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.