shakydismount | Member Posts

Concluding the story of yesterday, beginning the story of today (NB: some non-graphic discussion of seasickness)

We finished our official hike at Mount Orgueil Castle, which is a huge ruin towering imposingly over the bay and the town of Gorey, which is of course why it was built there. Settlement on that spot goes back to Neolithic times, if I remember the signboard correctly, but this castle was primarily built to defend against the French, after the Channel Islanders had decided to maintain loyalty to King John (of Robin Hood legend fame) instead of the French. The negotiations around that decision are why the islands are still not part of the UK today, but remain "direct dependencies of the British crown." I bought something small with a British ten-pound note early on in our stay, and got change in Jersey pounds, which are different.

(Also, castle ruins like that sometimes make me think about how the ability to scan a bay and determine the likely approaches of both friendly and hostile arrivals, and know where and how to build a fortification to control passage, is a skill completely foreign to me.)

We wanted some lunch, and we knew that lots of buses would go through Gorey on their way back to St Helier (there's a reason we did the hike north to south, to end there!), so from the castle we wandered down to a semi-circle of shops and restaurants facing Gorey Pier, and strolled their length comparing menus until we settled on the one at the end, because for some reason I was craving pizza. We split a really good pizza with pepperoni and spicy ham and fior di latte, and another pint of beer. I'm generally not much of a drinker, but somehow traveling with Geoff leads me to regular day drinking! We like trying local brews, and we have few or no responsibilities (except for me keeping track of the logistics, and both of us having to stay on top of a few things at home), so it's one of the pleasures of a trip, for me. Except that I do still have a teensy weensy tolerance level, so I'm careful about amount.

Which can mean that I'm occasionally amazed at how much others can put away! At the table next to us at lunch there sat down a man and woman, probably a bit older than us, whom I initially, reflexively assumed to be a couple. They initially caught my attention because he ordered a beer and she ordered a bottle of wine, and I thought to myself how I could not imagine managing to finish a bottle of wine by myself, at lunch. Then he finished his beer, had some of her wine, and they finished that bottle and started on a second. Before they'd had any food, even. I would die.

At the point where they were just about finishing the first bottle, they asked if we would take a picture of them with his phone, which I willingly did, and we got to talking. They turned out to be an Irish brother and sister who had lived on Jersey for several decades; he was a schoolteacher and she was retired but I think she said she'd done something in the cosmetics line. Anyway, I started to wonder if there was something about us that attracted conversation from tipsy Irish Jerseyites! It was the kind of conversation where they talked much more than we did, but Geoff did manage to wedge some contributions in, and I mostly made interested murmuring noises. They were the first people we'd talked to who, on hearing that we were going from Jersey to spend ten days on Guernsey, cheerfully approved and told us we'd have a wonderful time! Also, iirc, that the produce is better on Guernsey. Also, on hearing that we'd been to Ireland (separately) in the distant past and might go again (together), she told us all about this pamphlet she'd found while she was digging through all her cupboards and shelves trying to find a lost credit card; she had turned up so much forgotten stuff, among which was this pamphlet listing guesthouses and homestays in Ireland. We got on the subject because when we told them we were staying in a guesthouse in St Helier -- I mean, that's in its name, it's the Franklyn Guesthouse -- they were astounded that there were any guesthouses left, they said they'd almost all been replaced by hotels. Anyway, we all agreed that guesthouses and B&Bs and small independent hotels are more fun to stay in than chain hotels, and she told us we had to see this wonderful pamphlet, so Geoff gave her his card with his email address and maybe she'll send us some scans or something. I confess I wonder how old this pamphlet is, given that she uncovered it while doing a big clear-out, but certainly it's not impossible that Geoff and I will want to go to Ireland at some point; a branch of his family came from Ballymoney, in fact.

(We asked them to take a picture of us, too, which Geoff has posted in his blog.)

The brother spent quite a while telling us about the big rugby match that would be played the next day (i.e., today) between Jersey and Guernsey: the Siam Cup (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siam_Cup). He urged us to try to see it, but it's not really our kind of thing so we made polite noises, and I made a mental note that pubs would probably be madhouses that evening.

Having finished our lunch and our half-pint of beer each, we left them to their second bottle of wine and caught a bus back to St Helier. By the time we pulled in, the pepperoni and spicy ham had made me extremely thirsty, so I was delighted to see that a small market of French vendors had been set up in one of the squares we walked through: a cheese dealer that I admired from afar, and sausages, and jams, and someone selling leather goods, and, as I had hoped, someone selling cider! I got a half-pint of a very refreshing "summer cider" for £3.50, I think it was. Since the vendors were all French, there were signs everywhere warning that credit card transactions would be billed in euros, but I was able to avoid that complication by paying with my five-Jersey-pound note.

We detoured a little on our way home to locate the hotel we'll be staying in on our last night; we have to come back from Guernsey to fly out of Jersey, and the Franklyn Guesthouse was full that night, so we have one night in a different place. Having located it, we went back to our current place to rest up and also pack, since we would have to be out the door at 6:45 am to walk to the ferry terminal. The ferry company had sent me several dire warnings that check-in opened an hour before sailing, and if we hadn't checked in by T minus thirty minutes our bookings would be canceled, no arguments no refunds no recourse. The crossing was to take a little over an hour.

I set two alarms juuuuust in case, but we woke up spontaneously eight minutes before they went off, go us. Pulled on clothes and staggered off to the ferry -- where I was very glad that we'd met that brother and sister the day before, because we turned out to be on the ferry with the Jersey rugby teams, going over for the cup match! The terminal isn't big but it has security like an airport; we didn't have to take out our liquids but we had to pull all our electronics out of our bags and empty our pockets, and they confiscated and bagged Geoff's pocketknife and multitool and told him he could get them back when we disembarked in Guernsey. Then we waited for almost an hour in a gate area that was jammed with scores of young men and women in Jersey RFC rugby uniforms, mostly ridiculously fit (I have never seen calf muscles like that in my life), some clearly support staff or friends/family rather than players but every bit as energized, many of them hauling huge bags of gear, a few of them clearly on whatever the rugby equivalent of "injured reserve" is (arm in a sling, leg in a cast, etc.), and all of them talking nonstop at maximum volume and yelling excited greetings at one another.

Eventually we boarded the ferry, and Geoff and I were directed to a seating area in a big cabin at sea level where we dumped our giant hiking backpacks in a luggage rack and, carrying our day packs, managed to snag a left-side window seat and the one next to it in a row of four; then there was a middle row of something like six, and then another row of four on the right side of the cabin, and maybe twenty or thirty of those rows in the cabin in all, like the coach section of a very wide plane. The seats were basically airplane seats, in fact, except that they were fixed at a slight angle of recline.

I was glad to have a window seat because I wanted to watch whatever view there was, but I was EXTREMELY GLAD to have a window seat (and also that given the morning's time crunch we'd skipped breakfast) once we really got going, because I don't know if that was an unusually rough crossing or if that's what they're all like but we were heaving up and crashing into the water, sending up big impact waves that would wash over the windows and completely block the view for a few moments as though we'd briefly submerged. A few of the crest-and-crash movements were forceful enough that people lifted right out of their seats yelling like they were on a roller coaster -- and then people started getting queasy. There was a lot of hasty passing around of extra sick bags, in addition to the ones in the seat pockets. At least one person two rows ahead of us puked. The guy on Geoff's other side started looking very worried and pulled out his bag, whereupon I started ignoring him and everyone else as hard as I could and looking rigidly out the window at the horizon -- when I could see it; it was frequently completely obscured by the waves crashing against us -- because while I've never had a problem on a plane and only very very rarely in a car, I do have problems on boats in rough seas when I can't see a horizon and especially when I have to hear-- you know what, let's just move on. I sang a bunch of Gilbert and Sullivan to myself ("I am the monarch of the sea!") and made a mental note to pick up some Dramamine or Gravol or whatever they call it here before getting on another ferry; as well as going back to Jersey on our way home, we want to take at least one day trip from Guernsey to one of the smaller islands, Herm or Sark or both. Also I will shank someone for a window seat if I have to; if I had been in the middle section I'd have been doomed. Geoff has an iron stomach, lucky man.

Anyway we all survived and staggered off the boat in St Peter Port, the capital of Guernsey. I did hear someone assuring one of the people who'd been sick that the return journey would be smoother, because the boat would be going with the wind instead of against it. The rugby people quickly regained their raucous enthusiasm, including one woman in the crowd two rows ahead of us who started loudly honking a bicycle horn as everyone was slowly shuffling forward in a packed excited mass toward the single exit from the cabin, and, well, there's more than one reason to shank someone on the ferry, is all I'm saying. No wonder they confiscated Geoff's knives. (He did get them back with no difficulty from a staffer at the end of the disembarking gangway.)

