Harrison's Cave and Welchman's Hall Gulley

Tags: Barbados, caving, Harrison's Cave, Welchman's Hall Gulley

Date: December 16, 2016

One day we took a local bus to Harrison's Cave, a very large cave that was mapped in the 1970's, strangely enough with the help of a Danish speleologist. It is only possible to see the cave on guided tours and the tourists are driven around the cave on electric carts. The cave is very wet and has several small lakes and rivers running through it. Also it is full of different kinds of formations such as stalagmites, stalactites, flow stone, soda straws etc...

Here is a picture of one of the tunnels that have been excavated (1 km total) to allow the carts to drive the tourists around in the cave:

Félicie in front of the carts that drove us around the cave:

More formations:

After the visit to Harrison's Cave we walked a couple of kilometers to a gulley called Welshman's Hall Gulley. This gulley was created when the ceiling of a large cave collapsed.

The gulley has a dense vegetation with all sorts of plants that do not grow elsewhere in Barbados because the island was intensively cultivated with sugar cane for the production of sugar during the colonial period. Only because the gulleys were too steep and narrow to be used for agricultural purposes did a number of native Barbadian plants survive there.

There is a small entrance fee to see the gulley and it includes a little brochure explaining about the different plants growing there. Close to the entrance there was a panoramic view point from where we could see the sea in the distance:

Small parts of the collapsed cave are still intact, such as this:

The path through the gulley:

Giant bamboo - not native to Barbados:

At places the vegetation was so dense it was almost like being in a rain forest:

Félicie in front of a stalactite-stalagmite column formed when the gulley was still a cave:

The wall of the gulley/cave next to the path: