Holywell sits above 900 metres, in cloud forest, at Hardwar Gap in the Blue Mountains, and it is properly cold. People drive up from Kingston in a vest and spend the afternoon shivering. It is about an hour from town on a narrow, climbing, single-track road, and what you get at the top is a working national park recreation area with real trails, not an attraction with a turnstile.
History
The captain and the road
Holywell sits in Hardwar Gap, the notch in the ridge at roughly 1,220 metres where the Kingston side crosses into Portland. The gap is named for Captain Hardwar, a British army officer who supervised construction of the road cut from here down to Buff Bay on the north coast. That road is still there, still narrow, and still the reason the site is reachable at all.
Why the British came up this mountain
The road and the camp above it exist because the British Army in Jamaica was dying in the lowlands. Yellow fever killed the West Indies garrison at a rate of roughly one soldier every two and a half days through the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1838, a comparatively good year, 91 men died. In 1839 it was 110. In 1840 it was 121.
In 1841 Major General Sir William Maynard Gomm, commanding Her Majesty's forces in Jamaica, took a coffee plantation on the ridge below Hardwar Gap and turned it into a hill station, cutting the barracks into step-like terraces between about 3,500 and 4,500 feet. The effect was immediate and is the most striking number in this whole area's history. In 1842, 24 of 197 men at Newcastle died. By 1858, 2 died out of 476. A posting to the West Indies had been treated as close to a death sentence, and altitude ended that. You drive straight through Newcastle on the way up, and the Jamaica Defence Force still uses it as a training depot, so the parade square with the regimental crests painted on the hillside is not a monument, it is somebody's workplace.
Forest reserve to national park
The modern protection is recent. The Jamaica Conservation and Development Trust was set up as a non-governmental charity in 1988, and the Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park was declared on 26 February 1993 under the Natural Resources Conservation Order, with the first park rangers commissioned that same year. Jamaica's first national park is therefore run day to day by an NGO rather than directly by a ministry, which is unusual and worth knowing when you pay at the gate: that money goes into ranger salaries and trail maintenance. In 2015 the wider park became Jamaica's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed for both its ecology and its Maroon history.
What it costs and when it opens
Entry for non-residents runs at around US$10 for adults and US$5 for children. Jamaican residents with ID pay a small local rate in Jamaican dollars, quoted variously between JA$100 and JA$400 for an adult, so carry a little more than you expect. Parking may be charged separately, in the region of JA$500.
Published hours are roughly 9am to 5pm, and Holywell has been listed as closed on Mondays. Hours at a park run by a small trust do shift, so ring the JCDT before you commit a drive.
Three furnished log cabins with fireplaces, kitchens and solar power sleep between two and five, at roughly US$60 to US$80 a night for non-residents. Camping is allowed and you bring your own tent. Ten gazebos have barbecue pits, so most Jamaican families come up to cook.
What it is actually like
Cold, wet and quiet, and those are the selling points. At this altitude Blue Mountain temperatures typically sit around 13 to 18 Celsius through the year, and the cloud comes in and sits on you. Rainfall on these slopes is enormous. The forest drips even when it is not raining.
The trails are short and honest about themselves. Blue Mahoe is 350 metres, Shelter Trail 600 metres, both easy. Waterfall Trail is 1.3 kilometres, moderately difficult, ending at a five metre fall. Oatley Mountain is the real one: 1.2 kilometres, steep, roughly an hour and a half, and the walk worth coming for. The Wag Water and Dick's Pond trail has been partly blocked, so ask at the visitor centre rather than assume.
Birders should know this is one of the best accessible sites in Jamaica for endemic species, and the JCDT runs guided walks from 6am as well as a four hour nature and coffee tour into the neighbouring farms.
The road from Papine through Irish Town and Newcastle is single lane in stretches, with blind bends, no barrier and a long drop. Sound your horn on corners, and do not attempt it after dark or in heavy rain if you do not know it. On the trails, cloud can close visibility to a few metres within minutes, and the ground stays slick. Wear shoes with grip.
What to bring
- A jacket or hoodie. This is the single thing visitors get wrong.
- Closed shoes with tread. Not slides.
- Your own food, drink and charcoal if you plan to use a gazebo. There is no restaurant.
- Cash. Do not count on card payment or on signal.
How it fits a day
We run Holywell as a morning, leaving Kingston by about 7am and being on the trail by 9, because the cloud usually builds through the afternoon and the views from the gap close in. Oatley Mountain, then lunch at a gazebo or down at Irish Town, and you are back in town by mid afternoon. If you want the coffee estates as well, that is the same road and the same day, but it makes a full one. Anyone attempting Blue Mountain Peak should treat Holywell as a separate trip entirely, since the Peak trail starts from Penlyne Castle on the other side of the range and involves a 2am start.
