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He predated Queen Victoria and the abolition of slavery in the UK and is still going strong… but then life is slow for Jonathan Tortoise on St Helena.

JT, as we’ll presumptuously call him, is closing in at half a mile an hour on his 192nd birthday at the end of the year.

When the good islanders of the second remotest habitable settlement in the world after Tristan da Cunha will treat him to a birthday feast.

Of cabbage, lettuce, apples, bananas, guavas and maybe the secret of eternal life, monkey’s ears herbs.

Now my own little nutritionist at home has been trying to get me off my morning diet of bagels and tea so JT’s diet might be the way.

Two world wars, a Moon landing and Taylor Swift

Hop on board: But JT is an old boy now, so it’s no longer allowed

Of course, having lived such a long life JT, observers have naturally chronicled everything that he would have seen.

The industrial revolution, two world wars, the rise and fall of communism, Man walking on the Moon and Taylor Swift.

Although living on a tiny British outcrop 3329 miles west of South Africa he probably only heard of such seismic events.

JT is, in truth, more interested in his tortoise buddies on the isle and one in particular Fredericka.

Who legend has it was only discovered to be male years later leading to suggestions that JT is gay.

That’s just not croquet

Now it would be a mistake to think that JT might be slowing up and is past his shell-life because he is 192.

But the old rogue still likes to cause mischief, particularly disrupting the tennis and croquet games on the island.

Now you would think with a tortoise at the age of 192 the clock must be ticking.

Going through hoops: On the croquet field

And that we’ll need to get out there to see JT while we can.

And that is what we were planning back in 2021 and mark the bicentenary of Napoleon Bonaparte’s death on the British colony.

Only for Covid to close down travel around the world.

Of course, the virus thankfully could not touch the indestructible JT.

St Helena’s biggest celeb

And now that we have all come out the other side we’ve all got the chance again to come out and meet St Helena’s biggest celebrity.

So if you want to take in the ultimate in slow tourism then he’s not going anywhere.

Life is slow for Jonathan Tortoise on St Helena.

Africa, Countries

Happy Exile on Saint Helena

12th February 202412th February 2024 funtime65

It wouldn’t seem much of a disincentive to try to take over the world… send you to an idyllic island away from the sound and the fury, Happy Exile on Saint Helena.

Forward fast 200 odd years and all I wanted was an all-inclusive trip to the world’s second remotest inhabitable island.

Only for Covid to intervene.

Napoleon’s getaways

Of course, back in 1814 when Napoleon Bonaparte was trying to rule the world.

And he fled from the holiday resort that was Elba, off Italy.

Not easily pleased that one…

Nor indeed was he enamoured by the alternative accommodation provided for him,.

Saint Helena, off the coast of South Africa.

With him getting his Irish doctor Barry O’Meara to write back to England.

To complain of his English captors’ treatment of the former Emperor.

And even suggesting that they were trying to poison him through arsenic in his wallpaper.

Chapter and verse

Now if you want to get up close and personal to Boney then Saint Helena will give you chapter and verse.

All of which is an entry point to what else the island has to offer which they also do through their newslettering.

Such as the return of direct flights from Cape Town from December, running until March 2025.

They also showcase the Festival of Walking which started in November and runs through next month with prizes to win too.

Of course, the best and biggest prize of them all is the chance to win the trip of a lifetime.

Win a holiday

They have invited us to enter the St Helena Tourism social media competition for a trip to their island.

The package includes a return flight from South Africa or the UK and as well as a variety of on-island activities.

Now maybe it was the long sea journey which did for Napoleon and coloured his views.

But for the rest of us this sounds pretty special.

And I, for one, know I’d love to have a Happy Exile on Saint Helena.

Countries, Europe

Able was I ere I saw Elba

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Able was I ere I saw Elba which is probably how we know of the Italian island… that and its Napoleonic links.

The rather archaic saying is of course the best example of a palindrome: a sentence which reads the same backwards.

