The video is the route to Sandy Bay, and is the worst alignment on the island as a route in general, although the widths visible are comparable to other SH C-roads and wider than district roads. Having said it's the worst route, I don't think the clip gets anywhere near the worst bends/gradients, so what you can see can be witnessed elsewhere on the island - but not necessarily in such a compact area.

The only one-ways are in urban areas or a couple of other special cases (eg near the Governors House). Bearing in mind it's priority to uphill traffic you get good at doing hill starts in reverse!

Those in the video are, according to you-tube, Cruise Ship crew.

I believe the nearest Little Chef is aprox 4500 miles away, although the one just outside RAF Brize Norton is probably the most accessible. Burger Kings and McDonalds are of course much closer, I believe it's not much more than a 1200 mile swim and, by comparison, a short walk. Remember, wherever you live, and wherever you drive, you're never more than a 2hour walk from home, and chances are a friend will pass by and offer you a lift. We do have an Argos though, if you like Frozen Fish that is; that confused me as there is a Catalogue Shop (non-argos) and another shop which will order anything you like - from Argos (as in Homebase Argos).

Dave

Thanks for overview of the road and transport situation on St Helena, Dave, glad I have got travel insurance.

Sounds an interesting place. Are you the resident Traffic Engineer or THE Engineer?

I am going to visit the island's main police station and present them with a New South Wales (Australia) Police patch - as I do. That is if anybody is home and not out fishing. or on the

For those of you who are interested in the Roads, one of my ambitions before arriving was to set up DSV. Well now I've got a trial version up and running. It needs more work, and I don't think I'll ever be able to post it all online, but for now I've uploaded the main road out of Jamestown as a trial.

http://www.malpas.cwi.sh/dsv%20beta/index.html

p.s. if you can decipher the acronyms, answers on the back of a postcard.

Are there OS maps of St Helena?

Yes there are OS maps of St Helena, however the OS have passed responsibility to the St Helena Crown estate, so whilst the OS produced them (in the 1980's) they no longer have them.

They are available in either 1:10,000 (6 sheets); 1:25,000 or (I think) 1:50,000 from any post office at quite a reasonable price (I think my 1:25,000 was £5).

The St Helena Crown Estate are slowly building up an accurate topographical survey of the inhabited/owned parts of St Helena, it's more like Landline than Mastermap, but at the moment is very incomplete.

Dave

BTW, when I say any post office, I of course refer to the St Helenian post offices, of which there's only 1

Dave Drove his Land Rover very carefully is apparently the first one...

DDHLRVC protocol : Dave Didn't Help the Land-Rover by nearly driving it oVer the Cliff.

DKWHI GPS system : Doesn't Know Where the Hell it Is.

DSV : Decidedly Scary Velocity.

MSWMM : Must See Where i'M Meant to be.

DDHLRFB : Dave Dented His Land-Rover's Front Bumper

DDHLRVCAS : Dave Definitely Hopes that Land-Rover's Valuable Capetown Agent can come up with the Spares.

Close, but no Banana.

Dave Driving His Land Rover Very Carefully is the first one

I like the others, and some are very close!!!

Dave

For anyone interested, this is a photo of the taxi from the you tube video.


Obviously it's not being a Taxi today!

Great pics of St Helena Dave, also saw the ones on your site.

I feel I have already been there. The cruise ships must bring some £ into the island's economy, our ship Arcadia, calling in at St Helena on 16 April has 2000 pax, do you take Australian dollars? They are worth something these days.

The ship will have 1500 Brits and 500 Aussies on board, so I hope the pub stocks up on lemonade.

Re the 'Ute Taxi...I say, a breach of the Australian Road Rules, maximum 1.2 metre overhang at the rear, let me see now..Traffic Infringement Notice $375

Cruise ships don't bring in as much as they might, everything tourists buy (local crafts etc) is really cheap. Even coffee is less than £2 a cup .

I suspect that we will take Australian Dollars on the day you arrive, anything to encourage you to spend!

I haven't been to the pubs yet, various bars yes, but not the pub. You have to try the local spirits, we do have lemonade if you can't drink it straight!

Overhang, yeah well. It's safe if it doesn't fall out, even then it's probably not dangerous. We haven't done Health and Safety Overload yet so we work on the basis it's safe rather than
'there's a minute risk that it come loose, and if it comes loose there's a small risk it'll fall off, and if it falls off it's technically possible (however unlikely) that it'll injure someone. So we better not do it'
That's actually one of the nicest things about being here. Everyone uses their common sense to avoid injury and damage, and it works.

I mean really, who's going to drive into it? You'd have to be pretty dumb.

When I was out in the boat once, the owner was asked a question about swimmers being washed away. He said "well nobody has yet because everyone's careful - and if someone wasn't careful, well they deserve to get washed away". I've heard that sentiment a few times, everyone looks out for everyone else, but generally if someone does get injured it's because they were being stupid and then they deserve it.

DSV Hugely Improved!!!

http://www.malpas.cwi.sh/dsv%20beta/index.html

DSV has been Hugely Improved. At about 2am today the entire A1 and the Road to Sandy Bay were uploaded (I seemed to have enough spare internet) and this morning another update linked the A1 images to an embedded Google Map.

DSV will continue to be updated and added to for internal use within the Roads Section, but it probably won't all go online, sorry. However I do intend to link the Sandy Bay Street View to the embedded map as well, but it's not see easy as I don't know the road so well.

I wonder if the island's tourist board could persuade Google to run one of their Streetview cars around the island, to boost the tourist industry. From what I've seen, the kit fits on top of a standard car, so it could either be shipped in and stuck on a car already on the island, or possibly flown in when the airport opens in a few years time. Got to be worth investigating, it looks a nice place.

Hi NWSP,

Gutting that your ship didn't stop today. I know some Saints and expats made it out to Arcadia without incident, it was a shame your Captain wouldn't let you ashore because the sea was 'too rough'. It was dead calm by St Helenian standards, if it was too rough today then I think they mis-sold the trip as it seems they never planned to come ashore at all.

Still you got to sail around the Island, something I haven't done yet.

I hope the rest of your trip is better organised.

Reminds me of some of the roads in rural Hong Kong, jammed into a 16-seater Public Light Bus.

Hi dave, sorry for delay. We got back into OZ in June after cruise, time in UK and in USA. Well, yes, failure to come ashore on your Island home - St.Helena. I was looking through my binoculars and landing place looked ok, but not according to the Captain, an Englishman by jove. So we circumnavigated the island. Some passengers from St Helena did get on board by small boat, as you said. A lot of unhappy passengers on Arcadia that day. We also missed Seychelles due to Pirate activity, but got into all the others between Sydney and Southampton.

Cheers, mate.

My brother has just recently posted a link to this brief 'news report' on the roads of St Helena on his blog:
http://www.shbc.sh/L3_video_121101_roads_programme.html

How very Cholmondley-Warner in style... And they couldn't disguise that it was raining.

45 miles of road.

3270 vehicles.

At one point I think I counted 4, or was it 5, vehicles in view.

I bet the rush hour is a real b*tch

Not quite St Helena, but I think I've got the roads of Ascension Island written up. See the list above the pictures in the box at the bottom for individual road descriptions.