Guernsey, Channel Islands

As I mentioned last week, I had a week away from home.  As a widow, I have not been brave enough yet to do singles holidays (although I am slowly coming round to the idea). I do once a year grab a few days away with my best friend from university days, but she does not like the idea of flying, so holidays abroad are ruled out. It was therefore with some surprise when she suggested this year's trip might be to Guernsey in the Channel Islands via the ferry from Poole. It is off the cost of France and has its own currency and health system, so I could at least pretend it was "abroad".

I met my friend in Poole on Friday 8th May and we stayed one night at the Travelodge there. She had driven from Hertfordshire and I had got the train to Poole from London. Unfortunately my room had been sprayed with some very strong air freshener which gave me a headache within 5 minutes of being in the room. I had to get out of there and go for a walk in Poole to clear my head.  I think the maid must have dropped a whole bottle of room spray on the floor, because even with the window open for 5 hours, when I returned to the room, the fragrance still hit you between the eyes and took your breath away. I complained to Reception, they came up to the room and agreed it was overpowering and immediately gave me another room which was much much better. We also took the opportunity while there to meet up for a meal with the widowed husband of my old school friend who lives nearby and we were able to swap news and chat, much easier than the usual emails back and forth. Our meal was at Riggers - part of the Royal National Lifeboat College -  a 5-minute stroll from the Travelodge. It is the national training college for all lifeboat personnel. The menu was quite varied and well-cooked, served by delightful young waitresses.

The next day my uni friend and I boarded the Brittany Ferry to Guernsey as foot passengers. The crossing took 3 hours and was relatively uneventful. We arrived on the island 's capital, St Peter's Port, about 5.30 pm to discover the 9th May is Liberation Day when the inhabitants of the island go mad. Like New Year's Eve on steroids. It's the day in 1945 when the Channel Islands were liberated from 5 years of German occupation - the only part of Britain to be occupied by the Nazis during the war. There were Union Jack flags on just about everything, parties and parades in the streets, the town was gridlocked and taxis almost unable to get through. Apparently Queen Elizabeth visited there on its 60th anniversary and Princess Anne was there last year for the 80th anniversary.  The following picture is of the Liberation monument by the harbour unveiled by the Prince of Wales in 1995 (the 50th anniversary). It comprises 50 layers of blue Guernsey granite representing the 50 years of freedom since liberation up to its unveiling in 1995. The cut angle at the top represents the trauma of the 5 years of occupation.

We eventually settled into our hotel and ate our first evening meal there, as it was already quite late. The hotel had come as a package with the ferry crossing, so we knew very little about it on arrival but it had extensive grounds and also served as a retreat for religious groups and had once been run by nuns.  The grounds were extensive with beautiful views of the sea, as well as statues of Madonna and Child.  I managed to converse with rabbits and sheep when I wandered round the grounds one day. Apart from two parallel roads down by the sea - one the promenade and one the High Street immediately behind it - St Peter's Port is incredibly hilly and anywhere into the town away from the sea is invariably up very steep inclines. I walked up one one day and was so breathless I thought my heart would burst out of my chest. We took to taking taxis back to the hotel after that!

The hotel

view from my hotel room

Hotel grounds looking out to sea with the islands of Herm, Jethou and Sark on the horizon

sheep in the hotel grounds

entrance to the hotel peace garden

peace garden fountain

Another inhabitant of the hotel

On the first full day (Sunday 10th)  the wind was quite rough at 28mph and they even cancelled the ferry crossings, so we were glad it had not been that rough for ours. It was almost impossible to stand upright when we walked the short distance to a general museum all about Guernsey's history, art and folklore. It was impressive that all the information was in both English and  French, partly because the ownership of the island has been torn between the two countries over the centuries, but also because it is a day-trip visit from France, so there are a lot of French tourists on the island.  It is situated in beautiful gardens but again the wind was howling, so my friend decided to walk back to her room. I braved a walk down into the town centre to explore the High Street. Unfortunately the wind was so strong, there were hardly any people about, unless they were mad like me, so in the end, I braved the long vertical uphill walk back to the hotel mentioned earlier. Hardly any of the shops were open anyway, as they seem to observe Sunday as a rest day. Only one or two of the big chains (like Boots, Superdrug, New Look) were open, but the vast majority of smaller shops and cafes were closed.

