Island Tour

We booked a full day tour of Jersey with Waverley Coach Tours. For £20 we were picked up at our hotel just before 10am for a day's tour around the coastline of Jersey.
Jersey is just 9 miles long and 5 miles wide (45 square miles), so is not very big at all.
The driver / tour guide was Tony, a Jersey local who had come from Portugal for 10 days, 30 years ago.
He was a font of local knowledge and chattered non stop the entire trip, explaining details and pointing out landmarks along the route, telling us all about the history of each parish, building, church, pub and house along the way.
Lunch was at Greve de Lecq, with a view across the bay to the islands of Sark, Herm and even to France. France is just 14 miles across the water, while England is 100+ miles away.
As Jersey is so close to France, street names, place names and other areas are in French, although English is the most spoken language. 
Both Jersey and Guernsey have their own currency, only viable on the islands, so we've had to request UK£ as change when spending.
At almost every stop along the way, there were remains of German bunkers, towers or forts from WWII.  Some of the towers have been converted to accommodation and are available to book through the Jersey National Trust.
The morning tide was high, with water splashing onto Coastal roads, depositing sand and seaweed. By the afternoon, the tide had receded considerably, exposing rocks and vast expanses of sandy or rocky beaches.
Throughout Jersey there are 40 large statues of gorillas, decorated in bright colours, to recognise 60 years of gorillas in care at Jersey Zoo. The Zoo works to preserve species of endangered animals. This is the zoo where the 5 year old boy fell in to the gorilla enclosure 30 years ago and was protected by the silverback gorilla.
Tony had us back to the hotel by 5pm. We've decided on dinner at one of the hotel restaurants tonight as we have another early start tomorrow .

Jersey ice cream - had to have one! Very creamy!

More windswept moments

Jersey

We were up early this morning, with a taxi booked for 6am. It was still dark! The sun doesn't rise until about 7.30am.
We caught the flight to Jersey, which is only 10 minutes flying time, arriving here just after 8am. Once again, we waited for quite a while for a taxi, but eventually made it to our hotel in town. This one is a step up from the previous 3 star places we've been staying. Very nice!
Fortunately we were able to check in as we arrived and were still in time for breakfast which was a welcome treat!

We got instructions from the concierge on how to catch the local buses, so headed out to catch the bus to the Jersey War Tunnels.

From there we decided to walk to St Mathew's Church, the glass church. It was quite a long way in cold, windy conditions. As we passed another small church, it started to rain, so we sought shelter and were invited in to the church by our new best friend, Janet. We chatted with Janet for a while and she gave us directions for a short cut via a narrow path.

The path brought us out to the beach and we continued walking along the waterfront in gale force winds to get to the Glass Church.

Further along the waterfront we called in to our hotel to regroup and change shoes before continuing on TO the Occupation Tapestry Gallery.  This is a display of tapestries that depicts the history of Jersey during the time of the German occupation.  The tapestries were brilliant and a clever way to tell the story.

The lovely attendant at the tapestries suggested various places to eat and explained how we could catch Bus 15 to St Aubin's Harbour, where we'd find some popular restaurants. We ended up at The Boat Harbour, overlooking all the boats chained up high and dry on the sand. We were amazed at the speed at which the tide came in and in no time the boats were afloat.

After a delicious dinner we caught the bus back to the hotel, but missed our stop and ended up walking back to the hotel.

Looking forward to a cosy sleep in comfy beds!

Short cut

Holly!

Short cut lane

Elizabeth Castle - low tide

Windswept

Tower 2

Following Red Riding Hood

The Glass Church

Windswept

St Aubin's low tide

St Aubin's Harbour - with water

Dinner at the Pub

The restaurant at the nearby hotel was fully booked, so we tried the Chinese restaurant down the road. They were also fully booked and couldn't seat us until 9pm, in spite of the fact that the restaurant was almost completely empty.
The third option was the pub next door to our guest house. Reviews claimed it was a local pub and the publican and patrons were friendly and welcoming and the food was good.
Hmmm
True, they were all very friendly, but very vocal and very loud. The 'f' bomb was frequently interspersed in a colourful conversation which sounded more like an argument.
Our chicken burgers were tasty, but the barman was surprised when we didn't eat the burger roll or the mountain of chips and couldn't understand why we left before the karaoke night started! 😁

German Occupation Museum

Following our visit to The Little Chapel,  we decided to walk to the German Occupation Museum - not an easy feat, but certainly an interesting trek along narrow lanes and country roadways .

The Museum contained numerous relics and items that were used by the German forces that controlled the island of Guernsey from 1939 - 1945.

Very sobering but incredibly interesting.