We walked about ten minutes through town to the visitor information centre, where I was told that they don't have printed maps of trails or hikes available (except for a fairly pricy book) but there's an app plus some printed maps that should do us fine, and where I saw with great interest that they were selling jars of chili crisp made with Guernsey seaweed -- I am definitely coming home with some of that! I fell in love with chili crisp a couple of years ago when it was the hot new trendy condiment, and it sounded intriguing so I tried out a few varieties. (The one I settled on as my favorite is Hot Crispy Oil https://hotcrispyoil.com/, fyi.)

Then we caught a bus a little ways out of town, to our hotel/B&B. When I was looking for places for us to stay on Guernsey, everywhere that looked good in St Peter Port itself was eyewateringly expensive, so I booked us into what looks like a nice place ten minutes' drive away but on several bus lines. It's right near the airport, and I had a moment of "oh no, maybe I should try to research flight patterns" and then I got a grip and asked myself how busy the Guernsey airport was really going to be? So far we've heard a couple of planes but it's fine.

We arrived at about 11 to find a sign saying that the front desk wouldn't be staffed until 3, but early arrivals were welcome to leave their luggage in the front hall entry while they went off to do whatever. (There were a lot of suitcases already stacked to the side.) Another note gave the wifi info, so Geoff and I prepared to unload some luggage, ensconce ourselves on the big comfy couch, and check email for a bit before heading to the pub down the road, which would open at noon and which gives a 15% discount to guests at this hotel, for our first meal of the day. But staff came through on their various morning errands and asked if they could help. At first they said our room wouldn't be ready until three (unless we wanted twin beds, which we did not), and of course we said no problem, we certainly didn't expect it to be ready this early though it would be a lovely surprise if it were, we're fine waiting. And then half an hour later they said they had a room for us! It's big, with a big window overlooking the courtyard, and we have a mini-fridge and a full bathtub rather than just a shower stall even though the hotel's website says that only "superior" rooms have them. So I guess they upgraded us! Sweet. I mean, I would be cheerfully polite anyway, and I absolutely understand that a booked hotel room probably won't be available until mid-afternoon, but it's awfully nice to be rewarded for cheerful politeness!

Geoff noticed a third note posted at reception saying that there were still a few places available for tonight's tapas dinner: meet in the hotel bar at 5:30 for intro drinks and then [list of delicious dishes I don't remember except that they looked yummy]. And we were up early, and not having to hunt around for a place to have dinner sounded great, so we booked in for that. Then we dumped our stuff in the room and went down the road to the pub for a good lunch and a shared pint of Butcombe ale, which we hadn't tried before except that at some point Geoff had a fish and chips where the batter was made with it, but that hardly counts. The pub was advertising its Sunday roast dinner, and Geoff wants to experience that, so we booked in there for six tomorrow evening. (It was also advertising that Monday is "pie night", with five different kinds of savoury pie on offer, which we also find verrrrry intriguing.)

Many of the restaurant staff we've met, both here and on Jersey (as well as the host of our guesthouse there), have clearly been nonnative English speakers; I imagine a lot of people come here from continental Europe to work in the tourist industry. At the Spanish-Asian fusion restaurant we went to twice, Geoff had a fun conversation about Spanish beers with the Spanish waiter. Today at the pub I ordered a ploughman's lunch, and the waitress didn't know what I meant, so I pointed at it on the menu and she said (more or less), "Oh, the plockman's."

And now we are tucked up in our room, blogging and otherwise farting around on the internet. There are people chatting loudly in the courtyard under our window, but I'm sure they won't be there after dark. There's also a jacuzzi and a barrel sauna in the courtyard; I wonder if they're free for residents, or if there's a charge? We brought our bathing suits for kayaking, after all, and weren't expecting to get any other use out of them...

But now it's time to get ready for dinner.

the_shoshanna

More about yesterday, and also about today

I (we) didn't blow off dinner last night, in the end; we went back to that Spanish-Asian fusion place and I had scallops and also some of Geoff's duck gyoza and crispy beef tataki roll, which latter was so good (and food had woken me up enough) that we split a second one. Also a pint of Liberation ale, and I also had some of his dessert. We do like sharing food. (Though I eat several things he doesn't care for, and there's almost nothing he eats that I won't, so I generally get the better of the deal! He did taste a bit of a scallop since he'd never had one before, though he usually detests shellfish, and while he didn't detest it he didn't much like it, either. So they were mine all mine.)

We were eating outside -- well, the restaurant had basically enclosed their entire dining patio in transparent plastic sheeting for warmth and against the possible rain, so it wasn't really "outside" any more, but it was certainly better ventilated than inside, and the only people eating out there were a couple who finished and left soon after we arrived, and a woman who sat down a few tables away and had a couple glasses of wine which going through her various bags. The restaurant had draped cushy blankets over the backs of most of the outside seating, for the use of customers who might be chilly, and also had a couple of outdoor heaters going: very civilized! Plus the seating on the side the woman was on was more like couches and coffee tables than chairs and dining tables; it was clearly meant for socializing more than meals. Anyway, by the time we were finishing dinner and she was finishing her second big glass of wine, our eyes met and we started chatting. She was from Ireland but had lived on Jersey for like forty years; she basically told us her whole life story, but I've forgotten almost all of it (look, I was really tired) except for her saying to me, "I lost my virginity here, darling." Oooookay, enough wine for you, maybe? She was yet another person who, on hearing that we're going to Guernsey for ten days, boggled at the idea. She said that Jersey is, like, ten years behind the UK, and Guernsey is fifteen years behind Jersey, but she didn't specify what scale she was measuring on, and I didn't want to ask... Look, Guernsey has decent bus service and wifi in our hotel, it's modern enough for us. (Also, during dinner I did a bit of phone research and turned up this page https://www.visitguernsey.com/articles/2023/local-beverages-tours-and-tastings-in-guernsey/ which looks like it can keep us entertained for a while 😀)

Then we came home and I slept really well, although I had climate-catastrophe dreams. Kind of like living in a disaster movie.

Today we did our last serious hike on Jersey, from Rozel at pretty much the northeast corner to Mount Orguiel castle and the town of Gorey below it, about halfway down the east coast. It took us maybe three hours? More of the same, basically: footpaths through woodland and small roads through residential areas and great views across the rocky and/or sandy tidal flats across the ocean to France on the horizon; one road was scarcely a car-width wide but was officially two-way and had a couple of tiny pullouts marked "passing place", but if you encountered an oncoming car anywhere else, one of you would be backing up a looooong way! I'm also interested by how it's completely unremarkable to park facing oncoming traffic (on what we in the US and Canada would call the wrong side of the road), and the way that parked cars can legally just take up the traffic lane, so that the two-way road functionally narrows to one lane and cars have to take turns going through. I think a lot of Jersey traffic patterns are only workable because there isn't much traffic in the first place.

We walked past the same enormous breakwater we had gone to with

trepkos, but we didn't go out on it this time. The wind and water were much calmer than they'd been on our previous visit, and Geoff got an ice cream and we sat and watched the bay for a bit. Further down the coast we enjoyed a rocky promontory called Jeffrey's Leap (or Geoffrey's; different authorities give different spellings) where a malefactor named Jeffrey or Geoffrey or Geffray or Geffroy was supposedly condemned to death and thrown off the rocks; the story is that he landed in the water, survived, boasted that he could do it again, jumped, hit the rocks that time, and died. Geoff took a picture of the site marker but did not replicate his namesake's foolhardiness.

And that only gets me halfway through today, but it's six-thirty and we have to go to dinner because we have to get up at crack of dawn tomorrow for the ferry. So I will continue this later...

wychwood

I have been doing lots of socialising lately! I went to the opera on Thursday, as described previously. On Friday I had the David Attenborough Centenary Dinner, which went really well - we had about fifteen people, everyone had brought their required cool animal fact (we went round the table and everyone shared! the facts were indeed very cool!), and we had a very cheerful couple of hours. There were a couple of subgroups of people who knew each other, but even the odd ones out seemed to be enjoying themselves with conversation. Also, several of the people who couldn't make it shared animal facts in the WhatsApp chat, so I had a steady trickle of animal facts all day, which was extremely delightful. I'm thinking of doing one of these again, but next time I'll pick a space anniversary of some sort, and make everyone bring space facts instead.

Then on Saturday I went out for brunch with S, who happened to be here with her husband that weekend (although not early enough to come to dinner!), having brought her baby to visit the SeaLife Centre. Sunday I didn't have any in-person socialising as such, but I sang Matins for other S (final result: 7 congregation vs 5 choir... they had the parish AGM after the later service, so it was substantially quieter than usual) and then had three video calls (

toft, family crossword, B5 with Miss H). Work on Monday was comparatively restful.

the_shoshanna

Took a sleep aid last night, slept pretty well but not long enough. Today we went to the zoo, saw gorillas and capybaras and poison frogs and ducks and cranes and skinks and many other things, but sadly did not see giant otters or tamarins or a few other things that were apparently hanging out in inaccessible parts of their enclosures. Then we came home and I have been struggling mightily to stay awake because if I nap I'll probably just screw my sleep schedule even worse (and we have to be fully packed and out the door at 6:45 am the day after tomorrow to catch a ferry to Guernsey). We may just blow off dinner. I may fall asleep while typing this.

the_shoshanna

Another walk, this time partly in rain

I slept badly last night for no particular reason, just woke up at 3:30, managed to doze for a while, but was basically awake from 4:30 on. Bah.