The following day (Monday) we caught Le Petit Train - a train that does not run on tracks but wanders round the streets of St Peter's Port on an hourly basis pointing out the sights. We then explored the High Street, this time with all the shops and cafes open. Again, by lunchtime, my friend was flagging, so she returned to the hotel and I hopped on one of the many efficient buses to take a complete round-the-island tour. It was interesting to see that St Peter's Port is probably the only built up bit of the island - the rest consists of small hamlets of houses and bungalows by the sea, but with no shops to speak of. Perhaps a random dental practice or funeral director, but nowhere to buy food, so I guess people come in to St Peter's Port to buy anything! The coastline was beautiful and there were plenty of coastal walks, empty beaches with perhaps a single person walking their dog, and the occasional surfing shack. I was on that bus for a few minutes short of 2 hours and all it cost me was £1.70.

Le Petit Train, courtesy of Visit Guernsey

One of the many deserted beaches round the coastline

On Tuesday we visited Castle Cornet set out on a promontory and inhabited over 800 years by the French, the English and then the Germans under Nazi occupation. There was so much to see and do there with breath-taking views of St Peter's Port. At noon they fire a cannon which is well worth watching, even if you do lose your hearing immediately afterwards! 

Castle Cornet from the promenade

The German occupation used bits of the castle

Gardens within the castle

Another garden within the castle

About to fire the cannon - see the video below

A ghostly presence captured in this picture. At this point, I was the only one in this alleyway of the castle!

After that we puffed and wheezed our way uphill to visit Hautville House, the exile home of Victor Hugo who wrote Les Miserables. Unfortunately, you have to pre-book to go inside the house and there were no slots available during the week we were there. We did hope they would take pity us on us and let us in anyway, but they remained steadfast we could not enter the building, although they did let us look at the back garden down a side alley. 

Hautville House courtesy of Expedia

After that my friend was flagging so she made her way back to the hotel and I caught another public bus to see the interior of the island. It coincided with schools shutting down for the day, so the bus was full of very well-behaved schoolchildren.

Our final full-day was spent visiting the German Occupation Museum started and owned by a man called Richard Heaume. He is now in his 82nd year and was serving food in the cafe, while we were there!   As a small child, he loved hearing his parents' stories of the occupation so much, he started collecting memorabilia to do with the occupation and, let me tell you, there is so much to see you could spend hours there. Everything from Nazi guns, uniforms, posters, letters, boats, tractors and much more. The following photos don't do it justice.

After that, we caught a taxi to the Little Chapel - a tiny church made inside and out of broken shards of porcelain.   It was stunning and the video below only covers a fraction of it. It is said you can only get four people inside at one time and, with my friend and I the only ones there,  it was certainly beginning to fill up!

Sadly all too soon, it was time to return to our hotel for our last evening meal and pack for the early start the next day. We had to be at the ferry port at 08.30 am, so needed to be up and checked out by 8am. The winds were not as rough as the previous Sunday but at 20mph we were still concerned our ferry might be cancelled. In the event it wasn't, but the crossing was choppy to put it mildly. It was hilarious to watch people walking around the ship to the cafes or toilets, determined to walk in a straight line but looking like drunks as they lurched from side to side in a zigzag fashion. The ship pitched left and right for most of the 3-hour crossing and we stayed in out seats as much as we could, until we neared calmer waters just outside Poole.

I said goodbye to my friend - she was driving back to Hertfordshire and I was heading for the train station.  The trains back to London were chaotic because of a freight train breakdown earlier in the day, so were not running to time. I was advised by the Poole ticket office to jump on a train already standing on the platform - one far earlier than I was booked on - but at least about to leave. I rushed on with my luggage and slumped into the first available free seat. About 5 minutes into the journey, there came an announcement that the train was no longer stopping at every station as scheduled and would be fast to London Waterloo. That was no problem for me as I was heading there anyway. However, when the ticket collector came along he told me off for being on the wrong train, as it was a now a fast one and said I must pay a further £79. At first he would not believe me that the ticket office at Poole had told me to get on that train, but finally said he would "only" charge me an extra £5 and I was not to make that mistake again! With knuckles rapped, I made my way home through central London with fond memories of Guernsey.

Summer holiday

I have not long returned from a week's holiday and so have had no time to write up my weekly Sunday blog post. Watch out for it next Sunday.... I've meanwhile got mountains of laundry and admin to deal with first. Wish me luck.

