RAF Flight to UK Arrivng at 1:30 am: End of adventure

On Saturday, March 24, we packed, closed up Garden Cottage, made our way down the mountain, paid for the car and the cottage and went to the airhead at the ridiculously early, but strictly mandated by the RAF, time of 12 noon for a 3 pm flight.  We conveniently parked our rental car in the small parking lot near the "terminal" and left the keys in it for our friendly petrol station owner (Birdie) to retrieve later. To prepare for the flight, one queues (i.e., "stands in line" for you Yankees) outside in the hot sun, reaches a desk inside where they take one's luggage, gets a turtle and date stamp in one's passport, puts one's carry-on baggage through a scanner (a full one and half litre water bottle, an aerosol can of insect repellent, and who knows what else, is fine with the security person!) and walks into a small lounge to wait and wait and wait.  If one is bored by the lounge, one can go outside into the "cage."  The cage is a small fenced area, albeit with picnic tables and a modicum of shade, next to the runway.  Under normal flight schedules, passengers who have just flown for 8 hours from the Falkland Islands must wait in the cage (not being permitted entry into Ascension) for an hour and a half while the plane is refuelled and then and spend 9  hours flying on to RAF Brize Norton in the UK!   At 3 pm we walked onto the runway, up the steps and were fortunate to seize two seats by the window during the open seating scramble!  The aircraft was provided by Air Italy with an Italian crew.  The food was variable -- a good chicken dinner at about 5 pm and a nearly inedible microwaved grey tortilla wrap for a snack at about 11 pm.  We  landed at 12.30 am on Sunday, March 25, but went onto British Summer Time, thus immediately losing an hour.  The RAF staff at the airport were impressively and unexpectedly cheerful and helpful.  We took a shuttle bus, along with a few other passengers, to the Gateway House Hotel on the base.  The Gateway House is a billet for soldiers who have long waits for flights.  Equally helpful RAF staff assigned us to a simple room (two single, unmade beds, one chair and a wash basin) and we got to bed at 3 am.  Up at 7 am, we had a full English breakfast in the canteen along with a number of camou-clad soldiers, some of whom were NATO forces from Estonia.  The room and extensive breakfast were compliments of the RAF.  As the woman on the desk said, "What else could you have done after arriving in the middle of Sunday night?" Another shuttle bus landed us conveniently just outside the airbase gates at the rental car agency, and we were off into the English countryside!  The South Atlantic Adventure was over.  An endeavour well worth the trouble and expense, renewed family acquaintance, experiences we will not forget and the making of a few new friends with whom we hope to stay in touch.

Exploring Green Mountain and the Devil's Riding School

On Thursday, March 22, we drove back to North East Bay, but this time we turned southwards past the European Space Agency tracking station, and walked along the beach and rocks to get finally a clear view of Boatswain Bird Island, the nesting place for thousands of sea birds.  We also saw an impressive blow hole, sending sea water and spray 20 feet into the air regularly. As if we needed any additional drama, we learned today that the aircraft (Titan Airways) that provides the one and only service to and from Ascension Island was damaged at the RAF base on the Falkland Islands.  An alternative aircraft (Air Italy) has been found but it will not be able to maintain the expected schedule.  We don't know when we will be leaving!  On Friday, March 23, we explored the buildings just above us on Green Mountain, mostly built in the 1820s and 1830s, but some used well into the 1980s.  The Royal Marines built barracks (very small -- large enough only to accommodate a garrison of 20 to 30 men) in 1833 in the windiest, wettest place on the mountain, but after 30 years they found they couldn't tolerate the damp so they barracks were turned into a milking shed and new ones built!  There are also two huge slopes concreted in the 1860s to catch rain and funnel it down into tanks to provide the island's inhabitants' water supply and used for this purpose well into the 20th century. Down near sea level, Jack explored one of the island's strange volcanic features, the Devil's Riding School.  Reached after a short climb over a lava field strewn with flat, broken bits of lava (described as walking over broken china plates), one reaches a shallow, wide crater.  The floor of the crater looks something like a bull's eye target with rings of alternating colors.  The devil could have ridden horses around the circles!  (The formation can be seen from space, so try finding Ascension Island on Google Earth.  Hint: Latitude 7 deg, 56 min South; Longitude 14 deg, 25 min West.)

Giant Green Turtles and the BBC Relay Station

On Tuesday, March 20, we climbed around Fort Bedford which is situated on the lower part of a cinder cone just inland from Georgetown.  Some of the cannon are 19th century and two other rusty cannon were last used to scare off a Nazi submarine in World War II. We had a tour of the BBC World Service relay station courtesy of a friend of Howard Peters, who worked there until February.  The station gets BBC programming via satellite and rebroadcasts it on short wave radio to Africa and South America from this unique dot in the South Atlantic ocean.  The service provides unbiased news coverage, especially to those in less democratic countries.  The power supplies, amplifiers, frequency generators and tuners (some made in the 1940s) all operating at 11,000 volts and 100,000 watts are impressive!  If you're worried about cell phone exposure, don't wander into the BBC's field of transmitter antennae!  The BBC operates the only power station on the island and uses 90% of the power it generates.  The BBC also supplies, via desalination, almost all of the drinking water for the island. Nearby we swam at English Bay, one of the only two "safe" swimming beaches on the island.  Very warm water!  On Wednesday, March 21, we finally had a successful walk on the paths around Green Mountain.  They are definitely jungle walks, overgrown and sometimes requiring considerable exploration to determine the course of the path.  All is made more interesting by the fact that the paths are mostly cut out of the steep slopes of the mountain-side.  We have learned that parts of the Garden Cottage, in which we are living, date from 1817, and that our water is unique in that it comes from a well high up on the mountain and reaches us via a 300 meter tunnel through the mountain. Readers of this blog will find it unsurprising that we ended up at Phyllis's Village Takeaway, eating a delicious chicken curry for dinner!  After dark, we went to Long Beach to see green turtles coming onshore to lay and bury eggs.  The turtles are easily frightened but don't see red light very well, so Meg made a red filter for our torch out of parts of a plastic bag!  We saw many of these 400 pound, 3 foot long female turtles leaving the sea, crawling up the beach and digging large depressions in which to lay eggs.  The turtles have been doing this for several months.  We also saw a baby turtle that had recently hatched, claw his (or her) way up through the sand and head for the sea.  It had a tendency to head in the wrong direction, so Meg gave him an airlift to the water's edge.  Hopefully, he can head out to sea where it will be safer.