THERE IS NO doubt that Sailor Gully is a watercourse.
Inference from the name notwithstanding, the amount of garbage on the gully floor, from old tyres to galvanised sheets to children’s toys, proved that it was.
Thanks the Barbados Museum & Historical Society, a number of walkers got their first introduction to the St Peter watercourse, as well as a close-up of the problem that has been plaguing the island for decades.
The trip through Sailor Gully – the museum’s second natural history walk/hike last Saturday – was a new experience for all of the walkers.
Assistant curator in natural history, Kerron Hamblin, who led the hike, warned that the St Peter formation would require gloves and some climbing.
What he could not warn against was the amount of garbage that littered the gully floor and the appliances that were obviously dumped over the side of the road.
The gully, which links up with the one in The Whim and onto Speightstown, is as elegant as Jack-In-The-Box Gully in St Thomas, and on its way to being just as dirty. It’s also a study in contrast with nature’s flow stones occurring metres away from the man-made road above and its supporting brickwork.
Hamblin said Sailor Gully was part of the 350 kilometre-long network of gullies that meandered just below the island’s surface. He said the gully system covered more of the island than any other natural habitat and were watercourses, in Sailor Gully’s case, carrying not only the precious resource in the aquifers, but human garbage and its pollutants as well.
The hikers first had a brisk walk along one of the secondary roads off the Ronald Mapp Highway where tall walls, equally tall trees and thick forest-like vegetation belied the fact that there was a busy highway and massive houses minutes away.
The entry into the gully was through thick vegetable and the descent was immediate. Walkers carefully made their way over fallen boulders, under fallen trees, stepping carefully through ankle-binding vines and around jagged pieces of galvanised metal or bagged household garbage.
Hamblin then led them along the gully floor, under imposing rock formations, through a tunnel which was so dark that it was impossible to see inches in front one’s face, and under the bridge of the road into more vegetation. The walkers were then faced with a climb, only made possible by a sturdy rope which had been strung at the side. Through it all, Hamblin pointed out the feature’s flow stones, its stalactites and stalagmites, as well as its beehive and bat roost.