A staggering statistic

About once every two months, I meet up for lunch with a group of friends I name The Birthday Girls. As that suggests, we meet up around the time when one of us has a birthday. Not necessarily the same week as the birthday even, but close enough that we all have a common date free in our diary. There are ten of us altogether, although not all of us can manage all of the dates. On average there are about 7 or 8 of us at any one time. We know one another going back decades and first met when our children were at nursery age. 

A few weeks ago saw such a meeting to celebrate L's birthday. She dropped the bombshell that she and her husband of over 30 years have just separated. About a month ago, another one announced she was separated from her long-term partner. It got me thinking that in our group:

• 3 are married still
• 3 of us are widows
• 4 are divorced or separated

So in other words only 3 out of 10 are still in a relationship. That is quite a staggering statistic for such a small group of friends.

Alcoholic Daze - Chapter 3

The continuing saga.....

How dare she? The leaflet, which my neighbour had given me, incensed me - and my husband was pretty cross too, to put it mildly. This woman did not even know us. How on earth had she got the idea that he was an alcoholic and, even worse to contemplate, was she spreading malicious gossip about us, based on an untruth? The next day, I gathered up all my courage and went over the road to confront her about it. I am not normally one to stick my head above the parapet, but this could not be left unchallenged. If it was to do with seeing him on early mornings out on our forecourt doing DIY with a drink in his hand, I explained that Greg often worked night shifts and that other people's breakfast times were his supper time. Therefore to see him with an alcoholic drink in his hand at breakfast time was not as odd as it seemed. It was his nightcap. She still insisted we were in need of the advice she had presented me with. She had seen the signs in her own husband (from whom she was now divorced) and she was trying to spare me the same experience she had gone through. I was very upset that she continued to take that stance and through gritted teeth I said she couldn't be further from the truth - my husband was not an alcoholic. She had got it severely wrong. She apologised, but I never spoke to her again. Shortly after that, she moved away from London altogether. Everyone in our small close thought her a little strange anyway, so good riddance, I thought.

A year or so later, we discovered France. We had hitherto not thought much about the place - it was just somewhere we had to drive across to get from the English Channel to Germany, where we still visited our many friends. But we had meanwhile acquired a dog, Snoopy, and we were too soft to go away on holidays and leave him in kennels. Snoopy used to pine terribly if I left him alone for just an hour to go to the supermarket, for goodness sake - how would he cope for a fortnight without us, if we went away on holiday? So we prepared him for the Pet Passport Scheme and decided to go on a short camping trip to Northern France, taking him with us, just to test out the scheme and hopefully bring him back in one piece with us again. There was a residue niggle that we might have to leave Snoopy in quarantine on the way back, if we had unwittingly overlooked one of the conditions of the scheme. More than we could bear to think about. We found a superb camp-site near Calais with a huge swimming pool, which I couldn't tear my daughter away from. The weather was ideal too - much treasured when you are overnighting in a tent! It was quite cosy huddled together with Snoopy as one contented pack. We managed to communicate to the locals with our rather awkward school French and decided that there was more to France than just the transit route from Calais to Lille. On the return journey, we stopped at the famous Cite Europe just outside Calais and found by trial and error a wine we really liked. We had heard about other people's experiences of booze cruises and decided to take 12 cases of this particular wine (6 bottles in a case) back with us to eke out through the following 12 months. Roughly a bottle and a half a week between the two of us. An occasional glass with a meal, or for taking to dinner parties with friends. You can imagine the sight of us as we drove off the ferry and through the customs' shed at Dover. The car was piled high with the camping gear - tent, cooker, lanterns, kitchen sink etc - suitcases, us, 72 bottles of wine, a few bottles of spirits, AND Snoopy perched on top. You couldn't have found room for a pin. The customs officials waved us through with bored looks on their faces and had no queries at all about the dog. We breathed a sigh of relief. The holiday had been a great success.

That was in late August. In November, I had occasion to go into our cellar, where the wine was stored, and noticed that the last bottle of wine had been drunk and I had only had about six glasses in total myself.

Fly cemetery and lilac

A few months ago some of my houseplant spider plants had babies and I potted the baby cuttings in some new compost I had bought in a local garden centre. The soil did not look particularly nutritious, but I know there have been bans in recent years in using peat, so I just guessed this was what I had to now deal with. A few weeks later, I noticed tiny little flies ducking and diving all over the house. I also noticed that whenever I watered the spider plant babies, the flies seemed to appear in abundance. I can only assume the fly larvae had been buried in the new compost when I bought it.

