Sportshoes: The Wiseguy Community

Today was supposed to be a nice short easy walk of a day.

We started walking a few minutes after eleven. We caught the bus home -- well, to the pub down the road from our hotel for dinner, because once we got to the hotel boy howdy were we not leaving again -- at quarter past five.

It wasn't challenging walking, it was all basically level and the hardest part was that we were often walking in roadways, pressing ourselves against the hedge or ducking into driveways when a car went by. And we did see some lovely things, including another dolmen, and we walked out onto a part-time island that's only accessible at low tide, which was very cool. But we also walked through a bunch of not that interesting residential areas, and had to scramble across a rocky beach and clamber up its bank onto private land and sneak away to the road when our GPS utterly lied to us; we think its trail was probably programmed before all the residential construction we were walking past and through, because it absolutely insisted that we were supposed to be walking through places that were absolutely not possible to walk through.

Anyway, I am wiped, and we have to be up and out early to get to the ferry port for our day trip to the even smaller island of Sark, population 500 people (rising to 1,000 in the tourist season when seasonal tourism workers arrive) and zero cars. Fortunately I do not need to squeeze in time for breakfast, since the only thing I'll be consuming before we make landfall is a pill. But we'll ask if we can grab some bread and cheese and breakfast meat from the cold buffet before we leave, and picnic when we get to Sark.

As for recounting today's adventures, though, that's not happening tonight, and probably not tomorrow either, given our schedule. Geoff's blog of today is up, though, with a few pictures; he is less wiped than me, and also he travels with his laptop so he can type on a proper keyboard whereas I'm swipe-typing on my iPad.

G'night.

me yesterday: I'd like to do another challenging hike tomorrow.

Geoff: Sounds good!

me: Want to sit down with me and compare options?

Geoff: Nah, I already listed the hikes that interested me; any one of those that you like will be fine. Go ahead and pick one.

Geoff today: Why are we climbing up and down and up and down again? Why are there so many stairs? Who thought this was a good idea?

me: I said--! And you said--! And I said--! And you said--!

Geoff: Alas. Hoist on my own petard.

Today we hiked for five hours, and we still have a 25-minute walk each way to dinner

At least the walk to dinner will be flat!

Today we walked around the Jerbourg peninsula, at the southeasternmost point of Guernsey. Once again we started in a residential/commercial area (where the bus let us off) and walked through it into more quiet residential and some farming areas, and then began following the familiarly precipitous coastal path. It was a bit chilly to start, and the islands of Herm and Sark (and the smaller islands and outcrops that I'm sure have names, but 🤷) were blurred in the mist, but over the course of the day it became quite warm and sunny. Having started the day in thermal leggings under long hiking pants, and in a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece, and a jacket, and also in my wool hat, by the time we caught our bus home I had stripped out of everything except my shirt (with the sleeves rolled up) and the thin hiking pants (with the legs zipped off to turn them into shorts). It was lovely!

And so was the walk, which there isn't much new to say about, but I bet I can find something.

On the way to the coastal trail proper we passed two watering places that were at least two hundred years old, according to the markers. Next to the road or footpath there's first a spring or fountain that was for people to get water at, enclosed in a small sort of cupboard maybe three feet by three feet by three feet with a latched door to keep animals from fouling it; I opened one of them, but the actual fountain/spring wasn't really running any more, and all I saw was a dark interior and some trash people had tossed in. (In general both Guernsey and Jersey have been incredibly free of litter, but we have seen some.) In front of that protected water source for humans was a stone trough for watering animals, into which the water would flow after the people had their fill, and from there it ran down a built channel toward the sea. (Geoff has a good picture of one in his blog entry for today: https://geoff-hart.com/fiction/Channel-Islands-2026/may20.html)

Once we reached the coastal path we went "oooh" at amazing views of rocky bays and isolated beaches (some are accessible only from the sea) and crashing waves, and at other views across the countryside; and saw a tower or two built by the English to defend against the French, especially after France allied with the fledgling USA in the Revolutionary War, that were restored and bore historical markers explaining their significance; and also passed several German bunkers, which were ignored and largely overgrown. Also several cafes, cunningly placed at sites of particular interest along the way, but we had provisioned ourselves before starting out, and it wasn't a walk I wanted to have a beer during.

I blogged the other day about school uniforms here; well, today on a spur off the main trail we encountered a group of eighty schoolkids, maybe eight or nine years old, and maybe ten or a dozen moderately harried-looking teachers (or parent volunteers, how would I know) and the kids were just in regular clothes, not uniforms, although they were all wearing yellow pinnies and blue bucket hats to make them easier to keep track of. I know there were eighty of them because the teacher leading the first group -- they were in tranches, with an adult at the start and end of each line of kids -- told us so, apologetically, and said it was a school trip. So there was a school that didn't have uniforms!

That part of the trail wasn't so challenging, it was mostly a couple of feet wide and gently sloping, and we walked along among the kids for a few minutes. One boy asked Geoff, "Do you want to take my picture?" and seemed a bit put out when Geoff smilingly declined; five minutes later he passed us again and asked, "Want to take it now?" But walking in a crowd of fourth-graders (or however they class them here) wasn't our plan, so when we came to a fork, where the spur trail ended in a big loop and you could go either clockwise or counterclockwise around it, we chose to go clockwise, because that way was much narrower and more precipitous, scrambling down the cliffside almost to sea level, and we knew there was no way they were taking the kids on it. Although we did amuse ourselves imagining the lengthy release forms their parents and guardians would have to sign if they did... On the far side of the loop, overlooking that bit of bay, was a tower of historical interest (built in 1778 to guard the bay against the French) and I think they took the kids to it on the upper, more accessible part of the loop, and then went back the way they'd come. In any case, we didn't see them again after we went different ways at the loop.

The trail also overlapped with part of the "Renoir walk"; Renoir lived in Guernsey for a short time and painted a number of landscapes in that area, and in several places plaques have been put up with reproductions of the painting he did in that spot and also empty picture frames, so you can look through them and have a Renoir's-eye view of the specific vista he painted.

Once we returned from the spur to the main trail and began rounding the peninsula, it got very up and down and up and down again. On one uphill slog I complained to Geoff, "If we're accumulating all this potential energy, why am I so exhausted?" and then amused myself terribly by answering myself sotto voce, "That's just science. And science only matters during the playoffs." "What?" asked Geoff. "Oh, nothing," I told him.

We met a number of other walkers coming and going, but also had long stretches where it was just us, and the sound of the wind and the waves. Okay, and maybe an airplane overhead, but go with me, here. It was gorgeous. And I get a real feeling of accomplishment from accomplishing a hike like that!

The whole trail was a giant loop around the peninsula (plus the spur off it with a smaller loop at its end), so we ended up at a bus stop a block from where we'd been dropped off to start it, and our timing was perfect; there was a bus home in eight minutes. (And not just "supposed to be": an actual bus!) Home, and at Geoff's exhausted request we went straight into the bath our generously upgraded room provides! Ooooh, did hot water ever feel good on our aching feet. Soaked for a while, then showered ("You mean I have to stand up again? Unfair!" I whined), and now we've been relaxing and blogging until it's time to leave for our dinner reservation at a nearby hotel restaurant we haven't been to before, but our hosts recommended it.

When I made the reservation this morning I chose indoor seating because it was a bit damp and chilly, but it has become so lovely out that I've just changed it to outdoor.

Geoff: Can you also change it to a ten-minute walk each way?

me: Sure, honey. I'll get right on that.

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.

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...

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 🏒🍆😍