jackiekjono | Reading

Welp. I ended up being kidnapped by a friend for a large chunk of the day, so there went all of my plans to catch up on things that I'm behind on.

I need to get up early to head into the office tomorrow, but I'm currently wide awake so we'll see how things go. My sleep schedule always gets out of whack when I have a long weekend, so I'm not going to be surprised if I end up staying up half the night, get 2-3 hours of sleep in, and then crash for a few hours after work. Maybe my body will surprise me, though.

If it does as I'm expecting it to go, at least I'll have a few hours to try to catch up on some things before I get tired enough to actually fall asleep.

Current Mood: awake

the_shoshanna

Today was our last breakfast in this hotel's pretty restaurant area, sniff.

i have been making the most of it.

They offer six cooked breakfast options in addition to the great spread of cold meats and cheeses, bread and pastry, fruit and yogurt and cereal and juice; but after trying a couple different ones I decided that I didn't like any others more than I liked the one that comprised two poached eggs, half a sliced avocado, and some of the best smoked salmon I've ever had, so I've just been getting that one every morning. Also a croissant. Today I asked for only one egg, just so I'd have room for a second croissant. Plus several cups of excellent coffee.

(Since we're leaving at oh-fuck-o'clock tomorrow morning, they have packed up "continental" breakfasts for us to take away: each of us has an apple, some kind of wrapped sandwich that I didn't investigate, a yogurt, and a croissant. The croissants will not be nearly as good a day later after spending the night in our room mini fridge, but I will appreciate mine nonetheless.)

Then, after a little dithering, we went back to Petit Pôt Bay. Geoff had been interested in either or both of a walking tour of St Peter Port, or a tour of Sausmarez Manor; but the forecast was for today to be even hotter than yesterday, and it's a bank holiday so the buses are running a limited Sunday schedule, and in the end the opportunity to not slog long distances won out.

We headed down the hill again at about 10:15, and the tide was out when we arrived, making it a completely different beach! A huge swath of smooth sand was exposed, studded with some big rocks, and lots of people: families mostly, some kayakers, one guy with a fishing pole but I kept forgetting to keep an eye on him so I don't know where he set up or what he was fishing for.

This feels like our last full day of vacation, even though it's not; tomorrow we leave at oh-fuck-o'clock as previously established to return to St Helier in Jersey, and meet

trepkos and her partner for lunch, but other than that we have no plans for the day. And then Wednesday we leave not quiiiite as early to start on our journey home: walk to St Helier bus terminal, bus to airport, fly to Heathrow where we have a five-hour layover 😩, then a flight to Toronto, a night in an airport hotel, and a train home the next morning. But, conceptually, all that feels like one thing to me: Going Home. First thing tomorrow we start Going Home, except that we have a break in it early on to socialize with

trepkos and partner. Before I began writing this blog entry, I packed my whole bag, except for my toiletry kit and other overnight necessities, and one packing cube hopefully contains everything I'll need (barring toiletries) between tomorrow morning and getting home, so if I've planned it right I won't need to delve into my pack beyond that at all.

Anyway, since this feels like our last day and I can fit all my clothes for the remaining days in one packing cube, when I went wading this time I didn't care if my shorts got wet: let them be salt-crusted! They're going straight into the laundry bag until we get home! (As Geoff's photos reveal, I wore yesterday's clothes to go wading again today, anyway. No sense getting fresh clothes sweaty and salty; I need some clean ones for Going Home, and I didn't pack expecting multiple 30-degree days so I'm protecting the clean hot-weather clothes I have.) So Geoff settled himself and our daypacks and my boots and socks on a comfy rock a little way up from the waterline, and I had a wonderful time just wading back and forth from one side of the beach to the other. Geoff is not a fan of sunbathing or ocean-frolicking, but he is a fan of watching the waves, and watching little kids have fun ~~and watching me have fun~~, and there was a good breeze, so it wasn't too hot for him.

The water was (unsurprisingly) still cold, and this time, unlike yesterday, I wasn't overheated when I first waded in, so brrrr; I would wade from where Geoff was sitting to the other side of the beach, first at shin-depth and then at knee- and thigh-depth as I got used to it, but by the time I reached the other side I would be very happy to slosh out of the surf onto the sand and walk back dry to let my feet warm up before doing it again. Except that the tide was coming in fast, so every time I made the transit it was a new (and smaller) beach! And Geoff kept having to shift himself up the beach every ten or fifteen minutes. On my first venture out, I was fascinated by a massive rock whose seaward surface was 75% barnacles, 20% limpets, and 4% snails, with only 1% of actual rock showing, and I brought my phone out to get a picture of it; two or three transits later it was almost completely under water.

Not only was the tide coming in fast, the waves got bigger as the water level rose. I was mostly wading a little over my knees, but I got spanked by waves several times. Little kids were shrieking and jumping (or jumping into) the waves; one family industriously built three well-buttressed sandcastles, with their seaward walls reinforced with seaweed, only to see each of them brought down and dissolved in turn. The far side of the beach had much more seaweed than the one Geoff and I initially settled at (we had to move to the other side once the tide completely ate that side of the beach); the shallow water there was thick with tangled fronds of dark green and light green and red, with occasional bits of white, and the kids were bringing it up the beach by the armload.

