The highway must not leave us high and dry
The Chinese are closing in on us with the sections of the new highway being built connecting Caymanas with the north coast. At almost every turn as you drive through the Steer Town to Spanish Town route you can see huge construction taking place to straighten corners, build bridges, and reach new heights in their race against time. The promised deadline is early 2016, and we have got so accustomed to our shiny new highways that we will be unforgiving if this promise does not materialise. The China Harbour Engineering Company has a good record for meeting deadlines, and we can expect with confidence that this major new corridor will be ready before the next election.
Of course, progress comes with costs, and I am holding my breath as I wait for the announced toll charges. It already costs me near $1,000 to use the Moneague to Linstead route. Add a couple hundred more if I am to take the Portmore or the Spanish Town leg. That’s $1,500 going and coming; it’s worth it, if you don’t have to do it too often.
I am also bracing myself for the phased-out Bog Walk Gorge. Readers will know that I have fallen in love with that route; the apples at the Linstead train line, the hard dough bread and the chain of callaloo sellers at the Ewarton Bakery, the sugar loaf pineapples on Mount Rosser, the breath-taking glimpse of pastureland shrouded in the morning mist as you leave Moneague going uphill. We normally take a breather at the Bog Walk fruit vendors’ stalls before heading into the gorge.
Now this is where I hope the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) will get in on the act. With less traffic on that road, this passage from Bog Walk to Angels could be designated a tourism attraction for its sheer beauty, vegetation, river course, unorthodox bridge, and historic spots and sights.
But let us go back further, starting from the north-coast end at Moneague, where the Ocho Rios road joins a junction road coming from Lydford, home of the former Reynolds Jamaica Mines (Bauxite) Company.
Along that route visitors can be shown the former Moneague Hotel, built in the 1890s, converted later into the Moneague Teacher Training College. They can also be given glimpses of the famous Moneague Lake, three ponds which rise after heavy rains to offer itself for boating, fishing, and picnic areas.
The nearby Walton property, now the site of the Jamaica Defence Force Camp, was once the location of the Jamaica Free School, predecessor to Jamaica College on Hope Road in Kingston.
At one of the first corners as you begin to climb the Mount Diablo hill stands the old Moneague Tavern, now in ruins — for years a favourite inn when Moneague was a stage on the three-day journey from Spanish Town to the north coast. It was reopened as a gourmet stop-and-go a few years back, but failed to make it when it came to its final stop at the turn of the century.
At its highest point, 2,500 feet above sea level, the hill breaks as you cross over from St Ann into St Catherine, and you begin to descend going southward to what used to be known as the parish of St Thomas in the Vale.
The road wends its way through Ewarton, avoids Linstead, and takes you to Bog Walk, where the fruit and coconut vendors with other sundry items line both sides of the road.
As you cross over the Walks Bridge, a glance upwards at the railway line boring into the “3/4 mile tunnel”, the longest tunnel on the line, may remind you of earlier days when the regular trains took you through the heart of the rock, sounding a mournful horn and scaring the daylights out of its first-time passengers.
The intermediary district after leaving Bog Walk is Kent Village, perched on the river bank, with a few business places having been smart enough to construct elevated balconies to enjoy the view. Motorists are already stopping at an attractive-looking combined bar, grocery shop, restaurant, and rest stop three stories high. From the third floor you look directly down at the river and across the stream to a landscaped playground.
Kent Village is not short of roadside vendors selling a variety of interesting items; from yam heads to jackfruit, jackass rope and carvings, and of course strings of janga fish caught in the nearby tributaries.
Now Kent Village is also where Eric Donaldson was born, and surely his home should by now be on the travel brochures. After all, his iconic Cherry, Oh Baby continues to light up the international billboards and top the review charts.
The JTB already knows the story of the Bog Walk Power Station tragedy of 1904, where 33 men died while cleaning out the massive distribution pipe which was said to be largest in the world. The station was eventually closed over time, and the ruins can be seen on the right just after leaving Kent Village heading towards Kingston. But people are still fearful of the spirits said to haunt the area searching for loved ones and a foothold to get out of the pipe that trapped them over 100 years ago. So be careful how you stop there, for more reasons than one.
With less traffic to contend with next year — as promised by the highway men — we will now have the chance to enjoy at our leisure the beauty of that scenic drive through the gorge, especially during the early morning flirtation with the mist and dew.
The original roadway, a dirt lane that extended the north-south pathway for foot soldiers and buggies and carts, was known as the Sixteen Mile Walk leading from Bog Walk to Spanish Town. The original flat bridge, of wooden construction, was built by slaves drawn from the 16 sugar plantations around Bog Walk.
Before the bridge was built — said to be around 1770 — it attracted nature lovers and writers who would wander through the lush hills and valleys, and wax poetic about how the vegetation was comparable to the Welsh and Scottish highlands — well, so they would sing.
So the gorge has been a major tourist attraction for hundreds of years. It was a favourite pastime to ride through and wonder at the beauty of the scenery. Back in 1679, a Dr Thomas Topsham was exulting over the health values of the walk, which he described as “a tolerable good path for a horseback rider”. He spoke of the “rocky tablets which nature had heaped one on the other, while kindly veiling them with a green cover of delightful trees”.
Historian Edward Long, in 1774, found that “the passage is extremely cool and agreeable: every turn of the road presenting the eye with new appearances of the river, the rocks, and the woods, whilst the water, sometimes roaring and foaming at one end, at the other gliding smoothly and silently, delighting the traveller with alternating varieties”.
Next year’s visitors on the tourist bus will be intrigued by the story of The Day The River Disappeared, a story not so well told of how two mountains at the entrance to the gorge, “in the violent shake of the 1694 earthquake, joined together, which stopped the passage of the river and forced it to seek another way in and out of the adjoining woods and savannahs”.
“It was nine days before the town had any relief of it, in the meantime the people on the banks thought of moving elsewhere, concluding that it had been sunk as Port Royal was.
“Indeed the people were forced to go by Guanabo Vale before circling back to the 16 Mile Walk.” Jamaica’s first nine-day wonder.
The JTB could be on to a gold mine here. Hearken back to a The New York Times report of February 3, 1860, which described the gorge in glowing terms, saying how it “furnished some new variety to the scenery at every furlong.
“You look back and trace a silvery thread of water through the graceful plumage of a bamboo cluster; now it is a grove of plantains, or some huge cotton tree, stretching its arms from hill to hill, that forms the framework for a picture.”
Oh, yes, writers and poets waxed lyrical about Old Man River in ancient times. In 1883, a visitor wrote back home of how “the steep cliffs rise on either side, they are clothed with greens of various shades to the very summit, while by the road grow luxuriant ferns, chiefly maidenhair. The rocks are covered with creepers and massed over with lycopodiums, and by the river edge wave giant tufts of bamboo and quivering patches of wild cane and tall grass, the river all the while foaming and murmuring on its rocky course”.
Then, as you get your last glimpse of the river before it tumbles towards Dam Head, you can enthrall your tourists with the legend of the Golden Table which surfaced and at that spot, dragging with it six horses and 20 slaves who had been forced by their owner to try to retrieve the priceless table from the river.
Today, we see more rocks than foam, as I witnessed last week, but the sheer beauty of the gorge is nature’s gift to Jamaica that we should not allow to go to waste. Let’s make sure that with the construction of the highway, we capitalise on the opportunity to return the gorge to its former tourism glory.
Lance Neita is a public and community relations consultant and writer. Send comments to: lanceneita@hotmail.com
Monday March 9, 2015 pic
CAP:
The construction of the highway to make travel easier must not be at the expense of the cultural treasure trove that the island offers.