Day Nineteen - Jersey - 21 April

As we headed out to the Farmers’ and Craft Market at St Aubin’s Harbour the rain came down. We had only got to the end of the hotel driveway when we had to don our raincoats. By the time we made it to the markets we were quite wet and all the little market tents were covered in plastic. There were very few people around. We briefly walked around the market avoiding the heavily iced cupcakes because we had just had breakfast. At the square we joined the wide walking path to Corbiere Lighthouse as our intention was to make it to The Old Smuggler’s Inn at Ouaisne Bay near St Brelade’s Bay for lunch and to read the Daily Telegraph we had bought.

It only took us thirty minutes to arrive at the bay as it was flat walking along an the old railway line and downhill through little lanes to the bay. As we walked the clouds went and we had a mostly sunny day for the remainder of the day. The Old Smuggler’s Inn dates back to 1721 and is set back from the bay. It is the quintessential English pub. We spent two hours there relaxing, eating and reading. As we had arrived early we got the best seats in the corner overlooking the bay. We got the impression we had taken the seats from some of the locals of which there were many when lunchtime came around.

We chose a different route to return to St Aubin walking up a steep lane passing potato pickers along the way.

When we reached St Aubin the tide was at its lowest and we headed out to St Aubin’s Fort which was built in the 1540’s.

We can see this clearly from our hotel and have been walking past it all week. There were good views back over St Aubin and St Helier from the high walls of the fort. We walked back along the walkway from the fort to the harbour walls and returned to a very busy St Aubin. The sun had brought out the crowds and the market was just packing up. We visited the Harbour Gallery which is run by Jersey art and craft people. It was over three storeys of paintings, photography, jewellery, knitting, sewing etc. The standard was very high and I spent a considerable time there soaking up all the creativity. Henk soaked up the sun on a seat outside the gallery. We slipped into The Cabin for an afternoon coffee before heading back to the hotel. It was a very pleasant, relaxing last day on Jersey.

This is the last blog post from the Isle of Wight and the Channel Isles. We have had a wonderful time over the past three weeks. Each of the islands is unique and we have thoroughly enjoyed exploring them. Our next blog will be for the Coast to Coast Walk. The blogsite address for this is: http://henkanddi2012b.blogspot.com

Day Eighteen - Jersey - 20 April

Today the only thing we had planned was to go to the Laundrette at St Aubin which is a five minute walk from the hotel. Up to this point we have been hand washing our limited set of clothes but there comes a time when they need a decent wash. As we walked into St Aubin with our bags of washing we felt like a couple of bag people.

The tide was out in St Aubin Harbour and the three local geese were soaking up the scant sun which came and went during the day. We walked back along the esplanade to have a morning coffee at The Cabin across the road from our hotel. We had an unplanned and enjoyable hour and a half at the beach cafe as the woman who served us originally came from Gayndah. Henk recognised her Australian accent. I didn’t! She also had lived in Charleville and had been a governess on a property outside Tambo. Her two students were on Charleville School of the Air so we had a lot in common. We finally headed into St Helier and went straight to the Jersey Museum and Art Gallery. We didn’t emerge until three thirty as the displays were very good. It covered the history of Jersey from 250,000 years ago to the present day. There was an interesting section on the finances of the island. It only has one percent unemployment, the maximum tax is twenty percent with forty percent not paying any tax at all because of the high tax threshold and there’s no capital gains tax or death duties. Only twenty percent of the island’s income comes from the tourist industry with seventy-five percent from the finance industry.

At the Art Gallery within the museum it was the first day of the display of John Singleton Copley’s famous painting, “The Death of Major Peirson” which shows the Battle of Jersey, a battle which lasted fifteen minutes in 1781. Last night’s local paper devoted two pages to the exhibition. The promotion stated, “This portrayal of the Battle of Jersey is without doubt the most iconic work of art in the hearts and minds of Islanders.” The painting is huge and covers an entire wall. The museum also had a completely restored Victorian Merchant’s House with its period furniture. We caught the bus to St Aubin and picked up our clean washing. It smells so lovely! We settled on Chinese for dinner as we were looking for a change. We each were given a fortune cookie at the end of the meal. We both received similar advice. Henk’s was “Take each failure as a lesson” and mine was “Don’t repeat the same mistakes you’ve made before” We’ll have to bear that in mind!

