Bamenda

Bamenda is the largest town of the English-speaking north-west, laid out below an escarpment that drops several hundred metres to the plain and gives the approach road its long view. The grassfields around it are chiefdom country, and the palace at Bafut with its sacred forest and shrine house is the best known of them. Gerald Durrell collected animals here in the 1950s and wrote about it afterwards. The Ring Road loops two hundred kilometres through the highlands past crater lakes, waterfalls and the Kimbi valley. Bamenda's markets sell honey, coffee and woven bags. The town itself sits at twelve hundred and fifty metres.