I found a snail being washed back and forth in the water left behind as a wave retreated; I picked it up and put it on a wet rock, and watched as it put its foot out to pull itself into a more comfortable position. A little girl ran past me to show her parents the limpet she had managed to dislodge, and was appropriately praised and told to put it back. I had been tempted to try to knock one loose myself, as our seabed-walk guide had done, so as to get a good look at the animal inside the shell, but I didn't. Some people were genuinely swimming, not just wading, and some of them weren't even in wetsuits!

But after about an hour and a half it was getting noticeably hotter even with the breeze, and I had been back and forth and up and down the beach multiple times and was beginning to feel guilty about keeping Geoff just sitting there (not that he was complaining), and I'd pretty much seen what there was to see, so Geoff got another ice cream cone, and we grabbed a sandwich for later and trudged back up the hill to the hotel. It was not as difficult a slog as it was yesterday! Showered off the sweat and salt and sunscreen, and we've spent the afternoon just lounging around the room, reading and blogging (and, for Geoff, napping).

We're going back to the local pub for one last dinner tonight, and I've already set a phone alarm for five am.

settiai

For the record, I've discovered that cooking hot dogs in the air fryer on 385°F for five minutes (turning them over halfway through) makes them turn out absolutely delicious.

I normally either boil them or cook them on my George Foreman grill, but I decided to experiment this weekend. It took a bit of trial and error, but the temperature and time that I mentioned above turned out to be the winner. I mainly only eat them in the summer, but it's good to know that I've found a quick and easy way of cooking the considering they're one of those foods that's filling but cheap.

Also? I dipped potato chips in melted chocolate, which was an A+ idea that I should definitely make again sometime.

Current Mood: amused

the_shoshanna

Did you know Guernsey had a motorcycle club? Because we didn't

As previously indicated, we went down to the local pub for dinner again (and I did indeed have delicious fish and chips and a pint of that yummy cider). We sat outside at one of the tables in the pleasant back garden, along with a scattering of other couples and a family or two. The driveway and parking area backed onto the seating area, and after a few minutes we heard the rumble of motorcycle engines, and three very heavily tattooed men in club colors pulled up, parked their bikes, came into the outside seating area, and asked the server who came to meet them for a table for seven; two more club members and two women not in club colors joined them shortly afterward. They were seated some distance away from us, which we were glad of because several of them immediately started smoking but were sorry about because we would have loved to eavesdrop on their conversation! I'm pretty sure the first three who arrived were all in different colors, but I could only read two: Full-Boar (Guernsey) and Devil's Disciples (England).

the_shoshanna

like, genuinely hot, 30C/86F and blazingly sunny.

Phew.

We went back to our room after breakfast and zonked out for a while (Geoff has a practically unlimited capacity for napping), and then decided to walk due south from here about fifteen minutes to Petit Bôt Bay, which we'd been told was very pretty and also had a snack kiosk, and is also connected to the coastal trail network. It's basically midway between the easternmost point we ended at on our giant hike last Sunday (https://the-shoshanna.dreamwidth.org/907700.html) and the westernmost point we started at last Wednesday (https://the-shoshanna.dreamwidth.org/908256.html), so we figured we'd get there and then decide if we wanted to turn right (west) or left (east).

It was a nice fifteen-minute walk down the hill to the bay, except for the awareness that we would have to climb back up the slope. Most of it was on one of the old roads on which vehicles are no longer allowed, so they're wider than footpaths but still quiet, and we wound through the usual green banks. Sometimes you can tell that the mossy ferny small-tree-y banks you're walking between are old, overgrown stone walls that have almost disappeared under the long accumulation of greenery and soil, and often you can't. We also passed an old stone watering trough, which water was still running through and past, in a small trickling stream that paralleled us all the way to the top of the bay, where we saw yet another round tower that was built to defend against the French in the late 1780s, and the ruins of what had been a water wheel about two hundred years ago. Also, remember the Renoir Path we found ourselves on a few days ago? At the site of the old water wheel was a similar thing for JMW Turner, with a reproduction of a sketch he'd done of the site when the water wheel and a hotel were still standing.

We found ourselves walking the last few yards down to the kiosk alongside a man who had just parked his car on the side of the access road (where several others were also parked) and who was walking down to meet a friend who was setting up a couple of kayaks on the bank above the beach, so we chatted with him for a minute. He pointed out where the coastal trail going west left the beach access road, and we were like "we KNOW": it visibly began with, yes, a very long and very steep stairway climbing up the cliffside. Then Geoff and I went on to enjoy the view from the top of the retaining wall above the beach; the bay is a narrow V between seaside cliffs, and although the beach was largely rocky (perhaps there's more sandy beach revealed at lower tide), there were some swimmers, and some families with kids on the sandy part, and a number of other boaters and stand-up paddleboarders in the water. There was also a bin of children's beach toys available to be borrowed, played with, and returned: an absolutely lovely amenity that we've seen on beaches both here and in Jersey.