We strolled back to the hotel at eight thirty and it was just getting dark. The lights which encircle the harbour had just come on and the harbour was looking very pretty.

Day Seventeen - Jersey - 19 April

We woke to a lovely sunny day. It was still cold but we stuck to our plan of “making hay while the sun shines” and decided on outdoor activities. We were keen to revisit Mont Orgueil at Gorey Harbour which we had visited earlier in the week.

Dressed in our warm gear we took a different blue bus which went along the south east coastline and then turned north to the harbour. The views over the beaches from the bus were very good. The tide was on the way out.

Mont Orgueil (called Gorey Castle by English speakers) overlooks the harbour and original construction commenced in the early thirteenth century. It was constructed to keep out of the French. We took the opportunity to have a guided tour which was very good. Henk and I weren’t too sure if our guide, Nicky, was a woman or a man but we settled on a woman as she had pearl earrings. She would have been in her seventies, was very tall and large and looked like a female version of Greengrass from the “Heartbeat” series. With her cloth hat plonked on her head and her light blue grubby Paddington Bear coat “Our Nicky” was a very proud born and bred Jersey woman who had been taking the guided tours for fourteen years. She told us she wasn’t French; she wasn’t English; she came from the country of Jersey! She was very knowledgeable and also very funny and kept our group interested for the entire tour. The castle has had a chequered career but it was Walter Raleigh, Governor of Jersey in 1600, who saved the castle from demolition in his plea to Queen Elizabeth 1. The views over the harbour and over to France were excellent as it was such a clear day.

The wind was biting cold around the draughty old castle and we were pleased to retreat to a cosy, boutique pub for a late lunch overlooking the harbour. It seemed to be the place for the very well dressed Jersey people to meet and we were a tad underdressed in our faded jeans. Henk and I returned to St Helier’s Liberations Bus Terminus along the same route with the tide at its lowest. I returned to the hotel and Henk took the bus to L’Etacq at the far north west of the island. He walked back along the beach via La Corbiere Lighthouse to our hotel, a distance of about thirteen kilometres.

The walk was mostly flat with a combination of beach walking, sand-dune walking and joined a walking track back to St Aubin. Henk said it was a good walk. I read the papers in the comfy lounge of the hotel. The headline in one of the papers said it was going to be the coldest May in one hundred years especially along the east coast of England. We could be in for a cold walk and a cold stay in Norfolk.

Day Sixteen - Jersey - 18 April

It was a good day for museum visiting. The weather was cold with rain coming in fits and starts for most of the day. We caught the bus into St Helier to catch the bus out to the Jersey War Tunnels which are in the centre of the island. Unlike the Isle of Wight and Guernsey the bus routes do not go around the entire island; Jersey’s bus routes radiate out from St Helier. This means we often have to return to St Helier to get onto a different bus route.

We spent two hours totally absorbed in the displays in the tunnels and we thought the museum was excellent. It outlines Jersey’s war under German occupation from 1940 to 1945. The very large tunnel complex was excavated by forced labour as a bombproof storage and repair facility before being converted into a casualty receiving station which was never used. The war years were described through a range of techniques including very moving video and audio vignettes of Jersey people who lived through the war years.

Just like Guernsey, near the end of the war the people were starving and only survived through Red Cross packages from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Up until the arrival of the packages the people resorted to many different ways to survive. Sweet beet was made into a sugar equivalent and bramble leaves were dried to make tea. The average temperature in the tunnels is ten degrees and we were thankful for our Gortex coats over our fleeces. By the end of the last tunnel we were very cold and retreated to the museum’s warm café to thaw out. We were still in the zone of the starving people in the war and felt very thankful for our potato and leek soup. We were each given Jersey Identity Cards when we bought our museum tickets. When we walked through the museum we had to find “ourselves”. Henk was Clifford Cohu a local priest and was arrested for distributing allied news and was sent to a concentration camp in France where he died. I was Douglas Le Marchand who tried to escape from Jersey in a boat. He was shot and died when a bullet went through the boat. His companions survived. We were pleased to find that we weren’t collaborators.