Breakfast this morning was the sauteed veggies again, yay, but our host Elena says she'll make pancakes tomorrow morning. A day or two ago she gave us some pre-made maple(-flavoured?) pancakes from Marks&Spencer, which were fine I guess but certainly didn't feel nourishing; but now she's saying she's going to make pancakes with the bananas that are starting to go spotty brown on the sideboard. I am curious to see what they'll be like...

Today the forecast was for intermittent rain, possibly heavy at times, with a fairly strong wind from the northwest. So we decided to do a walk along the west coast, going from north to south so the wind would be at our backs. We caught a bus to our starting point, L'Etacq, about two-thirds of the way up the west coast (our big walk two days ago started at the northwest tip of the island). The bus ride there was almost an hour; taking the bus incidentally also gives us informal tours around! Also, this bus runs northward up the coast, the same route we planned to walk southward down, meaning that we could pretty easily bail out and catch it to go home at any point if we wanted to; worst-case scenario we'd have to wait an hour for the next one, but we wouldn't have to walk far to get to a stop.

There were ominously dark clouds approaching, so as soon as we got off the bus at its northernmost terminus we put on our rain gear: rain jackets and pants (and gaiters for me, because the rain pants I got in Wales last year are slightly too short and dump rain into my boots otherwise), and rain covers on our packs. This time I have a proper pack cover, unlike last year when I had to carefully dry out my passport and a lot of paper currency post-drenching.

I had downloaded a GPS track again, but we hardly needed it, since all we had to do was keep the ocean close on our right. It was about 11 am and the tide was out, although just beginning to start in again, so we went down onto the currently enormously wide beach and walked along it. It was VERY windy, enough to make me wobble on my feet a few times, and I had to put my wool hat on not only to keep my ears from freezing but also to keep my hair out of my eyes; I didn't think to bring any kind of headband on this trip. But thankfully the wind was indeed at our backs, shoving us along! And it did indeed start to rain after ten or fifteen minutes -- not a heavy downpour, but stinging painfully on my face whenever I turned to look to the side, because the wind was so fierce. Rain gear happily doubles as excellent windbreaking gear; thermal layers under it are definitely nice too.

The beach sand was hard-packed enough that walking wasn't difficult, and the views were hazed but dramatic, clouds and waves breaking on rocks and the vast curve of the bay; that whole coastline looks like a closing parenthesis. There are occasional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century towers and other structures, and also frequent German bunkers; the whole coast was heavily fortified against an expected British assault.

One of the buildings we passed was a small, mostly white-painted old stone house with a few windows and absolutely no indication of mod cons after about 1880; a sign outside indicated that (like the Seymour Tower we walked to across the seabed on our first real day here) it can be rented for overnight stays. However, your £400 rental fee doesn't buy you beds or toilets: https://www.nationaltrust.je/stay-hire/properties-for-hire/le-don-hilton/

(Again, we were walking at low tide, across a beach that was maybe seventy meters wide at that time; Geoff will doubtless post some pictures soon. If you want to see what high tide can look like there, go to the page I just linked, click "view all photos," and look for the one with crashing waves! All the coastal walks come with big warnings about not getting trapped by the incoming tide. Trudie, who led our Seymour Tower walk, told us about the rule of twelves: in the first hour the tide is coming in, a twelfth of it comes in; in the second hour, two twelfths, in the third hour, three twelfths; and then back down three, two, one over the next three hours. Which means that if you notice the tide starting to come in, calculate how fast it's moving, and from there assume you know how much time you have before you're cut off, trapped, and drowned, no you do not; it's soon going to be coming in two and three times as fast as you're currently allowing for.)

We also passed a handful of seaside cafes, ranging from fairly swanky restaurants to parked vans; about half of them were actually open. I stopped in to one of the swankier ones to pretend to consult their menu but really just to use their bathroom 😈. We also saw two intrepid and possibly utterly mad people going into the surf, I assume to in fact surf although they were a little too far away for me to see surfboards. We lost sight of them as soon as they went into the water, so I hope they managed all right! Other than them, it was far too rainy and windy for anyone to be on the beach.

After an hour or so the rain stopped and the sky largely cleared (it was still windy, so the clouds were moving at a good clip!); we took off our rain gear and enjoyed the amazing unhazed views. And after about three hours in all we reached our endpoint, the La Courbière lighthouse at the island's southwest tip. Well, not the lighthouse itself; the tide had by now come in enough that the causeway that connects the lighthouse's rocky perch to the mainland was underwater. But the ice cream van parked at the top of the causeway was also worth visiting!

Ice cream consumed, we walked a little further up the road to where a bus home was due in ten minutes. Perfect timing.

What with having slept badly and then a three-hour hike, I was getting really groggy and sleepy on the bus! We pondered stopping for coffee on our way home from the main bus station, and wandered through the pedestrianized shopping areas eyeing various cafes, but weren't really feeling coffee. We did, however, split a very acceptable cinnamon roll from Marks & Spencer's food hall.

Also we realized that we had wandered pretty near a restaurant that Elena, our host, had recommended to us. She's Latvian, and her daughter married a Kenyan man, and they've recently opened this Kenyan restaurant here! So we went by to check it out; it was about 4:00 pm at that point, and the restaurant was closed for the gap between lunch and dinner, but we admired the menu posted outside, and then through the glass door I saw a woman with a child I recognized as Elena's granddaughter, who was here the other day while we were having breakfast. The woman saw me seeing them and came to the door to ask if we needed anything, and I said "Are you Elena's daughter?" and of course she was, and we made a dinner reservation for six pm. before finally heading back to the guesthouse.

Having collapsed for a while, showered, and collapsed for another while, I was pretty stiff when it was time to slog out again to dinner. But it was worth it! We split an appetizer of "Swahili-style" potato croquettes stuffed with minced beef, with a cloud of parmesan shreds on top and tomato salsa on the side, which were excellent. Then I had grilled cod, which came with various veggies in a pool of a smoky tomato sauce surrounded by a hot green herby sauce, and ugali on the side; Geoff had a goat coconut-milk curry and a tomato and cucumber salad dressed with the same hot green herby sauce. Everything was delicious, although I would like goat more if it weren't always so bony. Then for dessert we split a fantastic hot chewy chocolate brownie and vanilla ice cream, which probably isn't particularly Kenyan except in the sense that Kenyans know a good dessert when they see one 🤤 Oh, and we also shared a Kenyan lager called Tusker, which was very good. The waitress told us that if we ever ordered beer in Kenya it would be served warm unless we specified we wanted it cold, but I don't remember how she taught us to ask for it cold.

And it didn't rain on us either going to or coming back from dinner, hurrah!

Tomorrow is forecast to be "rather cloudy with showers, perhaps heavy or prolonged." Thanks for the specificity, folks. We're planning on going to the Jersey Zoo, which is run by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, of which Geoff is a big fan. ("He was one of my boyhood heroes," he says.) That should give us a fair number of indoor things to see, so we're not outside getting rained on all day. But first I'm going to take a sleep aid tonight, and we'll probably take it easy tomorrow. On top of three hours of actual hiking today, Geoff reminded me that we did more than an hour of just going back and forth through town.

For now, we are curled up in our warm room, blogging. And as soon as I post this, it's time to relax with a Heated Rivalry story 🏒🍆😍

the_shoshanna

a less physically but more emotionally exhausting day

We started the day with a non-overwhelming breakfast! Just a bunch of veggies sauteed up together, no eggs no bacon no beans no toast (but yes coffee, and her coffee could punch Superman through a wall). We were delighted! Also, when we asked where we could find a laundromat to wash some clothes, she let us use her machine. So Geoff put a load through and hung it to dry before we left for the day; I had surreptitiously been doing some sink laundry and also I don't sweat the way he does, but I too am glad to have been able to properly wash some things. (Still gotta sink-wash a bra this evening, though; I've had too many destroyed by machines to trust one I don't know.)

Then we headed out to the bus station to catch a bus to the Hamptonne Country Life Museum https://www.jerseyheritage.org/visit/places-to-visit/hamptonne-country-life-museum/ . This was one of the things I specifically wanted to see while we're here, but sadly I was a bit disappointed. There was no living-history reenactor guide working today (the guy at the entry selling tickets said she would have been there but she had to go to a funeral, so I'm not going to complain), and the guide who took us around spent more time talking about what it was like to work there, and less about what it would have been like to live there in the various eras it represented (13th, 17th, and 19th centuries), than I was hoping for. (Honestly, a good episode of Historical Farm would have given me more -- thanks for putting me on to that show,

dorinda!) Still, it was interesting to poke around and look at things, and Geoff enjoyed it more than I did, which was good because I was the one who really wanted to go and if he'd been really disappointed I'd probably have felt guilty.

