D-Day Arrives at Last

We woke up early in anticipation of meeting the dogs again and had left Piccolo by 7.45 for the drive down to the wharf. On St Helena there are only two road into Jamestown – one on each side of the steep valley in which Jamestown nestles; Side Path and Ladder Hill. Due to urgent road works being undertaken further up ‘Side Path’ from the Briars to Gordon’s Post, The route into ‘town’ closed on Monday for 10 weeks! This means an additional round trip of 8 miles or so to get from our side of the Island to ‘town’ and closing 3 days before the ship arrived meant a much longer journey for us and the dogs! I’d already go accustomed to the new route to work, so we knew we would be down at the Wharf by around 8.15. I’d been down to Customs to check about being allowed ‘airside/shipside’ to meet the dogs and permission had been given, so we ended up doing a backwards route through Customs and Immigration before being allowed to walk down to the end of the Wharf where cargo (and dogs) get landed. We knew they would be pretty much last off, so we waited with much trepidation. We watched 4 cars be craned off the RMS and floated across on a pontoon before being craned off onto the wharf within a couple of metres of us. It was quite an amazing sight and a slick operation by the St Helenian staff – impressive.

Aboard the pontoon, being air-lifted to land and arrival on St Helena Island

We had seen the ‘air taxi’ waiting a little out to sea until the pontoon cleared – it then came alongside the RMS and we knew this was the moment of truth. Through the zoom on his camera, Andy could see movement on deck and knew the dogs had been loaded. They were then lifted clear of the ship and lowered onto the waiting pontoon. Soon they were travelling towards us. We knew that the vet, Joe, had gone out to the ship earlier to check the condition of the dogs prior to them being permitted to be landed, but we hadn’t seen him come back. As the air taxi was lifted onto the wharf we could clearly hear Pippy barking madly!

Joe handing Smudge to me
As the door to the ‘cage’ opened there was Joe the vet sitting with the dogs who were just on leads and not ‘crated up’. Smudges face was a picture when she realised it was us! She quickly went into ‘sulk’ mode though and refused to make eye contact or acknowledge any of us for a good few hours. Pippy had gone a bit ‘native’ and was spinning around madly – something we had trained out of her over the last couple of years. But they were both fit and well – if not a bit orange and a little smelly!
I walked Pippy all the way to the Castle (where I work) so that Annie could meet her before we began the journey home. The girls were so excited, but we forgot that a car horn being sounded send Pippy mental – On the Island you can’t travel more than a couple of hundred yards without there being a necessity to hoot your horn to avoid a head-on collision on one of the ‘too many to mention’ blind hair-pin bends.
Andy drove back trying not to use the horn and we eventually arrived at Piccolo Hill and let the dogs into the house for the first time.
Immediate priority – into the bath with both of them. As it was a nice day they were soon clean and dry and familiarising themselves with the large garden. Pippy almost immediately found an escape route through a slightly wider than everywhere else gate panel! Fortunately her intentions were spotted and the escape route swiftly blocked!
Over the next few days the girls have settled in nicely and enjoyed the walk through Plantation with the Governor’s dog Wellington. In fact he and Smudge had a lovely time running in and out of the trees and got on really well too.
It been a long arduous not to mention expensive experience but everyone is together now and happy in their new home!