We debated a bit about which direction to go and finally decided on west, despite the steep climb. For one thing, the western trail had another kiosk and public toilets marked on it, about halfway to the point we'd reached coming the other way, and if we got that far we'd also be near a bus route where we might be able to catch a ride home, whereas if we went east there were fewer amenities and it would definitely be shank's mare all the way. (None of this turned out to be relevant, however.) Then we went back up the bank toward the trail, past where the kayak guy and his friend were still setting up. We talked briefly about how very hot it was, and he agreed that it was so hot that he might accidentally fall out of his kayak a couple of times, sploosh, oops! We told him we were going to attempt that grueling stairway westward; "tell our families we died proudly," I begged.

In the end, though, we only walked for a little over an hour. It was very VERY up and down, made more so by our twice getting on dead-end spur trails that looked they would go along the cliffs but that ended up going steeply down to dead-end at a viewpoint or an old military emplacement, and then we had to struggle uphill again before we could continue on. And the heat made the climbing far more exhausting than it had been on other days. Plus Geoff has had real problems with heat in the past and I really didn't want him overheating, so we were resting frequently, and drinking a lot of water; we had two full water bottles and in just the time we were out we finished one. After we struggled to the top of yet another grueling climb, I finally said that I was willing to keep walking as long as the trail was more or less level, but I wasn't willing to do another steep ascent, or for that matter another steep descent, given that we'd have to get back up it on our return. The trail did politely remain only moderately tilted for a while, so we kept on, and we were rewarded by encountering a family of pheasants in the path! A beautifully colored male who hurried away into the underbrush ahead of the rest of the family, a drab female who herded four or five chicks with her into the shelter of the underbrush, and then two more chicks who had frozen in place instead of following her, and then as we came closer broke from their hiding places to scramble frantically after the rest. That was fun!

A little after that, though, the trail began tilting precipitously downward, and we called it and turned around. Slogged slowly back to the beach -- oh god the stairs, so many many stairs -- and shared a pizza and a pint of beer from the kiosk; the only beer they had was one that Geoff likes a lot but I don't, really, and yet I was absolutely loving my deep long cold swigs of it after spending an hour on those trails, in that heat. Happily, they had umbrellas shading the picnic tables in front, so we could sit in the shade, and there was a glorious breeze. (Oddly, there hadn't been one on the cliffs, even when we were in the open -- and the blazing sun -- rather than among trees and high green banks.)

The elderly man who brought us our pizza asked where we were from, and when we said "Canada" he said laughingly that he'd learned not to ask tourists, "Are you Americans?" because the Canadians would get so insulted. We laughingly agreed, and had a bit of the standard "Isn't he awful" conversation. "I bet you get some Americans claiming to be Canadian," I added, straight-faced.

Once we were finished, Geoff went back to the kiosk to throw out the trash and get himself an ice cream cone, while I went down onto the beach proper, picked my way across most of the stony part to a big rock sunk into the sand but high and wide enough to be a comfortable seat, and took my boots and socks off to go wading! (I'd been in shorts all day. Did I mention it was 30 degrees?)

The water was colder than I expected -- although, I mean, it's the north Atlantic, I suppose I should have expected that! But it was incredibly refreshing on my hot feet, and the waves weren't high or powerful but when they rushed out again they sank my feet deep into the sand, and then on their return sometimes wrapped seaweed around my ankles. Near me were children playing with buckets of sand and water, and building a sandcastle with parents; one very small girl whose teeth were chattering even in the sun, from the water temperature; a boy lying prone on a floatie in the water and wielding a stick with a net on the end, paddling to reach and scoop up the colored plastic balls his mom(?) tossed from behind him to bob on the water in front of him; a man and woman who waded into the chilly water to swim quite far out, which is less impressive when I add that they were both in wetsuits; and some adults just lying, soaking up the sun. I'd been making noise earlier about going swimming tomorrow; beaches and hot sun and sand and swimming are not at all Geoff's thing, but when we were in Hawaii years ago I insisted on getting a chance to, as I put it, frolic in the god damn surf. There wasn't any surf here (we did see quite a number of surfers on the north coast on Thursday, the day I skipped blogging about), but the principle still holds! But I think the wading I did today may have satisfied my need. To be honest, right now I don't ever want to trudge up a hill again, even one like the one from the beach that would have seemed like nothing a few days ago. It's hot, I'm tired, it's almost the end of our vacation, we are not as young as we used to be. (How did that happen. Who let that happen.)