In the early afternoon we caught a bus to Durrell which is in the north east of the island. The weather had improved and we wanted to walk from Durrell to Rozel Bay to see if we could see France from the cliffs. We did this but the walk wasn’t as pleasant as we expected as it was along a narrow, country road which doesn’t make for relaxing walking. The traffic wasn’t too busy thankfully. On the way back to the bus we were slower as we had to walk up an incline into stiff winds and occasional rain. We were very glad to get back on the bus at Durrell and get back to St Helier and onto our hotel to get out of the cold and rain.

When we ventured out for dinner the sun had come out but it was still very cold. It was the first time we had seen St Aubin Harbour with water. We walked to the end of the harbour and I took the opportunity to take some photos. We sat in the pub at a table overlooking the harbour watching the tide go out. It was a pleasant view from our cosy pub.

Day Fifteen - Jersey - 17 April

We woke to a very grey, wet day and decided that it was a good day to do the museums. Whilst on the bus into St Helier the sky had cleared to a sunny, breezy day and we changed our plans. We wanted to “make hay while the sun shines”. We first had to find a Vodafone-equivalent shop at St Helier to sort out the problems we were having with the sim card. After this was done we just had to have a coffee and cake before setting off to Elizabeth Castle.

The tide was at its lowest at eleven fifteen and this gave us two hours to safely walk to and from the castle situated off the coast from St Helier. The town of St Helier is named after the Saint who apparently lived and died on the site of the castle in the sixth century. In the middle ages a priory was built in honour of the Saint. During the occupation of Jersey between 1940 and 1945 extensive fortifications were added by the Germans. We are constantly amazed how rapidly and how far the tide goes out and how quickly it comes in. The wind on the dry walkway to the castle was quite strong and we were mindful of the tide times to ensure we gave ourselves plenty of time to walk back to the mainland. We were told by the ticket office that any visits to the island would be cancelled after one fifteen due to tidal conditions and high winds. We made it back to the mainland at twelve thirty which was just in time to catch the Red Explorer Bus to the northern part of the island. We went to the end of the line and got off at the La Mare Wine Estate, St Mary‘s.

This was quite unplanned but a pleasant surprise and we spent a lovely afternoon on a tour of the estate tasting their wines (well, I was!) hand-made chocolates, fudges and a Jersey speciality, Black Butter. It’s a traditional spiced Jersey apple cider preserve made with apples, black treacle, liquorice, cider, brown sugar and spices. It tastes like fruit mince and one national journalist described it as ‘Christmas in a jar’. We had a cream tea at the estate’s restaurant and instead of jam I had the Black Butter on my scone. It’s very tasty.

There were a number of signs on the estate describing the wine growing process. One sign highlighted the friendly rivalry between Jersey and Guernsey. The old saying said, “If you can see Guernsey it’s going to rain. And if you can’t see Guernsey it’s raining already.” However, in Guernsey they have a notice which says, “It’s a lovely day when you can’t see Jersey”. Before we caught the four fifteen bus back into St Helier we walked from the wine estate to the cliff path which was about ten minutes away. We wanted to see Devil’s Hole. To the north we could see Guernsey and Herm.

The bus from the estate drove us back through Jersey peak hour which means a lot of stopping and going on the very narrow, high-walled lanes whilst the drivers take turns in letting each other proceed or otherwise. The drivers seem to come within a whisker of scraping their vehicles but it all seems to be done calmly and politely. When we arrived back at St Helier at five o’clock I immediately stepped onto a bus to return to St Aubin and Henk walked the five kilometres back to the hotel. Due to the peak hour traffic I only arrived at the hotel ten minutes ahead of Henk. We had dinner at The Tenby which is a St Aubin’s eating place overlooking the pretty harbour.

Day Fourteen - Jersey - 16 April

We woke to a sunny and warmer day with low tide at ten fifteen. We thought we would take advantage of this and visit the Corbiere Lighthouse at the far south west of the island. At low tide you can walk out to the lighthouse across a causeway.

