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Trail Description
Difficulty Rating
Environmental Character
Safety and Risk management
Hikers Feedback
Maps
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Trail Format: Cul-de-sac – Return by same path.
Special features: Swimming pools
Goal/purpose of trail: Scenic; recreation
Length: 4.5 km
Time required: 3.5 hours
Difficulty rating (exertion): 6/10
Elevation: 40m to ridge 210; then down to sea
Terrain difficulty (technical): Scramble
Path Surface: Sandy / rocky / slippery when wet
Path type: Single file / track
Way markers: Wooden arrows
Safety: Safe but take precautions
Amenities: Swim / Picnic
Emergency contact: 25213
Trail authority contact: +290 22158
Guide contact: 24161
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Basic Trail Description and special attributes:
The Lot’s Wife’s Ponds trail is probably the most popular walk down to the coast on the Island. The path to the Post Box is clear and well used. The views along the way are spectacular, and the Ponds, if you climb down, at the end are large and sheltered from the sea. It follows a good path, for most of the walk which cuts across some steep slopes and a narrow ledge, with an optional short climb at the end. It is a fairly difficult trail with elevation starting from 40 m above sea level at the start and goes up to 250 m midway after running down to sea level at the end. While the Ponds are safe to swim in on most occasions, when the sea is rough they can become turbulent. Standing on the ‘wall’ on the seaward side of the Ponds is never safe, as waves can come from nowhere and sweep powerfully over the edge.
The walk to Lot’s Wife’s Ponds provides the opportunity to see various plants such as the winter flowering annual endemics: tiny French Grass (Euphorbia sanctae-helenae) with its delicate pink stems, the straggly yellow daisy flowered Bone Seed (Osteospermum sanctae-helenae) and the succulent Babies’ Toes (Hydrodea cryptantha). This area of white shell-sand deposits contains various fossilised bird bones and occasionally birds’ eggshells, from long-extinct species
A detailed description of the location of the trail appears in the booklet “A description of the Post Box walks of St Helena”, issued by the St Helena Nature Conservation Group and the government of St Helena.
Subjective QUALITY GAUGE of the trail. (A value of 5 = excellent / dominant feature, and 1 = negligible / absent)
SCENIC BEAUTY:
VARIATION / DIVERSITY IN LANDSCAPE:
SPECIAL FEATURES:
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