We did see a nineteenth-century apple crusher (which I immediately recognized thanks to Historical Farms!) and got to taste some of the cider they produce there. It was just fermented juice, no added sugar or rum or any of the other things that might be added to improve the taste, and it was like drinking paint thinner, I couldn't even finish my small cup. The guide said it was probably about 5% alcohol, but it felt stronger. So maybe it's a good thing I couldn't finish it!

Interestingly, the average age of the people visiting the museum seemed to hover around 70 that day. "School must be in session," I said to myself.

We finished up in the cafe, where we split an unexciting packaged sausage roll and a jacket potato with tuna mayo and sweetcorn. I don't know if the potato was a local Jersey potato, but it at least was very good! This whole concept of baked potatoes with stuff on them was something entirely unknown to me until a visit to Edinburgh years ago, when we got a number of out-and-about meals from a jacket potato shop that would put any of dozens of salads or sauces or meats or whatnots on them; I remember having to work hard to keep them from also plopping a giant knob of butter inside the potato as a matter of course. I mean, a buttered baked potato is delicious, but if you're topping your potato with a tomato-cucumber salad tossed in a vinaigrette, two tablespoons of butter really does not improve the experience. Anyway, I always think of that place when I have a jacket potato topped with something unusual to me, such as, for instance, tuna mayo with sweetcorn.

The bus we took to the museum was the same line we took home yesterday afternoon and it had the electronic announcement screen, but it wasn't on so I had to track us with my phone again to know when to get off. Ah, well. We had a nice five-minute walk through houses and farms from the bus stop to the museum site, and when we left to go back to the bus stop, the guy in the ticket office told us that if, once we got to the street the bus ran down, we went the other way from the bus stop we would come to an interesting old dovecote. We did walk that way for a bit, but didn't see anything promising, so we turned around and went up to the bus stop.

Rather than taking it all the way back into the capital city, though, we went only three stops (again tracking progress on my phone, for lack of any non-tech way to know where we were or which stop was ours), got off, and walked about fifteen minutes through more houses and potato fields and mildly wooded areas to get to the Jersey War Tunnels https://www.jerseywartunnels.com/.

The occupying German armed forces had this big tunnel complex built, largely but not entirely by forced labor and slave labor, originally as an ammunition store and barracks, later as a potential hospital in case of an Allied assault on the island(s). Now it's been turned into a really excellent museum of the occupation. When we bought our admission tickets we were also given replica ID cards, establishing each of us as an actual Jerseyite whose story we could discover as we went through the exhibits. (I was given the identity of a middle-aged Jewish woman who, when she was arrested a few years into the occupation, managed to escape her guards and flee to someone who hid her until the war ended.)

We made our way through the tunnels, each of which has been set up as a gallery documenting a different aspect of the occupation or part of the war, in chronological order: from the first decision that the islands wouldn't be defended, to the arrival of the Nazi forces, the gradual tightening of restrictions and rations, various people's attempts at resistance, escape, and sometimes collaboration, the arrival of a Red Cross aid ship just as the food situation got desperate, the experience of watching D-Day (remember, you can see France from here!) while still not being freed and while the local German commander was maintaining he would hold fast, until the final surrender and the arrival of the UK troops who raised the Union Jack again, as we saw reenacted a few days ago.

One particularly effective device was life-size human figures with video screens for their heads showing recordings of actors, so that you could imagine actually meeting and talking to the person who was depicted speaking to you. Here's a German soldier, fluent in English, who has bought your child an ice cream; do you let your child take it? Here's another who wants to hire you to do his washing, and you need money desperately; do you take the job? Here's a farm woman talking about food rationing, and how lucky her family is to have some livestock and chickens -- but of course the German authorities closely watch everything, including recording every piglet born, and god help you if you're caught hiding one. Here's a starving Russian slave worker who has escaped his barracks and stolen some carrots from your field; what do you do?

One informational signboard talked about collaborators, including women who went with German soldiers. It did acknowledge that, aside from the fact that the soldiers might be young, handsome, and -- at least in the early years -- friendly and congenial, being friendly with them might also mean extra food and security for the woman (and her family), but no explicit link was drawn between that signboard (which also explained the derogatory term "jerrybags" for such women) and a later one that told the story of a young woman who was "assaulted" (details unspecified but clearly sexual) by a German soldier while she was serving him in a restaurant, slapped him, and was promptly shipped to a German prison camp, where she died. Nor was a comparison made between "jerrybags" and the local workers who took jobs with the occupying forces to help build the tunnel complex. It all reminded me of the way that women's sexual purity so often stands in for and symbolizes all kinds of morality. Why is a woman who accedes to a soldier's demands and blandishments more of a collaborator than a man who takes a job furthering the enemy's projects?

On another note: as we approached the end of the war, plaques on the wall announced various milestones. I was surprised at the strength of my desire to spit upon seeing the one marking Hitler's suicide.

Anyway, the whole thing was A Lot, and very well done.

Eventually we emerged from underground and caught the bus home again. Once again we stopped on our way home from the bus station for an early dinner, rather than go home and then have to leave again; we found a nice sort of Spanish-Asian fusion place on one of the squares we walked through that had pleasant outdoor seating. (For COVID-cautious reasons we prefer to eat outside when we can; we're also masking on the buses and in other indoor public spaces. We haven't seen a single other person masking, but no one seems to give us the stink-eye about it, except possibly for one person on the bus the other day who seemed not to want to sit next to me.) Geoff had delicious lasagna that came with yet more delicious chips, and I, having not yet had any seafood other than some salmon at the arts centre cafe, had a sizzling plate of scallops and veggies in a vaguely oyster-sauce kind of sauce? Also a nice big glass of merlot, and Geoff had a pint of a Spanish beer called Madri, which he liked but I did not care for. And then back to the guesthouse and blogging!

One thing that has both startled and amused me is that several people (including the ticket guy at the Hamptonne museum), on hearing that we're planning to go from Jersey to spend ten days in Guernsey, have reacted with "Ten days on Guernsey?" in a very what-the-hell-would-you-do-that-for? tone of voice. I'm assuming that this is an expression of inter-island rivalry and not a real indication that we'll be bored out of our minds 😂 I mean, we did accumulate a list of things we might want to see there, and hikes we might want to do, and also we'll probably take a day trip to Herm.

But before then we still have three days here on Jersey to fill! It's likely to rain tomorrow and Thursday, so maybe we won't do another big hike, but we would like to see the Jersey Zoo...but for now, it's oh-so-exciting hand laundry for me, and curling up with some internet.

wychwood

I've never been much of a fan of opera - I don't like the vocal style, way too much vibrato for me - but since my sister started working for an opera company I've been to a few of their shows, and what's become really apparent is that I really do enjoy watching opera. The music might not be entirely to my taste, but I get properly sucked into the story, even when it's moderately silly.

So on Thursday I went to see ( The Flying Dutchman )

I do think I need to go and watch more opera, even if I'm still probably not going to go listening to it on recordings. Although IIRC there wasn't much of interest to me in next year's programme, so it might be a while!

the_shoshanna

Today the weather was absolutely gorgeous, sunny and mildly warm and a steady wind from the north -- and that last was important because today was our day to do a challenging hike along the north coast, and the last thing you want is a wind blowing you off the cliff!

Spoiler: we did not get blown off the cliff.

We had another huge breakfast at the guesthouse -- honestly, I'm becoming less able to eat them as the week goes on. I'm just not used to either that much volume of food at breakfast, or that much dietary fat; fat is very filling! And today's omelet/scramble included the bacon I didn't eat yesterday. We asked for vegetables tomorrow, lots of veggies please. After that I think I may opt out of cooked breakfast entirely for a day or so, and just have muesli with fruit and milk; it's still got a lot of nuts, but that fat doesn't gorge me the way eggs and bacon do.

Anyway, after that we caught a bus up to the northwest corner of the island, to a ruin called Grosnez Castle. We weren't quite sure which way it was from the bus stop, but we got to chatting with a slightly older couple who had also gotten off the bus, and they were confident it was thataway, so off we all went. Except that we walked faster than them, and anyway they were going to be turning left/counterclockwise at the edge of the land to go geocaching, while we were turning right/clockwise to pick up a coastal trail. A few days ago we overheard a woman complaining to a group of friends that the trail she'd tried to follow had been really poorly marked and she'd ended up walking several kilometers further than she should have had to, but we found it pretty clear throughout the day; the path was always obvious, and there were occasional signs. The only problem was that sometimes there were a couple of possible paths and we weren't sure which one was best -- but I had downloaded a GPS app and loaded into it a trail from I think it was a Jersey Heritage site? Anyway it kept us on the extremely curvy and narrow.

We didn't bother exploring the castle ruin, because we wanted to get walking; we knew where we were hoping to end up but really weren't sure how long it would take us to get there. So off we went!