The causeway spends more time under water than out of it so we were lucky to have the tide right in the middle of the morning. At the beginning of the causeway there were warning signs for all visitors and the perils of crossing at the wrong time. There was also a memorial to a lighthouse keeper who drowned trying to save a visitor. There is no access to the lighthouse. We returned across the causeway to catch a bus to St Helier. Our destination was the Information Centre but we wandered the busy high street with its vast array of shops and eating places and had lunch before getting there.

We collected the pamphlets of the places we wanted to visit across the island and I had this brainwave of visiting the Jersey Pottery Center at Gorey Village which is on the east coast of the island. Our bus pass allows us to catch the local buses as well as Explorer buses of which there are three types - red, green and blue. Red is for favourite attractions, green for nature and heritage and blue for spectacular scenery. And just to confuse things all the buses both local and Explorer are painted light blue! After a day of travelling on the buses we think we have the hang of it. We missed the Gorey Village and got off the bus at Gorey Pier. We were pleased that we did as we came upon a beautiful harbour filled with boats and a castle, Mont Orgueil Castle, overlooking the bay.

We couldn’t resist taking lots of photos. We asked for directions to Gorey Village and realised why we had missed it as it is not on the main road. It was only a fifteen minute walk south of along the harbour. I asked a van driver where Gorey Village was and he said we were in it! His directions to the pottery centre were vague and we got lost only to find that after we sought clearer directions that the pottery centre had closed three months previously. We had planned to have a scrumptious cream tea as the photo in the brochure looked very yummy. Alas, it was not to be and we trundled back to the bus stop on the main road and headed back to St Helier. I then had the brainwave of having a tea at The Cabin overlooking the beach opposite our hotel. Alas, it was closed at four thirty. We headed back to our hotel - Henk to make tea in our room and me to the lounge to devour the papers. All was made up when we went to dinner at the Salty Dog Restaurant on the harbour at St Aubin. We had a delicious seafood dinner. We are only five minutes walk from the centre of St Aubin and its many restaurants. Last night we went to the Boat House Restaurant and it sits on St Aubin's Harbour wall overlooking all the little boats which at the time were sitting on their bottoms as the tide was at its lowest. We were entertained by three geese which have taken up residence in the harbour. Apparently, they can hold up the traffic while they argue with each other.

Day Thirteen - Guernsey to Jersey - 15 April

We were up bright and early for breakfast, finalised packing and headed for the bus at nine forty-five. Our ferry to Jersey was leaving at eleven thirty but we had to check in at ten thirty. It was a sunny day but a cold one with a maximum again of about eight degrees. By the time we got to the ferry terminal after walking along the long harbour esplanade and long pier Henk said he couldn’t feel his ears and my teeth were starting to ache from the cold. The huge ferry left early at eleven ten so we guessed all those who had booked had arrived and were on board. The sea was very choppy but we made good time and landed at Jersey at noon.

Our hotel, La Haule Manor, St Aubin’s, is at the opposite side of the very large bay from where we landed at St Helier. We took a taxi to the hotel and we had a good view of the bay along the way. Our hotel is amazing. We felt as if we had landed alongside the Mediterranean from the hotel’s architecture and its position overlooking the turquoise blue bay.

The hotel manager made us a pot of tea and we had this in the hotel lounge surrounded by dozens of newspapers and magazines. I was in heaven! We have immediately noticed the differences between Guernsey and Jersey and were pleased we had visited Guernsey first. Jersey is larger, busier and more sophisticated than the laid-back Guernsey. At two o’clock we headed out for lunch and to do some exploration to get our bearings.

Opposite our hotel on the esplanade we found a beachside café, The Cabin. We sat outside in the warm sun and sheltered from the chilly breeze and had a delicious lunch. It made us feel very fortunate. We walked to St Helier along the esplanade which was a distance of about five kilometres. Everyone was rugged up but they were also making the most of the sunshine.

We found the Liberation Square Bus Terminal at St Helier and purchased five-day bus passes from Monday to Friday. This will give us the freedom to hop on and off the buses as much as we like all over the island. Despite it being very cold we had a “real Jersey icecream” at Liberation Square soaking up the sun. Just as in Guernsey all the shops are shut on a Sunday and the High Street was quiet. As our hotel is on the esplanade we have a number of choices for buses. We returned to the hotel at five and I slipped into a lovely warm bath to thaw out. We have a number of restaurants nearby to our hotel so we are going to have fun trying them over the next seven days whilst we are here.

