The Travelodge at Portsmouth was bogan city. Comparable in quality and price with the Ibis but without the the AccorHotels European ambience. Actually it was the Sovereign bar & restaurant at the Travelodge that was bogan city. There was a kids room at the restaurant and when we arrived there was the ragged remnants of a children’s afternoon birthday party. Mothers drinking white wine and smoking on the pavement outside the entrance. Their issue running riot inside. The birthday boy running and screaming through the restaurant with mom’s response being to yell louder than the child. Lovely. Fortunately, they all left and we had a bottle of Malbec and dinner. I had to try the Yorkshire burrito. Juicy roast beef and gravy wrapped in a huge Yorkshire pudding then lightly toasted and accompanied with the obligatory chips and green peas. British chips are bland beyond comprehension. Have they not heard of chicken salt? Rosemary and sea salt? Parmesan? Used diesel oil? Anything! And British peas are like eating pellets of green cardboard. How can the country that had an mighty empire where the sun never set produce such horrible tasteless food? Well, the roast beef was ok but the Yorkshire pudding wrap was too thick, too much and the consistency of vulcanised rubber.

It was a rough passage from Portsmouth to Jersey. The sailing was delayed 3 hours so we left at noon and were further slowed by the weather so didn’t arrive til 11pm. It was midnight by the time we got to our hotel and went to bed.

The Revere Hotel - I booked five nights at the Revere Hotel in St Helier, Jersey. Most of the people staying at the hotel were
10 to 15 years older, and I would guess that they’ve been coming here for years, if not decades. The hotel opened in 1952 so some could’ve honeymooned here. The hotel has updated over the years but the owners have “thing” about Spain so it’s like being on a Placido Domingo TV special. Red carpets, heavy dark wood furniture, and wood beamed ceilings. And in some ways it could be Fawlty Towers, except Manuel is from Poland and he is called Stanislav. Either way I didn’t mention the war. They did do a good English breakfast.

Day 1 - a long flat walk, mostly.
Our original intention of coming to Jersey was to walk around the island on the coast path. Not all at once but in stages. But we decided to just do selected stages and only walk for three days. Being middle aged, shiny pants public servants we needed to ease into the walking. Macau and London helped but we weren’t up for 6 to 7 days straight days walking, so the first day we walked a long the promenade from St Helier to St Aubin. About 5 miles. The day was mostly sunny with a cool headwind. Actually, we found that on Jersey no matter which direction we walked we seemed to be walking into the wind. It must be some kind of perverse meteorological island microclimate but it got tedious by the third day. The walking was good. The bay and scenery were lovely. We got to St Aubin by lunchtime but pushed on to Le Portelet peninsula for a picnic lunch. At the promontory the wind was blowing a gale amongst the abandoned German gun emplacements from the WW2 occupation and there were no picnic tables so we eventually took refuge in a bus shelter until we noticed a pub and went for a drink to re-hydrate from the walk. Quenched we then returned to the bus shelter for cheese and crackers and the bus back to St Helier. The great thing about walking on Jersey is that all buses start and return to St Helier within a 10 minute walk to our hotel. Dinner were hamburgers at the local Portuguese cafe.

Day 2 - a walk in the rain. The forecast was for light showers in the morning with heavy rain and wind in the afternoon. I didn’t mention the heavy rain part to Cath. I was hoping we’d be done with our walk by then. We were, almost. There are remains of defensive towers all around the coast of Jersey. Some were begun in the 17th century but most are from the 18th century with concrete embellishments from the Nazis in the 20th century. I like a good tower and on the west coast of the island there is St Catherine’s tower near the village of St Catherine. So we bused there, visited St Catherine’s tower and walked about 10 kms to Gorey where we’d take the bus back to St Helier. As we climbed to the highest point on the walk where Victoria tower overlooked Gorey Bay the heavy rain began in earnest. We walked down to Gorey village in a downpour and found a pub. We looked like drowned rats. A pint helped and then bused home but it was still pouring as we walked from the bus station to the hotel. We spread our wet things about the bathroom and rested the rest of the afternoon. We went to the local Chinese for dinner. The food was heavily anglicised, classic gold rush Chinese, and very sweet. The waitress noted that we were the only people in the restaurant using chop sticks. I guess we take good Asian food for granted in Australia.

Day 3 - Museum and mass
The forecast was for more rain in the morning so we went to the museum of jersey to avoid walking in the rain. The museum was very good at telling the story of the island from Neolithic times to the present. The Channel Islands are an odd bunch. They are crown dependencies, not territories. The governments report directly to the privy council and the monarch. There was an exhibition about life in the 80s on Jersey which featured John Nettles as Bergerac, the detective Sergeant who investigated crimes by foreigners on the island. They even had the 1947 Triumph roadster he drove in the TV series. I suggested to Cath that we go to mass on Sunday night and all was good till something in the liturgy made her remember Vince and the tears flowed. Vince had won a large concrete statue of St Francis some years ago in a lottery at church. “Big Frank” lived on a table in the corner of Vince’s lounge room. It was Vince’s wish that Big Frank rotate between the five children on a yearly basis. Also, Vince had a working dog years ago named Larry who according to all accounts could do anything from defusing nuclear weapons to feeding himself. He is known as Larry the wonder dog. Anyway, I look over to our right in the church and see a stained glass window of St Francis with a dog, so I turn to Cath and say, “There is Big Frank over there with Larry the Wonder Dog.”

Day 4 - it’s gorse, of course.
We wanted to try the north coast of Jersey for walking so we chose a section from Bouley Bay to Rozel. It was a beautiful sunny day with clear skies and a cool breeze. Ideal for walking. We get the bus to Bouley Bay and set off. It’s a roller coaster track but with great views of the coastline, and only about five miles. Along the way I’d been noticing this low, bush with small yellow flowers. We meet a woman walking energetically with 2 walking sticks, She stops to speak to us and we learn she tries to do 15 miles a day. I then ask her about the bush with yellow flowers. It’s gorse, of course. We get to Rozel. Re-hydrate at the pub and catch the bus back to St Helier. Dinner is at a different Portuguese cafe. Very good meal.

Day 5 - Bohemia and France. It was a travel day, but our ferry to Granville, France did not leave till 18:50. So we decided to have lunch at a good restaurant, but first I needed a haircut. On one of our perambulation of St Helier I had noticed a barbershop named Danny’s. Well, Danny turned out to be Polish with two Polish women as barbers. They did a great job for £11. We lunched at Bohemia which is considered the best restaurant on the island and has 1 Michelin star. The food and service was great although our Latvian waitress didn’t really understand a martini cocktail. Fortunately, the bar man did so got an excellent martini. So after a long boozy lunch we returned to our hotel, gathered our luggage and rolled it down to the ferry terminal.

Jersey had been lovely and interesting and healthy for us. It had a reputation for diary products from the Jersey cattle. It had been occupied by 11,000 German troops in WW2. It was one of the last places liberated in 1945. After the war it returned to being a holiday location for the British and a source of good Jersey milk. But it had the same problems as elsewhere in the UK including public housing estates with crime and violence. At some point in the late 1970s Jersey became an attractive tax haven for foreigners and thus began making lots of money on financial services. To their credit they used that money well by providing good services such as health, transport and housing. Unemployment is nil. That is why there as so many Poles and Portuguese on Jersey because they don’t have enough people for the hospitality and construction sectors. The tax haven aspect of Jersey was summed up well by the sign on the window of a financial consultant in St Helier: Wealth+Prestige+Exclusivity