Credited to Napoleon, Elba was the first of two islands he was exiled to.

The other St Helena, for me the island and planned trip which got away from me during Covid.

When I planned to mark the bicentenary of his death in his house, the southernmost part of France.

It was there that he is said to have coined the palindrome to his friend, his Irish physician Barry Edward O’Meara.

Impressive as I’m sure that few of us could come up with a palindrome with my school French often back to front.

Power to your Elba

Of course the Elbans have much to be proud of in their island.

And it was not antipathy to the isola off Pisa in Tuscany that led Italian descendant Bonaparte to quit Elba.

But a last and close stab at winning back France.

Twas on this day back in 1815 that Napoleon retook Paris and embarked on his 100 day rule before he met his Waterloo.

An aside here but we wonder what place name was used to denote your fate before the Flanders village.

Napoleon’s footsteps

Now Napoleon may have only lived 90 days in Elba but they have rightly dined out on it for the last two centuries.

And Napoleon did improve Elba’s roads during his months there.

Napoleon, still Emperor of the island, ensured he had one of the best properties on the island.

The seaside Villa dei Mulini (the villa of the mills) which he renovated.

As he did the ancient church of the Carmine which he turned into the first theatre on the island at the Theatre of the Vigilante in Portofierro.

If you want to get some exercise as you walk in Boney’s footsteps.

Then you can take a scenic uphill path through woods from the village of Marciana to where he worshipped.

At the Sanctuary of La Donna Del Monte.

So whether Napoleon did indeed opine to his Irish doctor years later ‘Able was I ere I saw Elba’ you can make up your own mind.

Africa, Asia, Countries, Deals, Oceania

The PIGS, the big winners on the UK Green List

8th May 20218th May 2021 funtime65

All countries are created equal but some are more equal than others… let’s hear it for the PIGS, the big winners on the UK Green List.

We will all now be able to visit Portugal, Israel, Gibraltar and St Helena from May 17 from England.

Make a break for it

Keeeeep dancin’: With Judy Murray in Portugal

Portugal has always been a personal favourite and it’s also fun for all you sporty types too.

And they are being rewarded for their Clean & Safe project with this green light.

Israel have been frontrunners from the get-go on the vaccination programme and I will be back communicating with the Promised Land through the week.

Gibraltar and St Helena too.

I am indebted to my old colleague from the American Travel Fair Britain’s Young Travel Writer of the Year Lottie Gross for road testing Gib for us over the pandemic.

And to Napoleon for doing the same.

Through countries

Get the Braai on: Port Elizabeth township, South Africa

The one niggling issue though is the status of the through countries to get to Gib and St Helena with neither Spain nor South Africa on the green list.

St Helena remains unfinished business.

With my walk in the footsteps of Le Petit Caporal ahead of this month’s 200th anniversary of his death there cancelled at the last minute.

Ice, ice baby

But while the PIGS pushed themselves out, as they do, as the big winners on the UK Green List there are others celebrating today.

Iceland also makes it onto the list and a long-promised visit to the Iceland Phallological Museum where all the Big Dicks hang out.

While the Faroes too, between Iceland and Norway, await and are tempting us with nature and wellness and hairy Vikings.

Further afield Singapore, and Brunei are long-haul bucket list favourites.

Bonzer

Of course it used to be that being sent to Australia and New Zealand was a punishment.

And the poor peoples on those islands are still suffering, albeit different hordes now of English Gap Year students… see The Inbetweeners 2.

Falklands awe

The good folk of the Falklands and South Georgia came onto our radar 40 years ago next year when the Argentines laid their beach towels down.

It’s a long way to go for a penguin but we’re here to serve.

And so are our friends at G Adventures who have a 22-dayer from Montivideo, Uruguay to Ushuaia.

No me neither, nor how it works with Uruguay not being on the list, and near pariahs Brazil, but G Adventures will be all over it.

And we should just be glad we don’t have to go to war to get a holiday.

MEET YOU ON THE ROAD