Day Twelve - Guernsey - 14 April

This was our last day on Guernsey as we set off to Jersey tomorrow morning. We were out early at the weekly Farmers’ Market at the Sausmarez Manor at St Martins. It was only a few kilometres from our hotel and on the bus route into St Peter Port. The manor house is Guernsey’s historic house having being the seat of the Sausmarez family for 800 years.

The market was small and quaint but well attended by the locals. We indulged in home-made patty cakes before catching the bus into town for a coffee and some final sightseeing.

We couldn’t leave the island before seeing the Guernsey Museum which sits on a hilltop behind St Peter Port. The views were very good over the harbour. The Titanic has been a big news story in the UK this week given its 100th anniversary since its sinking and when we entered the museum we were given a name of one of the Titanic’s passengers. At one of the exhibits there was re-build of a second-class cabin and it was there that we found if we survived or not. I survived because I was a woman and a First Class passenger but Henk drowned as he was a labourer and a Third Class passenger. His body was found unlike many others. It was an interesting way to get involved in the anniversary. Following a quick bite to eat at the museum we went to the nearby Candie Gardens.

The basic plan of the gardens has remained as it was originally laid out from Victorian times. There were hundreds of tulips in bloom and it was a pretty scene. Victor Hugo’s statue sits high in the gardens and looks towards his homeland France. Hugo was exiled in Guernsey for 15 years. The statue was given to Guernsey by France in 1914.

On the way to the bus terminus we visited the Victorian Shop and Parlour which is run by the National Trust of Guernsey. When we stepped into the shop it was a step back in time as we walked into the old lolly shop and behind was a replica of an old parlour.

We were very pleased we had visited the shop. We bought old fashioned lollies including Bull’s Eyes and Guernsey Drops and ate these later on the bus. To finish off the day we hopped on the 7A bus at the terminus at St Peter Port and circumnavigated the island again. We did this on the first day on the island to get our bearings but this time the journey meant a lot more as we passed sites we had either visited or learned about during the week. The trip took about an hour and a half and we got off the bus at our hotel rather than going back into St Peter Port. By this time it was four o’clock and I was ready for a rest before going to dinner. Henk went for an hour’s walk. It was a very good last day on the island.

Day Eleven - Guernsey - 13 April

As it was a beautiful sunny morning we decided to walk via the cliffs from our hotel to the German Occupation Museum rather than catch the local bus. The museum came highly recommended by our hotel manager.

The walk was about eight kilometres and took us two hours through pretty woods with bluebells, high cliff paths and small lanes. It was an ideal morning for walking and even though it was only about eight degrees we soon warmed up and were discarding our fleeces.

There were a few people on the path also making the most of the good weather. We used the guidebook, ‘Walking on Guernsey” which was a Secret Santa present last Christmas. We arrived at noon at the museum looking forward to a sit down and have a cuppa but it wasn’t looking good. The museum looked very tiny but we were surprised when we went inside to find it was much larger than it appeared. Thankfully, it had a tea room which . was decked out in 1940’s era furniture and décor. It had bunting throughout the room which added an air of liberation from the Germans. We had our cuppa with a Guernsey Gache (pronounced Gosh) which is a local tea bun with Guernsey butter. We were hungry so it tasted particularly good.

The museum is a non-profit making venture of a Guernseyman who was born in Guernsey during the occupation. The museum was opened 1966 and is well worth visiting. A highlight of the museum was a street scene with shops depicting interesting sites in St Peter Port during the occupation. Until food parcels arrived via the Red Cross in 1944 the islanders were starving. A kitchen display listed baking recipes used during the war.

They all seemed to use a lot of potato and very little flour, sugar or butter. They did not look particularly appetising but their inventiveness was inspiring. From the museum we caught a bus into the town centre and had a late lunch at two thirty. We chose “Dix-Neuf Brassiere” which seems to be a very trendy place to eat and drink. Henk decided to walk from the town back to our hotel and I decided to do some more sightseeing. It took Henk about two and a half hours to walk the distance along the coastline path and he arrived back at about five thirty. Tomorrow is our last day in Guernsey before we go to Jersey on Sunday.