But I dried my feet and brushed off as much sand as I could and put my socks and boots back on and we did indeed trudge back up the hill to the hotel, where we had to collapse a bit before either of us even had the energy to shower. (Also Geoff was still sweating even after coming in, and there's no point showering when he's sweating at the same time! It takes him a long time to cool down sometimes.) Anyway, we crashed out and eventually showered and he napped again and we both blogged the day. He's posted some excellent pictures! https://geoff-hart.com/fiction/Channel-Islands-2026/may24.html (See the line going diagonally up to the left from the tower? That's the trail we took. At a slant like this: \ )

And now back to the pub down the road for dinner. I haven't yet had fish and chips on this trip, and I plan on correcting that tonight. Also another pint of that tasty English cider, and probably about a gallon of cold water, we hardly did anything, it feels like, and yet it has been a DAY.

the_shoshanna

but we did sort of succeed at taking it easy?

Today we took a bus to a local weekly market on the grounds of Sausmarez Manor, a stately home that has been in the same family since, like, the twelfth century. Well, the estate has; of course there have been several houses on the site, and the family is not currently living in the height of twelfth-century architecture. (Although the then-seigneur's refusal to have the house wired for electricity saved it from being commandeered by the occupying Nazis, who wanted mod cons.) I had high hopes for the market, since I love farmers markets, but it turned out not to be one. There was one person selling food (sausage rolls and similar), a number of people selling handmade crafts, and several people selling mass-produced tat. I was disappointed. But it was still interesting to poke about the property! There's a sculpture garden with an enormous scorpion that I found quite disturbing (I do not like bugs, especially giant ones) and a cobra that I didn't mind but that Geoff found disturbing, and a quite wonderful lioness depicted lolling atop a stone wall, among others. And a small antiques sale was going on, and a sale of Oriental rugs: nothing that held our interest for long, but all together enough to keep us interested for an hour or so. I enjoyed paging through a pamphlet of "107 Things to See in Guernsey" from 1902, and Geoff bought a collection of some British comic strip he had fond memories of.

Then we walked ten minutes up the road to see La Gran'Mère de Chimquiere (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Gran%2527_M%C3%A8re_de_Chimquiere), a stone female figure that was originally carved about four thousand years ago, recarved about two thousand years ago, broken in half by a cranky Christian authority about two hundred years ago and promptly put back together at the insistence of the local population, and that now stands at the entrance to the driveway of a local parish church. History is just lying around everywhere! In itself it's not that much to look at, but contemplating it and the thousands of years of changing worship and veneration was quite moving.

Then we walked forty minutes back to the hotel, along quiet pretty residential back roads much more pleasant than the main drag. At one point a woman in a car pulled up next to us to ask where we were from and generally chat, and in the course of conversation told us that Paul Revere, of American Revolutionary War fame, had roots in Guernsey. (Wikipedia has no mention of this, fwiw.) I said something like "wow, I never knew that" and she said something like "well, it's family history," and I had the feeling that she meant less that she herself was related to him than that all Guernseyites are somehow related? But idk.

I have, by the way, been 100% describing myself as Canadian to everyone we meet. I admit to US roots only in particular circumstances and after some preliminary conversation, and when I do the conversation almost invariably turns to spend some time on "Isn't he awful."

Once back at the hotel, Geoff zonked out for two hours while I faffed about on the internet, and then we walked half an hour north along quiet pretty residential and agricultural back roads to a cidery where we had booked a tour (https://www.rocquettecider.com/). According to the tour guide, although not quite in these words, a super-rich family bought the whole valley in the 1990s, and a friend of theirs who had experience running a cidery in England told them, you know, the microclimate of this valley is excellent for growing cider apples, and it turned out that there had actually been a cidery there until it folded just after WW2, so they bought a few thousand apple trees and went into business. You can do that kind of thing on a whim when you're that rich, I guess; and it does seem to be a good business. It was an interesting tour, not deep but fun, and ended with free half-pints of their cider (which, unfortunately, was the local one I hadn't much liked a few days before; I still didn't like it and Geoff finished mine), plus gin and vodka liqueurs (?? no idea exactly what they were but the vodka one was deep red [?!] and very tasty) and their apple brandy, which was powerfully delicious). Also cheese and crackers and tasty house-made chutney so we didn't all die, drinking that much alcohol on empty stomachs on a very hot and sunny day.

We walked -- or staggered -- back to the hotel just in time for another tapas dinner, which they do here every Saturday. This one was perhaps even more delicious than last week's, and we were seated with an English couple from Reading, whom we very much enjoyed talking with; everybody else had finished and left by the time we said goodnight.

For us this counted as a quiet restful day: only about 100 minutes of walking, and all of it more or less level and on pavement! No idea what we'll do tomorrow, but I am babying a blister, so probably another quiet day?

the_shoshanna

I am skipping over yesterday and will hope to describe it later; today I am blogging about today, in an effort to not fall too far behind.

We left pretty early this morning, since we had to be at the ferry dock 45 minutes early, and after an incident yesterday (a minor car accident -- the first we've seen, which is frankly a little surprising) delayed our bus, we wanted to leave plenty of time in case of similar difficulties. We still miiiight have had time to grab some breakfast, but no way was I eating anything other than an antinausea med before getting on a ferry again, and Geoff decided he'd rather wait and get something in Sark.

