Scottish Highlands, Caribbean Islands and more: Travels in 2014

By Julian Worker

This book includes stories about travelling in the Western Caribbean, visiting Grand Cayman, Jamaica, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and The Bahamas. Other stories are about the Scottish Highlands including visits to Inverness, Ullapool, Plockton, and the area called Assynt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AUK Authors
• Release date: Mar 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781785381171

Julian Worker

“Little Known British Traditions” is my first book of humourous stories. One of my stories, Safari Sickness, has been recently published in an anthology called “Leave the Lipstick, Take the Iguana” by Travelers’ Tales. Other articles have recently appeared in the Expeditioner online e-zine, and in Americas the magazine of the Organization of American States. My travel stories have appeared in The Toronto Globe and Mail, The National Catholic Register, International Travel News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Southern Cross newspaper in South Africa. On the Internet my writing has appeared on the following websites: In the Know Traveller, Go World, Paperplates, Intravel, and GoNomad. I have also taken many photographs that have appeared in travel guides/articles by National Geographic, Thomas Cook, The Rough Guides, and The Guardian.

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Great Houses near Montego Bay, Jamaica

The Greenwood Great House is on the north coast of Jamaica east of Montego Bay. The house was built primarily for entertainment purposes by Edward Barrett, the father of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Barretts were one of the wealthiest landowners in Jamaica and by the time of emancipation in 1834 owned over 2,000 slaves, who worked in the sugarcane plantations on the family’s seven estates. The poet never visited Jamaica.

I visited the house towards the end of April when the temperatures in northern Jamaica were in the low 30s Centigrade. A tour of the house takes about 30 minutes and will almost certainly be personal as the house receives few visitors. One reason is the heavily pot-holed road to the house. This is in sharp contrast to a former owner of Greenwood who received an award from the Jamaican government for having the finest tarmacked road on the island. When my driver and I arrived in the car park a number of gardeners were busy at work clearing some weeds and pruning some bushes and trees. One of them pointed us in the direction of the entrance gate. It was locked, so I rang the bell and within a few seconds a lady came and let us in. I paid for my tour at the bar of the cafe and was then introduced to my guide. It turned out that the lady who gave me my ticket was the owner of the house.

The house contains some fascinating pieces including a polyphon, a working barrel organ, and a piano previously owned by Queen Alexandra, the wife of King Edward VII of Great Britain. A recent delegation from the Danish government tried to buy the piano, but their offer was rebuffed. My guide wound up the barrel organ and asked me whether I recognised the tune. I didn’t. She then began to sing Daisy, daisy, give me your answer do. I recognised the words, if not the tune, and began to sing along too much to the consternation of my driver, who almost suppressed a smile.

The upper verandah gives an almost uninterrupted view of the Caribbean Sea and, if you use your imagination, you can almost see the curvature of the earth. It’s one of those views I would like to have lingered over with a drink in my hand, but sadly no such option existed. Outside hand-pump fire carts and wagon wheels adorn the walls. Greenwood Great House is set in attractive gardens and is worth every cent of the entrance fee.

The Rose Hall Great House is closer to Montego Bay than Greenwood. Rose Hall was built in 1770 by John Palmer who looked after the estate along with his wife, Rosa. This house will always be associated with the infamous ‘White Witch’ of Rose Hall, Annie Palmer, who probably didn’t exist. Annie is supposed to have moved to Haiti when she was 11 with her English mother and Irish father. Annie immediately took a keen interest in voodoo. Her parents died from Yellow Fever soon afterwards, but Annie was coached in the art of voodoo by her nanny, who perished when Annie was 18. People close to Annie dying was a familiar theme during her short life. She moved to Jamaica and married John Rose Palmer, the owner of Rose Hall in 1820.

After 7 years, so the story goes, Annie Palmer murdered her husband, a pattern that was repeated twice more in the next three years with two more husbands. Each was killed in a different bedroom using a different method. Annie Palmer also had many slaves lovers during her life and they helped Annie dispose of the bodies via a secret passage that led to the beach. Annie was hated by the slaves for her cruelty towards them, indeed one of her favourite pastimes was to watch them being punished from an upper window.

Annie Palmer was killed during the Christmas Insurrection of 1831 by the slaves on her estate. A brutal ending to a cruel life, which may or may not be true depending on whom you talk to. Rose Hall is haunted with many sightings of ghosts. Indeed people’s cups have been moved from one room to another while their backs were turned. In the cellar are a number of letters from previous visitors, who have taken photographs in different parts of the house. The images contain an apparition in either a mirror or a shiny surface.

My tour of Rose Hall was personal just like at Greenwood. The weather was beautiful and sunny and yet the Hall still refused to look welcoming somehow appearing grey despite the beautiful blue sky. The entrance hall was airy and the floorboards creaked just as they should in a haunted house. The guide was soon showing me where one of the servants fell to their death in the 1820s - was she pushed or was it suicide? Upstairs were the bedrooms where it’s alleged Annie’s various murders took place and where the tea service relocated itself.

Rose Hall is not only recommended because of the fascinating tale of Annie Palmer. It is almost miraculous that the house is still standing at all given that it lay derelict for 130 years, before being restored by John Rollins from New England between 1965 and 1972 at a cost of $2.5 million. Today, Rose Hall is at the