The trail was much like the cliff trails we were on in Wales last year: narrow, often only a yard or so from Certain Death but safe enough if you weren't stupid about it, with absolutely gorgeous views along the cliffs and out to sea, where we could see Guernsey and Sark (and probably Herm too) in the distance. And also France, but that's old hat to us by now. (I was amused to get a text from our mobile-phone provider informing me that I was now roaming on a French network, though!) We tromped along happily, admiring everything including our own stamina. There was a lot of up and down, as the trail wended its way through and around and down into the places where the sea has cut deeply into the land.

There are supposed to be a few puffins in that area, a small colony, but we didn't expect to see them, and indeed we did not. We did, however, see the giant statue of a pair of puffins that has been put up to mark their presence!

We had caught a 10:30 bus and started walking at 11:30, and at about 1:30 we arrived in the town of Grève de Lecq, which greeted us with perfectly salubrious public toilets, and a beautiful curving stretch of sand beach, and a very nice beachside cafe with outdoor seating. As I said to Geoff, that's my kind of hiking: rugged terrain, gorgeous views, crashing ocean waves, and a pub every two hours! We split a pint of Liberation ale (unfortunately no longer actually brewed on Jersey) and a piping hot plate of chips with a sort of chili mayo dip, and Geoff also bought me a bottle of water, because I hate the taste of the tap water at our guesthouse and had meant to bring an empty water bottle to fill along the way but forgot. (Look, I was managing all the logistics of getting us to the start of the hike, and keeping us on the right trail, and keeping an eye on the bus times to get us home again from various possible bailout points, and I did remember to bring the bag of trail mix. I dropped one stitch. And then I had a bottle of tasty water anyway!)

We headed out again at two, but fortunately only got about five minutes down the road before Geoff realized he'd left his camera on the table! So I waited while he went back for it; the waitress had kindly set it aside when she saw it had been forgotten. So Geoff ended up walking a bit further than me today, and accordingly has slightly greater bragging rights 😀

Anyway, from there we continued on the same kind of cliffside trail (and occasionally road), except that we made a small detour around a recreational shooting range that was flying the red flags that meant, according to all the signs, ACTIVE SHOOTING IN PROGRESS, DO NOT ENTER. We did not enter! We did see a couple of guys with bows as we skirted the edge of the restricted area, and a little further on we heard a fair amount of gunfire.

Right at the point where we detoured, we also stopped to look at some odd-looking sheep grazing in a field beside the road. Another couple of hikers were already there, looking at the sheep and chatting with the shepherd, a young man who was happy to tell us that they were an unusual breed called Manx Loaghtan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_Loaghtan); he said, and we could see, that they often had four horns, but Wikipedia says they sometimes have six! We definitely didn't see any six-horned ones. And a signpost next to the field he and they were in told us that the conical hill in the center of the field, on the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean, was an ancient hill fort, which had been fortified in various ways by multiple succeeding cultures and forces. So much history, just lying around everywhere!

We walked past many many potato fields, and startled several grouse out of the gorse as we walked by, and saw a tractor moving through a field and followed by a flock of hopeful gulls (or similar), and encountered a fair number of other walkers, either coming the other way or overtaking us. We don't generally overtake others, except for one older couple whom we leapfrogged a few times as we and they alternately stopped to rest, snack, or don or doff layers. Strange to think that we also qualify as an older couple now!

We made it to our ultimate goal, the evocatively named Devil's Hole, a deep crater and blowhole in the oceanside cliff, at about 3:15. Except that we weren't actually there yet; we had arrived at the Devil's Hole bus stop, from which we could get home, but the Devil's Hole itself was a ten-minute walk further on, steeply down through woods as we approached the edge of the water. Climbing back up was not fun ("ten minutes there, fifteen minutes back"), but the Devil's Hole itself was worth it: a wide and dramatically deep and dangerous hole in the rock, and fascinating to stare down into. A signboard warned onlookers that the ground beyond the constructed path and viewing platform was crumbly and unstable, adding, almost but not quite in these words, "Jersey Fire and Rescue rescues twenty or thirty people a year who try to climb down there and can't get back up, don't be a dumbass!" It was indeed sooooo tempting to hop the fence just to get a better look down the throat of the crater, but we generally try not to be dumbasses, so we did not. Sadly it was low tide, so the seawater was not crashing in the crater, but we could see it ominously slapping around at the bottom, as the waves washed the outer side of the rock.

There was also a big statue of the devil beside the path down, mostly cheesy but fun to see.

We slogged back up the path to the parking lot where the bus would stop, had about twenty minutes to sit and rest, and then the bus arrived that would take us back home! Excellent timing. Well, first it took us five or six stops further out, to the end of its route, and then it turned around and took us home.

You could not pay me to drive on these roads. The roadway was often barely six inches wider than the bus, and yet was a two-way road; several times either the bus or the oncoming vehicle had to brake hard, back up, and pull into some invisible but marginally wider spot -- or just into someone's driveway -- so that we could squeeze past each other. Truck drivers and oncoming buses often flipped their rear-view mirrors in to make more room. In the more rural northern part of the route, the bus driver often honked several times as he approached blind curves. If there was a bicyclist in the road, there would often be a line of several cars creeping along behind them, since it was rarely possible to get around them (and you couldn't pay me to bike these roads either). As an admiring and occasionally freaked out passenger, though, bus rides like that are pretty cool! Also, the bus we took home was a newer one, and it actually announced every upcoming stop both aloud and on an electronic screen, which was remarkably civilized compared to the way I'd had to carefully track our progress on previous bus rides so as to know where we were and when we should get off. It wasn't actually helpful, though, since we were going to the end of the line, the big main bus station in the center of town, so we didn't need help identifying it. But it's good to know that some buses, at least, have that system!

Rather than get home and then drag ourselves out again for dinner, on our way home from the bus station we stopped at a likely-looking pub that had outdoor seating and split a big order of fish and chips; a "coronation chicken tart" that turned out to be curried chicken salad on top of a flaky pastry, garnished with salad greens; and another pint of Liberation Ale. Then back to the room for collapsing, showering, and blogging. And here we are!

the_shoshanna

Nothing beats meeting a friend for the first time

trepkos and I friended each other on LJ waaaaay back in the day, because we had friends in common and I thought she seemed cool and I guess she thought the same of me, and there it might have rested if Geoff and I hadn't come to her island!

We started the day with another huge breakfast and enthusiastic conversation from our host Elena; this time she made us veggie omelets and I fended off the beans and still couldn't finish everything. Then we hopped a bus to

trepkos's place -- we caught a slightly earlier bus than I'd allowed for, so when we got off at her stop we had enough time to wander around the little oceanfront park and out along a slipway and a natural sprit of land that would have been under water at high tide but was lovely to pick our way along now that it was exposed. Then we came back to shore and walked up the road to her place, and had a nice chat (and tea) with her and her partner, and then we got in her car and she drove us to see wonderful things.

We started with a stroll out an enormously long breakwater on the northeast coast, just to admire the ocean and the way it was so much choppier and violent on the seaward side than the inner side, which is of course exactly what a breakwater is for, but it's pretty cool to look along its length and see both sides at once. There were several people on their way to swim, even. We could just see France on the horizon. And it was ferociously windy; at one point trepkos picked up a tangle of seaweed that had been flung up on the walkway atop the breakwater and tried to drop it over the side back into the sea on the seaward side, where we were walking, and the wind immediately snatched it up and whipped it over our heads to dump it in on the sheltered side instead.

There was a plaque mounted on the breakwater commemorating a fifteen-year-old girl who, starting and ending there, swam all the way around the island. The mind boggles, but apparently this is a thing that people do regularly!

Then we went on a beautiful walk through a wooded valley of conservation land with a stream running through it, just chatting the whole way about fandom and life and I don't know what-all. I had wondered if ticks were a danger here, which question was answered by a signpost warning of the danger of tick-borne disease, and also by the dog we met that had a tick on its forehead, which its owner flicked off when Geoff pointed it out, shudder. But I don't get the sense that they're the constant glaring danger that they are in some places I've been back home.

*pause to tick-check my lower extremities*

At the far end of the conservation area we looped around briefly on roads before re-entering it to retrace our steps, and we passed someone's "fresh eggs for sale" shed at the end of their driveway, with an honor box for money and also a "smile, you're on CCTV" note posted. However, there were no eggs there to be admired; I mean, I wasn't going to buy any, but I would have enjoyed admiring them. We did see a pheasant and several chicks crossing the road, though!

From there we went to the Faldouet dolmen, a Neolithic tomb and ceremonial site; we didn't stay long but such places are always atmospheric and make me think about the length of human history and culture. This one is six thousand years old.

We also went to La Hougue Bie, another Neolithic passage grave, where history is literally layered on layers. We crept into the Neolithic passage under the hill, and walked through a reproduction Neolithic longhouse; and went through the museum exhibit about the enormous Celtic hoard of coins and jewelry that was found in an undisclosed location nearby, dating from around 50 CE; and went through the underground bunker that the Germans built into the hill, which now houses exhibits and photographs commemorating the enslaved workers whom the Nazis brought to Jersey from all over Europe to build their fortifications. (We forgot, however, to visit the sixteenth-century chapel on the top of the hill.)