The weather today was absolutely gorgeous, sunny and gently breezy and even a little too hot. The ferry over to Sark was much smaller than the one from Jersey to here, and we had seats outside on the upper deck with great views, and the sea was calm; I doubt I even needed the pill but I'm not sorry I took it just in case. We saw many jagged rocks gouging up from the water, some of them extra jagged because of all the cormorants on them; and the island of Herm as we passed it (year-round population: about 60; tourists per year: about 100,000); and also the island of Brecqhou, right next to Sark, which is privately owned by the surviving billionaire Barclay brother. The glimpse I got of their castle-mansion looked exactly like you'd expect a ~~supervillain's~~ billionaire's castle-mansion on a private island to look like.

Our plan was basically to walk around the island, and also have a meal or two. The first walk was just up the loooong steeeeeep hill from the ferry dock to the center of the village (and the Visitor Information Centre). We'd more or less assumed we'd ride one of the wagons pulled by tractors (which are the only motor vehicles allowed on the island) that are made available, and that haul overnight visitors' luggage up for delivery to their hotels, but the crowd preceding us off the boat had filled them by the time we walked from the disembarkation point to their parking and loading area, and we didn't want to wait for them to deliver the first load of tourists and come back for more. Also none of the info we'd seen had told us there was a charge for the ride, but then we saw a fee list posted. So we said screw it, it won't be the hardest walk we've done this week, and headed for the footpath up the hill along with a number of other intrepid walkers.

That may have been the nicest walk we did all day, sadly. It was lovely, wooded and shady, steep at times but never grueling, with no particular views to admire but just a green and pleasant passage, very quiet unless a tractor-bus was chugging past us on the road that was paralleling us off to the side, behind a line of trees.

We got to the top, walked through shops and restaurants to the Visitors' Centre and confirmed that they had no maps better than the freebie the ferry company had given us when we checked in, and went to a pub for some food. Well, they weren't going to start serving food until noon, and it was 11:45, so we killed time in an excellent exhibit on life under the Occupation in the hall next door. It included a whole history of the war as Sark experienced it, including awful details about the level of hunger. (Sibyl Hathaway, the Dame of Sark, the feudal lord who ran the island from 1927 when her father died and she inherited the title until she died in 1974, went from what the narration happily described as "a healthy weight of 10 stone" to 7 stone by the end of the war: 140 pounds to 98. The feudal system of government wasn't changed until 2008, and whoever wrote the story of the Occupation clearly adored Dame Hathaway.) There were also stories of a group of local divers and others who worked for the Germans under the threat of danger to their families and communities but who slowed and sabotaged the work as much as they dared; and accounts from someone who was evacuated as a child just before the Germans arrived and from someone who stayed; and many more stories, including the code words that Dame Hathaway and her husband used in letters, to pass on news of the war, after he was deported to a German prison camp.

Anyway, once the pub was open for food, we got some excellent coffee, and Geoff got a quite tasty plate of duck tagliatelle. I, still on my quest to eat my own weight in seafood, got a crab sandwich that the menu board said was made with local foraged seaweed -- how could I turn it down? I'd had a crab sandwich at a beachside kiosk yesterday, which was...acceptable: it was on supermarket sandwich bread, thickly buttered, and wasn't all that good, really. This one was better, on a crusty roll that was still buttered but at least only lightly, and the chopped seaweed that was mixed into it didn't add a noticeable flavor but maybe it was a bit more...umami? The crab itself did taste better than yesterday's sandwich. But on the whole I think I'll give up on crab sandwiches. Geoff's pasta was better.

After lunch, we set out to walk to Little Sark, a chunk of land that hangs like a teardrop of the south end of Sark proper, connected by a high and narrow land bridge called La Coupée. Until 1902, when the first safety railing was installed, Little Sark children on their way to school would crawl across it on their hands and knees to avoid being blown off. Now it has sturdy railings on both sides, and also a smooth and somewhat leveled walkway, paved down each side but left as dirt in the middle so that horses could get a better footing, that was constructed by German prisoners of war in 1945-46. It was a very dramatic crossing; I hope Geoff's pictures came out!

But the walk to La Coupée wasn't anything special, and on the other side the dry dirt roadway was wide and unshaded and between banks so there were almost no views. We had been hoping to get to a Neolithic dolmen at the far end of Little Sark, but we didn't really have time before we had to report to the return ferry, and the walking wasn't pleasant, so we gave up and turned around. Wandered back through town, got Geoff an ice cream, and took the nice footpath down the hill again. Since we had some time, we went from the ferry harbor through a short tunnel bored right through the rock to the boating harbor next to it, which is one of the smallest working harbors in the world. It's almost entirely enclosed by a breakwater, making it also a nice place to swim; several people were in the water, and so was a very happy dog. Then we went back and stood on the ferry dock waiting for the ferry. I'm pretty sure I saw a jellyfish in the water; it was a foot or so below the surface, which was several yards below me, and it wasn't very big, so it's hard to be sure; but it was definitely moving differently from the water around it, and it definitely seemed to be blooming and contracting, blooming and contracting, as a jellyfish would. So I'm going to say I saw a jellyfish! That was exciting; I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild before, unless you count the Portuguese man o' war that stung me when I was a child.

