Jersey, Channel Island

Wife and I took a week's summer holiday in Jersey. Airports are about work and long-haul journeys, for me. So being at London Gatwick with a hop, skip and jump across the English Channel to Jersey felt less joyful than it could have. Wind-blown, tiny-drop, hugely-drenching rain celebrated our arrival. The next morning was just windy. Our hotel on the southwest corner of the island, Corbière Point, is surrounded by gorse-strewn coarse grass, all that can survive the winter gales. A white lighthouse sits on pinkish granite, pummelled clean by the waves. Nearby are several concrete structures, squatting on the rock, a reminder of nervous Nazis in World War II, who were well prepared to resist invasion by British troops, but who--in the end--were beaten by food shortages. Wife was here in her teens; then, she hired a bike to explore the island. This time, a little less energetically but still on cycles, we twice reached the north coast, gradually climbing the gently rising plateau before swooping down to the beach. That left one challenge, the climb back to the plateau high point, before the ride back to a daily five-course dinner. For some reason, clothing seemed to shrink a little and the cycle tyres looked flatter by day four. My father's father ran away to sea at 16. One summer my dad's brother-in-law showed me grandad's log book, signed by each ship's master who hired him. In my teens, I longed to be at sea, but my short sight would have meant engineering, the stink of hot oil in confined spaces, not the romance of navigation and the wheelhouse. This probably explains why I loved the two hours we spent at St Helier watching, without a shred of envy, little craft coming and going while a tug nosed a coaster from the harbour wall, pointing it to the seaward channel and its next port of call. Victorian hymns were all about the perils of the sea as an analogy of life: Will you anchor hold in the storms of life? That afternoon and all in our little Jersey break were peaceful, refreshing reminders of my hero's words, "Peace, be still."