JERSEY: THE CHANNEL ISLAND WAY: 10: The North Coast

OR     WHAT WE DID INSTEAD OF AN AFTERNOON SNOOZE

Whilst waiting for our post prandial limo to arrive, I took a peek at the bus stop. Frankly I was really surprised at how many buses there were. This is apparently the norm for Jersey, so expensive limos are not a requirement for a walking trip round the island based at, say, one location in St Helier, or wherever. If you click on this picture I have made it available in a jolly large size so you can see how frequent the buses are.

This next shot wasn’t actually taken on the north coast – our next destination but it shows, for records sake, the guide posts that are dotted along the Channel Island Way. It would be pretty difficult to get lost!

Our post-lunch limo now whisked us off to the north of the island, to experience the majesty of the scenery to be found there. Dropped off near Les Colombiers, we strolled down the hill passing the clay pigeon shooting range, which seemed to be doing good business and had me ducking at the sound of every 12-bore gunshot. It must have been at one of my deeper ducks that I came face to face with this little beauty, which Mark recognised instantly as Sheep’s-bit.

The view from the elevated cliff path was extensive and islands could be spotted far out to sea. At this point my camera froze on me! No amount of beating, pleading or cajoling would get the lens back out from it’s ‘sleep’ position and so I am afraid the next two shots I have had to lift from the web, but they show exactly where we were and what we saw. Honest! I wasn’t still in the Crab Shack eying up the second pudding menu. Only at the cafe at the end of the walk, dropping the camera on the cafe table did the lens re-appear so I could toddle down to the sea to take a few more snaps.

That’s the second time it’s done that recently. I think it needs Stern Words.

We rounded the headland at La Tete de Plemont, beneath the sad remnants of the old Pontins holiday camp, now a target for graffiti ‘artists’ and surrounded by the only barbed wire I saw on the entire trip (if you don’t count the tall fences around the prison at La Moye on the south coast – which we thought was pretty fair!)

The paths in Jersey are wonderfully clear of any obstruction; be it from overgrown vegetation (the local volunteer police force enforces the Branchage – the twice yearly cutting back of all overhanging vegetation) so that all paths are delightfully clear of anything to snag you. I honestly do not remember encountering a single strand of barbed wire near any of the paths we walked. Jersey really is walker-friendly.

This next picture is the shot just before we dropped down to the cafe at Plemont for a welcome coffee, about halfway down.

Having un-jammed my mis-behaving party camera, I nipped down the walkway past the splendid cafe (who sold beers and ice cream and all manner of wonderful sticky cakes amongst other hot snacks) and over a bridge over swirling seas onto the rocks to watch the high tide with some families there enjoying the afternoon.

Then, back to the limo to be dragged, screaming, to a pub in St Helier to sample Liberation Ale (a Jersey pint). This was just to steady ourselves for the onslaught of yet another magnificent meal at the The Inn and another night trawling the St Helier pubs afterwards.

You know, Mark & I suffered this hospitality in a stoical fashion; not once letting the other know the pain he was suffering to get these reports out to the world. If you look closely, you can make out the pain-wracked expression on Mark’s face. (He’s the chap on the right of the picture. The other is Arthur, our tormentor.)

We deserve medals.