I took another pill before the return ferry ride, and although I hadn't felt that the first one affected me at all, I definitely got hit by "may cause drowsiness" on the way home! I actually fell asleep sitting up (we had great seats on the outside upper deck again) and dreamed of figuring out buses for tomorrow's excursions. Neither Geoff nor I felt we wanted (or could manage) dinner after that big lunch, but I did want a little something, so we stopped at the M&S food hall again on the way to the bus home: I got a couple of tea cakes with dried fruit, and he got a bottle of beer 😀 (Alcohol is contraindicated with the meds, but that didn't stop me having a couple of swallows!) Consumed them back at the hotel after bath and showers, and have been blogging every since.

Tomorrow, the plan is to visit the main local farmers market -- I love farmers markets! -- and pass by a 4000-year-old goddess statue, and then in the afternoon tour a local cidery, which means many samples of cider, plus biscuits, cheeses, and the cidery's own apple chutney. Might be another day without dinner!

the_shoshanna

Today was supposed to be a nice short easy walk of a day.

We started walking a few minutes after eleven. We caught the bus home -- well, to the pub down the road from our hotel for dinner, because once we got to the hotel boy howdy were we not leaving again -- at quarter past five.

It wasn't challenging walking, it was all basically level and the hardest part was that we were often walking in roadways, pressing ourselves against the hedge or ducking into driveways when a car went by. And we did see some lovely things, including another dolmen, and we walked out onto a part-time island that's only accessible at low tide, which was very cool. But we also walked through a bunch of not that interesting residential areas, and had to scramble across a rocky beach and clamber up its bank onto private land and sneak away to the road when our GPS utterly lied to us; we think its trail was probably programmed before all the residential construction we were walking past and through, because it absolutely insisted that we were supposed to be walking through places that were absolutely not possible to walk through.

Anyway, I am wiped, and we have to be up and out early to get to the ferry port for our day trip to the even smaller island of Sark, population 500 people (rising to 1,000 in the tourist season when seasonal tourism workers arrive) and zero cars. Fortunately I do not need to squeeze in time for breakfast, since the only thing I'll be consuming before we make landfall is a pill. But we'll ask if we can grab some bread and cheese and breakfast meat from the cold buffet before we leave, and picnic when we get to Sark.

As for recounting today's adventures, though, that's not happening tonight, and probably not tomorrow either, given our schedule. Geoff's blog of today is up, though, with a few pictures; he is less wiped than me, and also he travels with his laptop so he can type on a proper keyboard whereas I'm swipe-typing on my iPad.

G'night.

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: accomplished

settiai

I think one of my favorite things about people make podfics based on my fanfiction is how many different ways I've heard Settiai pronounced over the years.

No, really, you wouldn't think there were that many possible ways for people to try to say it, but there are. "Set-tie" (the pronunciation that I and most people familiar with Babylon 5 use) and "set-tea-eye" are the most common ones, but I've probably heard at least half a dozen different pronunciations in addition to those over the years. Every time I think that there's no possible way someone could come up with a new one, they prove me wrong.

There was one person who actually managed to turn it into four syllables, which I quite honestly found very fucking impressive.

Current Mood: amused

the_shoshanna

me yesterday: I'd like to do another challenging hike tomorrow.

Geoff: Sounds good!

me: Want to sit down with me and compare options?

Geoff: Nah, I already listed the hikes that interested me; any one of those that you like will be fine. Go ahead and pick one.

Geoff today: Why are we climbing up and down and up and down again? Why are there so many stairs? Who thought this was a good idea?

me: I said--! And you said--! And I said--! And you said--!

Geoff: Alas. Hoist on my own petard.

Today we hiked for five hours, and we still have a 25-minute walk each way to dinner

At least the walk to dinner will be flat!

Today we walked around the Jerbourg peninsula, at the southeasternmost point of Guernsey. Once again we started in a residential/commercial area (where the bus let us off) and walked through it into more quiet residential and some farming areas, and then began following the familiarly precipitous coastal path. It was a bit chilly to start, and the islands of Herm and Sark (and the smaller islands and outcrops that I'm sure have names, but 🤷) were blurred in the mist, but over the course of the day it became quite warm and sunny. Having started the day in thermal leggings under long hiking pants, and in a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece, and a jacket, and also in my wool hat, by the time we caught our bus home I had stripped out of everything except my shirt (with the sleeves rolled up) and the thin hiking pants (with the legs zipped off to turn them into shorts). It was lovely!

And so was the walk, which there isn't much new to say about, but I bet I can find something.

