used to do so, demonstrating the technique:
The transit time to the bottom was less than a minute! This guy used to go to school at the top. Occasionally they'd kick their football over the school fence and therefore over the cliff into the sea. You'd then slide down the steps, run around to the bottom of the cliff, jump into the sea and swim out to recover the ball, then race back up the steps (the current world record is 5 minutes 11 seconds) and back to the playground to resume your game - because if you lost your ball you'd wait months for a replacement.
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