The Mandeville to Kendal highway gives a bird's
eye view of Jamaica's huge red mud lake glowering
beneath Shooters Hill. At the junction north
of Kendal the L fork leads L to Grove Place,
an agricultural research station. A detour
this way takes you through citrus groves and
dairy pastures to Balaclava, Appleton and
Maggotty.
BALACLAVA
is a pleasant village, a backwater since
the closure of the railway. It has a pretty
Anglican church and proximity to the huge
Oxford Caves.
APPLETON
ESTATE
on the edge of the Cockpit Country is a
privately owned sugar estate and factory,
producer of famous Appleton rum. Closure
of the railway has put an end to a tourism
tradition - The Appleton Express from Montego
Bay, but the Appleton Rum Tour, currently
via bus, is still very popular.
MAGGOTTY,
another rural community isolated by the
closure of the railway, was once the site
of magnificent waterfalls long since sacrificed
for hydro-electricity. A sad and rather
shabby village, Maggotty is the site of
Apple Valley, a pleasant water park offering
boating and fishing on a mini-lake and river
swimming. Picnic areas, barbeques and campsites
are also available. The owners, the Lee
family, run the store and bakery opposite
the entrance and operate a guest house nearby.
Or
turn R at the junction north of KENDAL
for SHOOTERS
HILL, site of the Pickapeppa
factory. Based on a secret formula, both
the hot and the sweet Pickapeppa sauces
are prized by gourmets all over the world.
It is a stiff hike to the top of Shooters
Hill but the view on clear days is magnificent.
A former owner, Alexander Heron, left instructions
that he was to be buried here. The current
owners maintain his tomb and the original
great house. Across from the Jamalcan refinery,
turn left up to the hills. MIZPAH
Moravian church, L overlooks the highway.
It was begun in 1869 by a German minister
Theodore Sonderman and completed in 1870
by Heinrich Walder, a Swiss missionary who
founded the nearby village of Walderston.
Here, an observatory known locally as 'The
Castle' was built by an English peeress
and is now the site of a workshop/home that
produces decorative jigsaw craft items.
The
villages of WALDERSTON,
SPALDINGS, CHRISTIANA, COLEYVILLE
and countless small homesteads meander across
the mountains and appear to merge. You can
see for miles in all directions and after
dark the myriad lights twinkle through the
mist like fallen stars.
At
Walderston, bear left for Christiana. Hotel
VILLA BELLA
on the brow of a hill and set in a three
acre garden, has 22 rooms and a gourmet
menu that includes English High Tea. Information
about places of interest including HIBERNIA,
a farm offering hiking and pony trekking,
is available at the front desk. They can
also give you directions to BETHANY
another interesting Moravian Church founded
in 1835. It was in Christiana, in 1898 that
an American minister called George Lopp
first introduced the Irish potato to the
island. His first plot is still maintained
at Bethany by the Minister of the Church.
The
town of CHRISTIANA
is surrounded by small farmers who produce
ginger, bananas, yams and the bulk of the
island's Irish Potatoes. The light-skinned
farmers of Christiana Bottom are of German
descent. Some of their forbears fought as
mercenaries for King George III during the
American War of Independence and afterwards
received land grants. Two turn-of-the-century
cut stone buildings - the Police Station
and another Moravian church - overlook Christiana's
main street. If the mountain air makes you
hungry, Juicibeef patties, arguably the
best in Jamaica, are available at a snack
shop nearby.
The
road winds west through Coleyville, another
farming district noted for strawberries.
Past the Bryce United Church and School
the road L leads to the Christiana Potato
Growers store house and the GOURIE
cave. At a crossroads marking the district
of DUMP
you can turn R for an adventurous trip skirting
the Cockpit Country through ALBERT
TOWN, ULTSTER SPRING and
ALPS back to the northcoast
at DUNCANS.
Or
bear L up a hill and explore an equally
unfrequented road towards CRAIG
HEAD
and TROY.
Approaching #6148B7you will spy L a gigantic
golf ball looming above the peak that is
3226 feet high. This is a radar station
that was established with the help of the
Canadian government some years ago, reportedly
for tracking illegal flights. It has now
been superseded by a more functional facility
at Lovers Leap, set up and manned by U.S.
military personnel. Nowadays,the lone inhabitants
of the Pike station are security guards
and the fine for trespassing is J$20,000,
but the road up to the peak entrance is
good and offers interesting views including
a close-up of a dry limestone forest: lush
vegetation springing from bare rock. On
this road you will meet pick-ups laden with
yams bound for market and view an extensive
patchwork of Jamaican hill farms. Troy is
the destination for the long hike from Windsor
in Trelawny through the Cockpit Country
- just about as far into the ìinteriorî
as you can get on wheels.
Heading
southeast from Christiana, it is about 3.5
miles on a good road to SPALDINGS the largest
town in these hills with a busy main street,
a choice of banks, a large hospital and
KNOX COLLEGE; a unique educational centre,
the brain child of the late Rev Lewis Davidson
and sponsored initially by the Presbyterian
church (now the United Church of Jamaica
and Grand Cayman). Davidson, a Scotsman,
came to Jamaica as headmaster of Wolmer's
Boys School in Kingston but his concept
of education proved too revolutionary for
the Wolmer's board of the day and his contract
was not renewed. Knox was founded in 1940
and deliberately sited in a remote area
to test Davidson's axiom that an educational
institution must contribute to the development
and well being of the surrounding community.
Knox puts great emphasis on character building
and the teaching of practical skills. Today
the complex includes a Junior School, High
School, Community College, farm, printery
and dental clinic.
The
route from Spaldings to the northcoast via
BOROBRIDGE,
winds through hill country and yam, cane,
coffee and banana cultivations. Thence through
AENON TOWN
and CAVE
VALLEY
where the Cave River sinks to emerge
miles downstream at STEWART
TOWN as the Rio Bueno. Cave Valley
has a busy Saturday market, specializing
in the sale of livestock: goats, cows and
donkeys. En route to BROWNS
TOWN, about 16 winding miles
away, you pass through ABOUKIR,
a rural educational centre and CLARKSONVILLE,
one of several 'free villages' created by
the emancipated slaves with the help of
Baptist missionaries.
From
Spaldings, the route to the south winds
through the Clarendon hills, and above and
along the RIO MINHO
valley (the longest river in Jamaica)
between citrus orchards, through FRANKFIELD
and CHAPELTON
to MAY PEN.
These once fertile hills, were the childhood
home of Jamaican author and poet laureate
Claude McKay and a continuing source of
inspiration to him. Books like My Green
Hills of Jamaica and Banana Bottom provide
a compelling picture of rural life sixty
years ago. About a mile west of Frankfield
there is a famous fossil bed. Fossils here,
including an extinct species of gigantic
shellfish, are estimated to be between 65
and 70 million years old.
Some of these can be seen in the small museum
in the Geology Department of the UWI.
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