On the way to the coastal trail proper we passed two watering places that were at least two hundred years old, according to the markers. Next to the road or footpath there's first a spring or fountain that was for people to get water at, enclosed in a small sort of cupboard maybe three feet by three feet by three feet with a latched door to keep animals from fouling it; I opened one of them, but the actual fountain/spring wasn't really running any more, and all I saw was a dark interior and some trash people had tossed in. (In general both Guernsey and Jersey have been incredibly free of litter, but we have seen some.) In front of that protected water source for humans was a stone trough for watering animals, into which the water would flow after the people had their fill, and from there it ran down a built channel toward the sea. (Geoff has a good picture of one in his blog entry for today: https://geoff-hart.com/fiction/Channel-Islands-2026/may20.html)

Once we reached the coastal path we went "oooh" at amazing views of rocky bays and isolated beaches (some are accessible only from the sea) and crashing waves, and at other views across the countryside; and saw a tower or two built by the English to defend against the French, especially after France allied with the fledgling USA in the Revolutionary War, that were restored and bore historical markers explaining their significance; and also passed several German bunkers, which were ignored and largely overgrown. Also several cafes, cunningly placed at sites of particular interest along the way, but we had provisioned ourselves before starting out, and it wasn't a walk I wanted to have a beer during.

I blogged the other day about school uniforms here; well, today on a spur off the main trail we encountered a group of eighty schoolkids, maybe eight or nine years old, and maybe ten or a dozen moderately harried-looking teachers (or parent volunteers, how would I know) and the kids were just in regular clothes, not uniforms, although they were all wearing yellow pinnies and blue bucket hats to make them easier to keep track of. I know there were eighty of them because the teacher leading the first group -- they were in tranches, with an adult at the start and end of each line of kids -- told us so, apologetically, and said it was a school trip. So there was a school that didn't have uniforms!

That part of the trail wasn't so challenging, it was mostly a couple of feet wide and gently sloping, and we walked along among the kids for a few minutes. One boy asked Geoff, "Do you want to take my picture?" and seemed a bit put out when Geoff smilingly declined; five minutes later he passed us again and asked, "Want to take it now?" But walking in a crowd of fourth-graders (or however they class them here) wasn't our plan, so when we came to a fork, where the spur trail ended in a big loop and you could go either clockwise or counterclockwise around it, we chose to go clockwise, because that way was much narrower and more precipitous, scrambling down the cliffside almost to sea level, and we knew there was no way they were taking the kids on it. Although we did amuse ourselves imagining the lengthy release forms their parents and guardians would have to sign if they did... On the far side of the loop, overlooking that bit of bay, was a tower of historical interest (built in 1778 to guard the bay against the French) and I think they took the kids to it on the upper, more accessible part of the loop, and then went back the way they'd come. In any case, we didn't see them again after we went different ways at the loop.

The trail also overlapped with part of the "Renoir walk"; Renoir lived in Guernsey for a short time and painted a number of landscapes in that area, and in several places plaques have been put up with reproductions of the painting he did in that spot and also empty picture frames, so you can look through them and have a Renoir's-eye view of the specific vista he painted.

Once we returned from the spur to the main trail and began rounding the peninsula, it got very up and down and up and down again. On one uphill slog I complained to Geoff, "If we're accumulating all this potential energy, why am I so exhausted?" and then amused myself terribly by answering myself sotto voce, "That's just science. And science only matters during the playoffs." "What?" asked Geoff. "Oh, nothing," I told him.

We met a number of other walkers coming and going, but also had long stretches where it was just us, and the sound of the wind and the waves. Okay, and maybe an airplane overhead, but go with me, here. It was gorgeous. And I get a real feeling of accomplishment from accomplishing a hike like that!

The whole trail was a giant loop around the peninsula (plus the spur off it with a smaller loop at its end), so we ended up at a bus stop a block from where we'd been dropped off to start it, and our timing was perfect; there was a bus home in eight minutes. (And not just "supposed to be": an actual bus!) Home, and at Geoff's exhausted request we went straight into the bath our generously upgraded room provides! Ooooh, did hot water ever feel good on our aching feet. Soaked for a while, then showered ("You mean I have to stand up again? Unfair!" I whined), and now we've been relaxing and blogging until it's time to leave for our dinner reservation at a nearby hotel restaurant we haven't been to before, but our hosts recommended it.

When I made the reservation this morning I chose indoor seating because it was a bit damp and chilly, but it has become so lovely out that I've just changed it to outdoor.

Geoff: Can you also change it to a ten-minute walk each way?

me: Sure, honey. I'll get right on that.

settiai

Oh, hey! I just realized that our office is closed on Friday as well as Monday, so I get a four day weekend!

I'm going to try to do some grocery shopping after work on Thursday and maybe pick up a 12-pack of Corona to see me through the long weekend, and then I'm going to plan on not leaving the house for the entirety of those four days.

Current Mood: excited

the_shoshanna

but I just had a pint of cider, so I can't say how this will go

Yesterday we wandered around St Peter's Port just looking around, and also I went to Boots and dithered between the motion sickness med that the pharmacist said was stronger and the one he said was less likely to knock me out. (Not in those words, but basically.) I ended up picking the "less drowsy" and therefore "less effective" one, started stressing about it as soon as we walked out of the store, and was relived this morning to look up the active ingredient and discover/decide that I could definitely safely take another half-pill if I felt I needed it.