We finished up in the on-site cafe, which offered cakes and eclairs of a size that I remarked would make an American blush; Geoff and I shared a latte and all three of us got bowls of really excellent tomato-basil soup with fresh rolls, crusty on the outside and wonderfully soft on the inside. It was so much that Geoff and I have decided to skip dinner -- though I might have a handful or two of our trail mix, which I also greatly enjoy!

Trepkos gave us a ride back to our guesthouse, where we are now tucked up blogging. Tomorrow we plan to hike along the northwest coast, which is supposed to be be both gorgeous and quite challenging. We'll start by taking a bus to Grosnez Castle, at the northwest corner of the island, and walking east from there; there's a bus we can take home after what might be a hike of an hour or two, and another one at what might be anywhere from another one to four hours; I'm finding it really hard to get clear information! We'll see how we get on.

the_shoshanna

Today was the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Jersey from Nazi occupation, and we joined the crowd in Liberation Square to watch the festivities!

Well, mostly to listen to them. Well, mostly to stand in the sun with no view except of other parts of the crowd and mostly poor audio of the music and speeches and songs and prayers. But we did have an excellent view of a small group of young soldiers (cadets? Some were literal children) reenacting the troops' entrance into the Pomme D'Or hotel facing the main square, where they took down the Nazi flag that had been flying above its portico (that bit was not included in the reenactment) and raised the Union Jack for the first time in five years. We admired many mysterious local dignitaries, political and religious, who gathered on and around the dais we were near, in front of the hotel, and watched the parade of Scouts, veterans, military and ambulance units, and other groups who marched past to close out the commemoration. Overall we didn't really experience much of the ceremony, and I was sorry not to have been able to hear the first verse of "Beautiful Jersey" being sung in Jèrriais (the lyrics were in the program, and I could hear well enough to recognize and follow the English verses, but my ear couldn't pick out and follow the Jèrriais against all the background crowd noise and with the poor amplification from the main square that we were just outside of). Even so, parts of the morning were quite moving, just knowing what it all meant.

Also I saw a lot of locals recognizing and calling out to one another in the shifting crowd and parading dignitaries. It's not a huge community here!

After the ceremonies ended there was music and food trucks and so forth in the next square over, but I was a bit done with crowds at that point. So we wandered a few blocks away to get Geoff an ice cream (it was hot and sunny! I had brought a scarf because I'm always afraid of being cold and the forecast had said it might rain, and I'd ended up draping it over my head to shade the back of my neck; I was worried about sunburn!). Then we went to check out the Jersey Museum, just off that second square.

We wandered through rooms recreating the domestic life and furniture of a (real, historical) Victorian family whose home the building had been, and who had gone broke and done a midnight flit to France, but what was more interesting to me was the exhibit that had been tagged on to it in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, tracing the connections that family, and other Jersey people, and the culture in general both here and in England, had with the Atlantic slave trade. I am now too tired and sun-fried to really write it up -- I think Geoff is saying a lot more, he's next to me also typing -- but I thought it was very well done.

We looked through some other galleries as well, especially a good display on the Neanderthals who lived here off and on for, like, a hundred thousand years, up to as recently as forty thousand years ago.

trepkos, we also saw your friend's piece on the people persecuted as witches! But by that time I was really staggering, so we stopped in the cafe in the museum's courtyard and I had a half-pint of that yummy Stinky Bay IPA and also several handfuls of trail mix, the first things I'd eaten or drunk in seven hours. Then we went back to our guesthouse, rested for a while, and had another excellent meal at the same cafe we'd been to before; they're getting to know us there! But our host, who recommended it to us, has also recommended a Kenyan restaurant (run by her daughter and son-in-law) and, when we asked about seafood, a Portuguese place, so I expect we'll branch out eventually.

But now, collapsing into bed.

the_shoshanna

Sea kayaking!

Today we had an early breakfast, because we had to walk out the door at 8:40 to catch a bus to the place where our kayak tour would launch. The earliest option for breakfast at this small guesthouse is 8, which is what we'd requested, but we went into the breakfast room at 7:40, since the muesli and fruit and such were already out, and she'd said we could take milk from the fridge if we were making coffee or tea with the kettle and supplies in our room, so we figured the same would apply to taking it for an early muesli breakfast. She came in about ten minutes later and when we said we didn't need a cooked breakfast today, given our time limitations, she was having none of it! She pressed us ("You have to eat!") until I said I'd have one egg -- yesterday we had two each, plus baked beans and tomato and basically the full English™️ -- whereupon she brought out two eggs for each of us, plus toast, slices of cheese (Geoff's not a big fan of cheese and I didn't eat the cheddar because this was getting to be a lot of food! but I admit I delightedly chowed down on the Wensleydale with cranberries, mmmmmm), and sliced tomato and cucumber, not to mention trying to give us beans as well, but that we did manage to fend off. She's very enthusiastic!

Even so, we did manage to get out in good time, and walked down to the center of town to catch a bus to a stop called Ouaisne Junction, and if you think we had the slightest idea how to pronounce that, you're mad. We'd asked our host (who is from Latvia) and she took a guess as more or less "wash-neh," but when we showed the written word to the bus driver he pronounced it basically "way-nay" or "way-neh," so that's what we're going with.

Anyway, here on Jersey the buses only stop at a stop if a stop is requested, if someone on board presses the signal that they want to get off there or if someone is waiting there to get on; otherwise they just blow past it. Nor are the stops announced. So you can't just figure you want the ninth stop and count, and you can't always see the stop name as you blow by, and of course we have no idea what our stop looks like. Fortunately the local bus app can track you along a bus route map that shows the stops; it's supposedly also showing live tracking of the bus, but the "live" tracking is often a minute or two outdated, so our little location dot was often a stop or two ahead of the bus icon 😂. Still, I was able to track us and know when to signal that we wanted the next stop. Yet another way in which travel without a phone and a data plan just isn't really feasible any more...

We walked ten minutes from the bus stop down a country road to a lovely beach, and the van from the kayak company, towing a giant rack of kayaks, passed us on the way. We got there and meet up with our guide Derek, who was indeed the husband of Trudie who was our guide yesterday; we were already in bathing suits under our clothes, so we stripped down and got fitted with sleeveless wetsuits and windbreaker jackets and floatation vests and also helmets juuuuuust in case we dumped a kayak and landed headfirst on a rock, and put on the water shoes we'd brought from home (which we wear for lake kayaking there). There were supposed to be three other people on this morning's tour, but their ferry had been delayed, so it was just me and Geoff. And then we launched! The water was cool when we waded in to launch, I wouldn't have wanted to go swimming, but with the wetsuits and jackets -- and exertion -- we were perfectly comfortable.

We spent a good two hours paddling along the coast, with almost constant (and fascinating) narration from Derek. He pointed out Nazi fortifications (including what we'd thought was a seawall along the edge of our launch beach, but nope, it was an anti-tank barricade) and caves that were inhabited by Neanderthals for thousands of years, and different kinds of seabirds (many of which are experiencing population crashes) and geological features and formations, and told us lots of stories about life and resistance during the Occupation (which his mother lived through). The wind and water were active but not too strong or choppy; paddling was quite manageable even for us lake-kayaking amateurs.

Exxxxxxxcept when Geoff didn't see a barely submerged rock in front of him, bumped it, momentarily grounded his kayak, and then tipped and dumped it and himself trying to get unstuck! But Derek had walked us through how to get back in before we even put the kayaks in the water -- these were sit-on kayaks, so they didn't fill up with water or anything -- and he paddled over, righted the kayak, and steadied it for Geoff to hoist himself back into (onto) it, while I hovered a safe distance away. Geoff was drenched, of course, but not even bruised, and the helmet was not needed, and it was warm and sunny enough that he didn't get chilled or anything, and mostly dried off pretty quickly.

After two hours we returned to our launch point, stripped out of all our borrowed gear, and said goodbye to Derek with many thanks; both this and yesterday's walk were great experiences, well worth their cost, and we plan to leave some glowing Tripadvisor reviews. The beach had perfectly acceptable public toilets, which I ducked into to change out of my swimsuit into the bra and underwear I'd brought with me, a bathing suit not being particularly comfortable as everyday walking clothing; Geoff's suit, of course, functioned fine as walking shorts. Derek had told us the pub next to the beach had excellent beer, but we wanted food more and also, having had a very pricy though tasty dinner last night, didn't want to pay their prices, so instead we got a couple of sandwiches from the beach-shack cafe, plus a few handfuls of the trail mix we hit a grocery the other day to put together, and that did the trick just fine. Geoff had filled a water bottle at the guesthouse this morning, but unfortunately I really dislike the taste of the tap water there, so I only had a swallow.

Then we walked along the long wide sweeping curve of the beach in the opposite direction from where we'd kayaked; we'd gone south and east around a point, and now we walked north and west, passing a variety of people enjoying the beach, a group gathered and getting ready around a rack of canoes whose towing van identified them as Healing Waves Ocean Therapy, pretty cool! and also a number of waterfront hotels, one of which Geoff just looked up as I'm typing this and informed me costs about $400 a night, jeepers.

