Sophie’s World

After a rough morning crossing with very choppy waters and queasy kids, we arrived in St Peter Port, Guernsey’s diminutive capital.

Originally, I had meant to stay on Jersey and explore the other islands from there on day trips, but ended up booking a few nights in St Peter Port after Ali read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It’s the sweetest little novel written as letters between a London author and various characters on Guernsey during the aftermath of WW2. I really liked it too; didn’t want it to end. Nothing like a good book to inspire travel to a new destination.

Naturally, it seemed very relevant to visit the German Occupation Museum, quite a good museum. It even included a life-size WW II-street, portraying everyday life in St Peter Port during the occupation.

We spent two nights at Le Friquet Country Hotel, home of top notch Guernsey restaurant The Carvery. It’s a lovely hotel with a beautiful garden, a little stone bridge across an even smaller creek, a fish pond and a nice, child-friendly swimming pool.

I had hired a car we sadly didn’t get much mileage out of. Both the traffic and the parking regulations made public transport a much better option. Parking is free everywhere, but limited in time: 1/2 hour, 1 hours, 2 hours. 3 hours was the longest I saw. Not very good if you wanted to, say go out in a boat.

In fact, I found Guernsey traffic to be a major annoyance; way too much traffic for the infrastructure. A bit nerve-wrecking actually, both as a driver and a pedestrian. Especially with children. Discussing this with locals, many agreed. Some thought only one car should be allowed pr family. I think they should look at limitations on car size. The narrow island roads just aren’t fit for large Land Rovers. At least, there’s pretty strict speed limits – max 35 mph. Insurance companies won’t insure tyres of the hire cars as the chance of ruining one is just too great. Luckily, our tyres stayed intact.

Hire cars on Guernsey (and Jersey) are marked with a large “H”, to warn locals here comes an ignorant non-islander. And some really are ignorant. One day, leaving our hotel to (wisely) use the bus, a man in an “H”-car comes out of the parking lot without looking …well, anywhere. He slammed into another car (local) and just kept driving, not stopping to take accident details or anything. I hope they got the idiot’s licence plate number!

I do recommend using public transport on Guernsey. And St Peter Port bus station is adorable:

Of course, you might be forced to become a pedestrian if it’s after 7:15 pm on a Saturday night. At least that’s when the last bus left town for Le Friquet. “Can’t find a taxi on a Saturday night,” we were told. Mysteriously :), numerous empty taxis passed as we trudged along the roads. But by then, Cat had spotted several rabbits along our walk. Couldn’t have gotten her into any vehicle when the possibility of seeing one more was so good.

Our final day, we had a whole morning before catching the ferry back to Brittany. Determined to get something out of the hired car, we had a look around the island. Some serious back roads driving - having to hoot the horn before every turn in the road, before we managed to spend nearly an hour at the Mill in St Martin, where Catherine Best has her jewellery shop and home. I’m not normally particularly interested in jewellery, but she has some beautiful and unusual pieces.

So Guernsey in conclusion: In many ways a sweet little island but it will improve vastly if something’s done with the traffic. Of course, after reading the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, I might have formed a mental picture of Guernsey as it was in 1946. Guess I can’t really expect horse-drawn ambulances, like this one:

Coming up: Tiny Herm Island