I decided to buy some fly-catchers and stick them in the pots I was suspicious of. I then gave the pots a good watering and waited. I then discovered the most horrific sight. There were loads of fly bodies stuck to the catchers. Over the months, the number has increased and occasionally when I am sitting still - such as watching TV or eating, a rogue fly will flutter past me. They are so tiny, you don't really see them coming until they zoom past close to you,  and too fast to catch in my hands. Below is the result of a couple of months since I bought the fly-catchers. Those of a sensitive nature may wish to look away now.

Look to the left side of that last photo, there's a whole cemetery of them. Eugh!

Meanwhile, outside my lilac tree is looking absolutely beautiful at the moment, but is being buffeted by strong winds.

Sweet Sixteen

I'm thinking of suing the National Health Service (NHS). I had a hospital procedure on Friday in which I was injected with Botox. I had hoped to emerge looking less like a 75-year-old and more like a young Sweet Sixteen. Looking in the mirror, I look exactly the same, so I want to make a complaint. The fact that the Botox injection was into my stomach valve via a gastroscopy (which I mentioned here) is neither here nor there. Botox is Botox, right?

Seriously though, the procedure at St Thomas' Hospital went well and I always love seeing my consultant as she is just a lovely human. As she injected the sedative (I won't have a gastroscopy without a sedative), she said "here comes your gin and tonic". I was out for the count for the rest of it, but knew there were five people in the room, four of them nurses and one consultant, looking after me, monitoring my blood pressure, oxygen levels and making sure I was in the right position for the gastroscopes to go down.  A prerequisite of the hospital agreeing to give me sedation is that I must be accompanied home and have someone stay with me overnight in case I do something stupid, like walk in front of a bus or leave the gas cooker on at home. One of my choir friends very kindly collected me from the hospital at lunchtime after the procedure and made sure I got home safely on public transport. My daughter Kay stayed with me overnight to fulfil the 24-hour rule.

Meanwhile I'm meeting an old friend for lunch today who lives in Ireland but happens to be in London for the weekend. I haven't seen her in 25 years. Do you think we'll recognise one another? We'll certainly have a lot to talk about.

Rochester, Kent

Over Easter, Kay and Darcy came to stay with me a couple of nights. On Good Friday we went out to my favourite Italian restaurant where I always order the same thing - Razza or, as we English say, skate wing. You never see that fish in supermarkets and can only get it in fishmongers. Few restaurants ever have it on their menu either, so it is  real treat for me to have it in that restaurant.

On Easter Saturday, we took the train to Rochester in Kent. Although not far from where I live in South London (about 25 miles) I have never actually been there, so decided it was now or never. I was quite surprised by how quaint the High Street is. I suppose I was expecting a modern drab sort of city centre like any other, but the High Street was full of old buildings dating back to the Victorian, Georgian and even Elizabethan times.  It was home to Charles Dickens for many years and featured in his novels. There wasn't a chain store in sight, but many coffee houses, charity shops and sweet shops. We wandered along the High Street stopping at some of the older buildings to take photos.

Elizabethan Eastgate featured as Westgate in various Dickens' novels

A town crier on his rounds

Look at the front door on this - not at all straight - in fact the whole building is listing to one side

We moved on to the Cathedral which is literally off the High Street. 

Unlike a lot of cathedrals and high churches these days, there was no entrance fee and you could wander around at will. I suppose being an Easter Saturday helped too, as no doubt Good Friday and Easter Sunday would be busy. There were lots of elderly ladies arranging flowers around the Cathedral and decorating a scene from the Garden of Gethsemane at the entrance.

The High Street is in the foreground

Peaceful cloister garden

The choir

aerial view from the castle

After grabbing a snack of coffee and cake from one of the many cafes in the High Street, we moved on to Rochester Castle, also a stone's throw from the High Street. This was quite impressive and took a lot of stamina to climb the many stairs - most of them cobbled and quite steep in places. The inner floors of the castle have crumbled away so the stairs in the corner turrets are the only way to reach the upper storeys and see across. It was built just after the Norman Conquest in 1066 and was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its history is fascinating - including the Barons' Uprising against King John in 1215 and also the place where in 1540 Henry VIII first clapped eyes on Anne of Cleves, his fourth wife, as she travelled from Germany to London to marry him.

no floors exist

You can get an idea here of what the stairs looked like. It was quite lethal coming down them.

After such a busy day on our feet for most of it, we decided to take the late afternoon train back to London and feasted on a Chinese takeaway for our supper.