We ended up at St Brelade's Parish Church, which had a beautiful stone ceiling inside, and very warm and welcoming flyers and info posted, and also a vast and fascinating graveyard around it, with stones as old as [illegible] and as recent as last year. There was also an older side chapel building with partially preserved paintings on the ceiling that the posted info said dated from 1375 and 1425, mostly too faint to fully appreciate but including a beautiful and well-preserved (or perhaps well-restored?) Annunciation.

By that time we were pretty wiped, so we walked up to the main road and waited only ten minutes or so for a bus back into the center of St Helier, the capital, where we're staying. No need to paranoically track our progress when we're taking it to the end of the line! We wandered homeward through a big shopping area, and I seized the opportunity to check the backpack options at the local outdoors supply store, but my ideal unicorn backpack remains sadly mythical. We weren't terribly hungry, but stopped at the same nearby cafe we went to before, where we split a really good teriyaki salmon bowl, and Geoff got a pint of a draft beer he'd liked the other day and I tried a bottle from what Derek had told us is now the only craft brewery still operating on the island. The brewery is unappetizingly called Stinky Bay, but the IPA I got of theirs was delicious.

Then we staggered home at about five-thirty, showered (unfortunately both the water pressure and the hot water supply could be better here, but it's a functional shower and that's what we needed), and started writing up the day. And here we are!

If you're enjoying my trip blog, you might also enjoy Geoff's, which is at https://geoff-hart.com/fiction/Channel-Islands-2026/index.html -- he sets up the outline in advance, so click each day that has actually happened to see his writeup. Eventually he'll probably post some pictures, which I won't be doing (except maybe after we get home); I'm the logistics officer of our trips, but he's the photographer.

Tomorrow is Liberation Day! Our plan is just to head into the center of town after breakfast and try to find a place from which we can watch the ceremonies and reenactments, and then hopefully there will be festivities and whatnot. Also hopefully it won't rain much; today's weather was spectacular but it's not going to last.

vass

Finished reading Tuyo. Liked it very much. Unfortunately, my options for reading book two (whose title is not, in fact, Twoyo) are limited to Amazon, Audible (which is also Amazon), and seeing if my local library is willing/able to buy ebooks and/or audiobooks from Amazon. I hate when writers go Kindle-exclusive. I hate it for me, since I'm boycotting Amazon and have managed (for name change/moved house/moved email addresses years ago reasons) to raise the barrier to getting over myself and just buying Kindle-exclusive books there high enough that I always end up just reading some other book that I could buy another way. (I bought the audiobook of book one on libro.fm, but it doesn't look like the others are available there.)

Read Sax Brightwell's Low Dawn, book one of a trilogy. I know the author from fandom, so I am not an unbiased reader. It was fun. Here is a summary of the first few chapters, in emoji form: 🪐🛸🪷☄️💥🎒📨🐎🤴🎊🦀🦐👸🥂🏕

The above summary also presents three of the four main party, and one of the two main ships (🎒📨 doesn't meet 🧬⚓ until a little later. As you can see, 🐎🤴 and 🦀🦐👸 are already celebrating their engagement.)

I would be starting on Cameron Reed's What We Are Seeking next, but my library hold just arrived for the audiobook of T. Kingfisher's Paladin's Hope, and I have a long drive coming up, so I'm going to try to race through Paladin's Strength before then.

Fandom
Haven't posted anything on AO3 since last time, but on Discord I did post a few hundred words of a 9 Worlds/Ratatouille fusion fic starring Enya. If I finish it, I'll post that.

Crafts
The Sekrit Project I alluded to last post has reached its destination, so I can now reveal that I made fridge magnets for

bookgirlwa by printing out A8 sized book cover art and glueing it to plywood and adding a coat of varnish and (obviously) a magnet. I'm really pleased with how it worked out.

Food
Banana bread, when the bananas were just this side of unusable. \o/

Cats
I'm not at all good at identifying jumps, but I think what Ash did today while attacking the Birdie might have been a salchow.

the_shoshanna

Turns out that

trepkos lives nearby! We've been internet acquaintances since forever, and this morning we met in person at the same cafe where Geoff and I had dinner last night: a great time chatting, and she has kindly offered to show us around some favorite places on Sunday!

But today she went to run errands and we headed off to catch a bus to a three-hour guided walk across the seabed where huge swaths are exposed at low tide (the sea floor slopes quite gradually and some of the tides are quite huge). I don't have time or brain to write it up properly but it was wonderful: lots of information about shellfish (our guide showed us a live limpet! I've always heard "clung like a limpet" and so on, but she knocked one off a rock so we could see the actual animal. And then put it back, and we could see it shimmy about a little as it resettled itself), and about neanderthal and later early human inhabitants, and anecdotes of people trapped by the rapidly rising tides, and just incredible views across the exposed sand flats and rocks, and channels still running with the tide going out (and later in again), and some commercial oyster beds. There were nine other folks on the tour, and we enjoyed chatting with them too.

Bus back to the main depot in the center of town, where we located the place to catch another bus at 9 tomorrow morning for our kayaking tour with a parallel branch of the same company (probably led by today's guide's husband; she's originally from Germany and met him when she came here and went on a kayak trip he led!). Then we stopped for dinner at a likely looking restaurant in a square on the way home: also very tasty. I pulled out my phone and booked us a table at last night's cafe for Saturday night (day after tomorrow); Saturday is Liberation Day, the 61st anniversary of the island's liberation from Nazi occupation, and there will be big celebrations (the guy in the tourist info centre said ten thousand people would be in town!), and we don't want to have to worry about finding a place that evening.

And now it is late and I must go to bed. The time change and being brain-fried yesterday led me to break my 220-plus Wordle streak, darn it!

the_shoshanna

in the Channel Islands!

A friend very kindly gave us a lift to the train that we took to the train that we took to a plane that we took to a plane to the Bailiwick of Jersey! Which (like the Bailiwick of Guernsey) is not part of the UK, but rather a self-governing direct dependency of the British Crown. Very cool! and also made it a giant pain to find a reasonably priced travel SIM that would provide both minutes and data in both England (since we transfer at Heathrow) and the Channel Islands.

I've already blogged some of our exciting adventures so far! Other than thinking for the first couple hours that I'd forgotten my wallet, the transatlantic overnight flight was fine. I didn't manage to sleep, even though we had a whole three-seat row for just the two of us, but I did watch a bunch of historical short PR films made by, or at least for, British Airways' predecessors, like BOAC, about air travel, dating from the late 60s or even early 70s all the way back to the 20s! That one was a day and night at a way-station airport on the south side of the Arabian Gulf, I think somewhere around where Abu Dhabi is now? A big fortress of an installation "in case of -- unlikely, but possible -- trouble from the local Bedouin tribes", it's been built because planes can't fly at night, you see. So the passengers traveling on Imperial Airways (yep) get room and board at way stations like this for each of the four nights it takes to get to India. Meanwhile engineers and mechanics climb all over the plane by lamplight (all, like, thirty feet of it), checking and adjusting it for the next day's flight, and dozens of jerrycans of water have been hauled in so the passengers can bathe, and also the local merchants bring camel-loads of goods (especially pearls) to be sold on in the great markets of the Empire. It was fascinating both for its actual context, of which I wanted far more, and for its attitudes and silences. Also fun was a travelogue from I'd guess the 50s, of two white British women having a grand time touring through Asia. I was struck by the immense amount of alcoholic socializing ("I'd never flown before, but by the time I had my first drink on the plane I felt completely comfortable!"), and of course the exoticism and all the smoking, but the thing that completely sent me was the baby hammock provided by BOAC, rigged to hang from the ceiling next to the overhead bins like a cradle in the treetops. Had turbulence not been invented yet?

Anyway, that flight got to London in good time, even had to kill time flying in circles because we were early and local noise regulations forbade us to land before six am. We didn't have to reclaim our bags, as they'd been checked straight through, hurrah, but we did have to go through immigration and security again ourselves and walk what felt like a kilometer or so. But it was nice to stretch our legs! We had enough time between flights for me to set up my UK travel eSIM, but Geoff's phone wouldn't start up, so we just had to hope we'd be able to deal with it in Jersey.

And that flight was greeted at Jersey baggage claim with the announcement that a whole lot of our bags hasn't made it on at Heathrow, but they'd be on the next flight they pinky-swore, and so thirty or so people, including me, lined up at baggage assistance to give them our bag check number, a description of our bag, and our local contact info. Sure glad I had a working phone! Also that at the last minute I jammed some clean underwear, another shirt, and my toothbrush into my carry-on. I've been flying since I was a child, and I think this is the first time I've ever had luggage go astray! And I don't understand why Geoff's bag was one of the first to arrive on the carousel in Jersey and mine didn't even make it on the plane; wouldn't they have been close to one another in the to-be-loaded stack at Heathrow? Oh, well, the auto-email I got from British Airways says they have it (i.e. it's not lost, just delayed) and if we're not at our B&B when it arrives our host says she'll be here all day and can receive it, no problem.

