Matt’s been putting in his table tennis practise and as a result has started to beat me, which is a bit annoying! We’ve had a pretty tiring but excellent week of work. As well as Tean, we have also been rat baiting on the uninhabited islands of St Helen’s and Samson. It’s interesting how each island has a different “personality” and different archaeological history to accompany it.
Matt, Daren and I went to St Helen’s on Wednesday. On the island is a ruined building, known as the “Pest House” which was used to quarantine sick sailors in the eighteenth century. Skeletons have been found of the buried dead but we managed to avoid finding any of them!
It really was quite tiring walking around and over the island as there are few well-trodden paths so we were scrambling over bracken and brambles and have the scratches to prove it. We were treated to a beautiful rainbow over Round Island though.
On Thursday we went to Samson which Matt has visited before, some 15/20 years ago! Not much evidence of rats but we did get up close to a dolphin, unfortunately dead. Samson is the most recent island to become uninhabited and there are many ruins around the island, including an old deer fence. Apparently the deer jumped over it the first night they were put there and swam away.
Yesterday we were back clearing the squares which we started on Monday, which was a nice sheltered spot to be out of the freezing wind that is blowing over the islands. We’ve also been joining in island life and have been wine-tasting (luckily we weren’t the only ones to score 2 out of 10 in the wine quiz!) and last night went to the panto, “oh yes we did”.
Rats, dead dolphins, skeletons, freezing cold wind...sounds like a dream destination!
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