Day Ten - Guernsey - 12 April

We woke to a lovely sunny day with a maximum of twelve degrees. This maximum temperature seems to be the norm and is similar to the temperatures in Cornwall when we were walking there at this time of year three years ago. After two days visiting the islands of Herm and Sark we thought we had best visit some of the other parts of Guernsey before we left for Jersey on Sunday. At ten o’clock we were at the Castle Cornet which was originally an island at the opening of the harbour.

It was built by the English Crown in the 1200s after King John lost Normandy. The fortress has had a chequered history as it was taken over by the French in 1338, a Royalist stronghold during the English Civil War when the remainder of Guernsey supported Cromwell, the victim of an explosion in 1672 and occupied by the Germans during the Second World War. Following the war King George VI gave the castle to Guernsey with the proviso that the flag of England would always fly over the castle. We joined a guided tour of the castle at ten thirty and we were very pleased we did as Tom, our Scottish guide who has lived on Guernsey for forty years, brought the castle alive with his extensive knowledge. The tour finished at noon in time for the gun which is fired daily over the harbour from the battlements.

It was incredibly loud and we were pleased to have heeded their advice and covered our ears. Before and after lunch at the castle café we visited the five excellent museums which are housed within the castle.

These are the Story of the Castle Cornet, the Maritime Museum, the 201 Squadron Museum, the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry Museum and the Royal Guernsey Militia Museum. The personal stories of the men of Guernsey during World War 1 were particularly poignant and brought alive through their letters from the front and audio points throughout the museum. We didn’t emerge from the castle until three o’clock. It was a visit well worth doing. We walked back along the harbour wall to the High Street and Henk bought some walking shoes to complement his walking boots at our favourite outdoor shop, Millets. Before catching the bus back to our hotel we had a coffee overlooking the harbour.

Day Nine - Sark - 11 April

We had a lovely day visiting Sark, an island forty minutes east of Guernsey. It was a mainly sunny day and a good one to visit the island as we spent most of the day walking. Our ferry left St Peter Port Harbour at ten o’clock and we returned to Guernsey at six o’clock. The ferry ride took forty minutes through large rolling swells. Henk and I sat at the back of the boat on the top open deck and it was very exciting.

When we arrived at Sark the majority of the ferry passengers including us took the opportunity to catch one of the tractor taxis from Maseline Harbour up to the top of the cliff to the main street known as the Avenue. This only cost a pound each and was well worth it as we didn’t know how steep the walk from the harbour would be or how far to the town centre. It would have been a steep climb of about twenty minutes. The town centre comprises a long line of little shops with a dirt road running through the centre.

It felt like we had slipped back quite a few decades to a simpler life. There are no cars on the island nor any street lights. The main transport options are walking, bicycles, tractors, horses and carriages. Many locals cycle on the island with very Enid Blyton looking bikes with large cane woven baskets. The fire engine and ambulance are pulled along by a tractor. We passed the doctor’s tractor on our walk.

We headed straight for the Visitor Centre at the far end of the Avenue. It was a good move as we received some good advice as to how to see the island in the six hours we had. We were keen to see Little Sark and cross the narrow isthmus at La Coupee. This joins Sark to Little Sark as we had seen on Martin Clune’s “Island” program. The views from the isthmus were stunning over the rugged, steep-sided cliffs down to the sea. We could see Jersey and France in the distance.

We reached Little Sark at lunch time after forty-five minutes of walking and found a tea room set in a beautiful garden. We opted to sit outside and stayed stoically under the umbrella when a shower went overhead whilst we enjoyed our cucumber sandwiches and fruit scones with Guernsey cream.

When we walked back to Sark we went on a circuitous route on the main dirt roads, little lanes and across farmland on the cliffs to reach La Seigneurie, the island’s garden. It was well worth the visit as flowers were in abundance and it was very pretty. At the end of the day we would have probably walked about four hours and managed to cover the majority of the very attractive island.

When the ferry came to pick us up the tide had once again dropped significantly but the swells remained. It is an island well worth visiting.