Having dealt with that, we took a bus into the center of St Helier, the capital, and from the bus depot walked about 15 minutes to our guesthouse/B&B. The proprietor is friendly and welcoming; I'd exchanged email with her in advance and it's paid through Booking.com, so she didn't even ask to see ID or anything, just gave us keys to the house and the room. Geoff is glad our room is on the ground floor because it meant he didn't have to climb multiple flights of stairs; I, relatively unburdened 😢, rather regret that's it's at the front of the house, facing a rather busy street. Oh, well. She said the place isn't very busy; if it's really noisy tonight I can always ask about moving to another room. We're here for more than a week!

Having dumped our stuff, I looked up the local Apple Store manqué ("authorized reseller") and we walked back down there and got Geoff's phone restarted, as previously blogged, and then just wandered around town for a couple of hours. We didn't try to actually be tourists, but we located a bus stop we'll need to catch a bus at tomorrow, and picked up some maps and walking advice at the tourist info, add checked a couple of groceries for good trail mix or the makings thereof but without success, and climbed many many steps to a high point from which we could admire the view of the port and the bay. Then we came back home, set Geoff's phone up with his UK number, and he showered and is now napping while I've been blogging and also trying desperately to stay awake; except for dozing maybe half an hour on each flight, I've been awake for [counts on fingers] twenty-nine hours, but if I crash too early I won't sleep enough tonight. But we're definitely going for an early dinner tonight; our host recommended a nearby cafe, and we stopped in this afternoon and it looks perfectly nice. And it's two blocks away, which is a big plus this evening. If I'm really lucky, my bag will arrive while we're out!

ETA: a nice man just showed up with my bag! Yay.

the_shoshanna

Monday Me put it in a secure inner pocket of my backpack that At The Airport Me forgot even existed, but On The Plane Me found it! Hurrah for my health card, my British currency, my backup credit card, and my faith in myself. Also my UK eSIM is working.

Unfortunately, Geoff's phone is completely refusing to boot. Whee!

ETA: Also, while Geoff's checked bag made the transfer at Heathrow and arrived in Jersey with us, mine did not. They promise to deliver it to our B&B, maaaaaybe this evening, probably tomorrow, hopefully not later than that? Good thing this isn't the kind of trip where we're moving every day.

Now off to the nearest thing to an Apple store so Geoff can have them poke at his phone...

EATA: They prodded his phone with a secret special boot sequence and it started up fine. Yay! Now to hope my luggage arrives. Baggage assistance at the airport said it would arrive on the four pm flight, and I've received automated email saying it's being sent, but they missed a whole lot of bags, and they also admitted at the airport that until they knew exactly how many bags they had to deliver to what places on the island, they couldn't have any real idea just how long delivery would take. I think they have only one van for it.

the_shoshanna

We left the house at 10 am, and at goddamn four in the afternoon, after we've gone through airport security, I realize that I left my wallet at home!

I have my passport (or we couldn't have gotten this far) and the one credit card I had tucked in with it for easy access. But nothing else.

I am basically in charge of logistics for our trips, and in general I do it very well, but sometimes I REALLY FUCK UP.

Sigh. Nothing to be done about it now. But I feel like an idiot.

ETA: On the other hand, ee have a row of three to ourselves, so that's pretty great!

wychwood

( 61. The Water Outlaws - S L Huang ) a fun adventure, and I did enjoy all the warrior ladies.

( Four late Chalet School books - Elinor M Brent-Dyer ) My beloved Chalet School, always a pleasure.

( 63. The Song of the Cell - Siddhartha Mukherjee ) More than I ever knew there was to know about cells; this was a really interesting overview.

( 64. Bang Bang Bodhisattva - Aubrey Wood ) I think this was well done, but I didn't enjoy it very much? I do want more cyberpunk, though, so I'm not sorry I tried it.

( 65. Death of the Author - Nnedi Okorafor ) I had a lot of thoughts about this book but I'm not sure how much I liked it.

And that was the last of my batch of books! I picked a whole new set and started all over again.

( 67. Valor's Choice - Tanya Huff ) Huff is a good writer, and I feel like she could have done something much more interesting. This is competent but... a bit dull?

( 68. The Science of Racism - Keon West ) This is brilliant and I wish there were more books taking this approach of just absolutely drowning the reader in facts until it becomes impossible to overlook them.

( 69. Tempests and Slaughter - Tamora Pierce ) Not her top work, but very enjoyable; I'm sorry the sequels haven't come out.

( 70. Reflections - Diana Wynne Jones ) DWJ was an interesting person who thought in interesting ways about her work, and I really enjoyed all of that; the rest was at the very least entertaining.

( 71. Grave Secrets - Alice James ) On one level this was quite fun, but on another I just had... far too many unanswered questions. Don't think I'll be reading further.

( 73. The Complete English Poems - John Donne ) I like Donne much less than I did before I started reading the entire collection instead of just some of the good bits!

( 74. Smokescreen - Dick Francis ) I didn't find this nearly as propulsive as usual, but it was still definitely enjoyable.

( 75. The Apex Book of World SF - ed. Lavie Tidhar ) Overall a disappointing collection; I'm hoping the later volumes will be better.

( 76. Hons and Rebels - Jessica Mitford ) Mitford seems like an interesting person, but really I think we should abolish aristocracy.

( 78. Starcruiser Shenandoah: Division of the Spoils - Roland J Green ) I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about this series, but also determined to find out how it ends!

( 79. Where We Left Off - Roan Parrish ) I kind of feel like this happy ending is a disaster waiting to happen, but also neither of them is going to let go for long enough to really end the relationship, so... I guess this is the best result available?

( 80. The Husbands - Holly Gramazio ) This was an interesting book, but it had a lot of different things going on, and I wasn't entirely convinced that it fully cohered. I did enjoy it, though!

( 81. Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin ) Really well-done but miserable! Rosemary deserved better.

( 82. Fairy Cat - Hisa Takano ) The tiny cat is super cute, but I kept waiting for something to actually happen, and nothing ever does, really!

( 83. The Legends of the Jews volume 1 - Louis Ginzberg ) An interesting exploration of some of the folklore that accreted around the Torah, but mostly rather depressing on human nature.

( 84. This Rough Magic - Mary Stewart ) Solidly enjoyable.

( 85. Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey ) Surprisingly enjoyable, despite the... everything! I can see why I liked these books so much as a teenager.

( 86. The Children of Ash and Elm - Neil Price ) Really outstanding overview of Viking history, deliciously crunchy but also very approachable.

( 87. Quentin Durward - Walter Scott ) I used to enjoy Scott; this one didn't feel as much fun as I remembered, though.

( 88. Choices - LA Hall ) I'll keep reading these as long as she cares to keep writing them, honestly.

wychwood

Yesterday was exhausting. Errands are so tiring! I did a day in the office, then bought two birthday cards for my niblings on the way to the station; once I got off the train, I collected the prescriptions I'd forgotten I'd ordered ten days earlier, then took the bus three stops down the road to collect the furniture oil I'd reserved at Wickes. Then I waited 35 minutes with my heavy tins for the every-seven-minute bus back, changed over and waited for a second bus home, and finally made it to my flat only one hour after collecting them.

That left me 45 minutes before I needed to go out again for choir practice at St N for next week's Matins, and I decided that I needed to lie very still rather than e.g. unpacking my bag, making dinner, taking my jacket and boots off, etc. I did eventually drag myself up and out, went to the choir practice, bought some chips for tea, finally picked up my new prescription swimming goggles from my neighbour the optician, and came home, before finally collapsing for the weekend at about 21:00. I was in bed falling asleep over my book before 22:00.

However! That was lots of items ticked off the list. Now I just need to take approx one million follow-up actions and also do all the non-errand items. But next time I go swimming I will be able to see things, and I'm very excited about it - my current pair have completely lost their anti-fog and it's a toss-up whether I can see more with them on or off...

the_shoshanna

Do Before Leaving list: 72 items checked off, 19 remaining

Pack And Bring list: 33 items checked off, 16 remaining (including 5 items to be worn for travel, not packed)

Pretty good, for three days in advance!

A friend has offered to give us a ride to the train (that goes to the train that goes to the plane that goes to the plane that goes to where we want to end up, whee), so that's very nice indeed.

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Shaky on the Dismount

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Shaky on the Dismount

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wrapping up Friday, our last real day on Jersey

Last full day on Jersey (until we leave)!

social butterfly spreads its wings

I am so so so sleepy

So sleeeeeepy

a somewhat less ambitious day

johohe! hallajo! hohoha! hallojo! ho! ha! ha! ja! hallajo! hallaha! hallahoja!

We did it! Also, OOF

A day with @trepkos!

Liberation Day!

another excellent and busy day

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an excellent and busy day

first day!

I did NOT forget my wallet!

jfc

april booklog

one two three collapse

trip prep checklist

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January 2016

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