Wednesday, 19 June 2013

Guernsey, Channel Islands

We motored to Guernsey today, leaving Cherbourg at 6.00 am and arriving about 11.00 am in the FOG! What a pity because St Peters Port is postcard perfect as a town, with the pretty pointed -roofed buildings as a backdrop to the yachts in the walled harbour. We were able to tie up to a pontoon just off the pontoon on the shore and we couldn't work out why the harbour was not developed as a normal marina so that we didn't have to go ashore by water taxi or by dinghy. There is an additional area for the local boats that is accessed by a lock, just as all of the French towns have had.

Guernsey was a very pretty island with hundreds of beautiful flower boxes everywhere in the major town and port - St Peters Port. The island is also extremely interesting because of the German occupation during World War II and because it is governed by the UK but only through a bailiff, and is tax free. We walked around the town on our first day and were very impressed by the architecture, particularly in the old part of town. It is such a shame that the buildings that were once the town market are now just a range of shops and people do their shopping in supermarkets. There is no butcher, baker or fruit shop in the whole town! The six of us (Peter and Elizabeth are now part of our group) had a very good Chinese dinner and we all appreciated eating an Asian cuisine for a change.

We hired a car on our second day and drove around the entire coast of the island, stopping at various interesting viewing areas and watch towers, plus visiting  the underground German military hospital which had been dug out by the locals during the war. It took them four years it was so vast and so the German soldiers were only taken there after they were injured on D-Day. It was a ghastly dark and damp place.

I tried to buy our friends a copy of the Guernsey potato peel pie society book but the book shop had sold out unfortunately. I would like to read it again after being in Guernsey.

The marina wifi was terrible in Guernsey and we couldn't use our French sim card, so we didn't communicate much while we were there.