One thing I've noticed both here and in Jersey, btw, is that we haven't seen a single person begging on the street or apparently homeless. Very very different from home.

Anyway, after a while we headed off to the Guernsey Museum, which is an interesting combination of "neat temporary exhibits on subjects of local interest", "permanent exhibits on the history and culture of our island," and "IDK, somebody gave us this stuff and I guess it's interesting?" One of the temporary exhibits was partly focused on the tradition of "hedge veg": produce (and plants, eggs, etc.) set out for sale in a small unstaffed roadside shed or stand, with an "honesty box" for people to leave money in. I had noticed numbers of such stands both here and in Jersey -- these days, as well as or even instead of a box for cash, they may have a note posted saying how to electronically transfer payment to the seller for whatever you're taking. I always like seeing honesty boxes; they give me such a good feeling about the local culture.

I also liked the exhibit on the history of human habitation of the island, from neolithic times onward, and very much enjoyed the recorded samples of sayings and adages in Guernésiais, with both literal and idiomatic translations into English. (I always want both literal and idiomatic translations! Literal translations are fascinating!) Mostly the Guernésiais is entirely incomprehensible to me, and then every now and then a word that's exactly the same as modern French pops up and I have a total Steve Rogers moment: "I understood that reference!"

Many other things were also interesting: "here's a display about a nineteenth-century glassblower who made replicas of ocean invertebrates!" "here's a selection of local traditional medicine!" "here's a Haida totem pole!" (that one was very much in the "IDK, somebody gave it to us" category), but after a while I started fading. Also, as well as motion sickness meds, I had also bought more contact lens solution at Boots and had stopped in at the visitor information centre and bought two jars of the seaweed chili crisp, so my bag was quite heavy. Back we went to the hotel, to rest up before dinner.

Dinner was "pie night" at the local pub, which was definitely in part a way for them to use up the leftovers from carvery night -- chicken and ham pie, you say? shepherd's pie (the proper kind, with lamb), you say? Remarkably familiar roasted potatoes and carrots and parsnips? -- but was tasty and fun anyway. The beef and mushroom, chicken and ham, and roasted vegetable pies had pastry top crusts; the shepherd's pie and the seafood pie were topped with mashed potato (which explains where the previous night's baked potatoes went). All were quite tasty except the seafood pie, in which I found the seafood sadly indistinguishable from the potato. Ah, well, it was a fun experience anyway.

Today we had a slower morning and a later start than usual, but it was nice not charging off to do something right away. The hotel had done a load of laundry for us, so we tidied our luggage up a bit. We also asked the woman staffing the desk (the hotel's co-owner) about the best way to book a cab for next week: we have to catch a 7 am ferry back to Jersey on Tuesday, which means being at the ferry port at six, and the buses don't run that early. They have a list of all the taxi operators and their phone numbers posted (some of them are company names and some are just somebody's name) and at first she just recommended one of them, and then she was like, eh, what the heck, and called him up herself and made a booking for us right then ("Hi, Glen, it's Ank; do you have a cab for 5:45 Tuesday morning? Yes, it's for two of our guests here, they have to catch the ferry. Great, thanks"). It's fun getting to see some inner workings of a community I'm only visiting!

Eventually we pulled ourselves together and walked an hour northward to the Folk and Costume Museum. The walk was along quiet streets, past homes and farms and schools. I don't know if all the schoolkids here wear uniforms or if it's just that we only recognize as schoolkids the ones who are in uniforms, but we certainly have seen a lot of crowds of boys in matching dark trousers and jackets and ties (Geoff was incredibly amused at the sight of a troop of boys heading out for phys ed or whatever they call it here, running out onto the soccer field in their jackets and ties), and crowds of girls in matching jackets and sometimes ties and often the shortest skirts I could possibly imagine. Like, are you for real with that? Those are the kinds of skirts that girls in some schools elsewhere get sent home to change out of!

(I think I've seen one or two girls in school-uniform trousers, but they might have been feminine-looking boys; it's not like I was going to stare at and scrutinize them, I was just privately going "huh, hm?" as they went by. I am somewhat curious about how -- and whether -- schools that demand gendered uniforms deal with trans, nb, or gnc kids.)

Anyway, we got to the park where the museum was supposed to be, didn't see it, but did enjoy wandering through a reproduction of a Victorian kitchen garden (artichokes always look so... unlikely! and I'm not sure I'd ever actually seen espaliered fruit trees before), and then we found the park's cafe and split a plate of chips; we were about to eat them at one of the outside tables but it started to rain, so we took hits of our antiviral nasal spray and went in to eat. And after that it had stopped raining and we managed to find the museum, right next door. The power of fried potatoes, I guess?

I don't have a lot to say about the museum; it was all interesting but I'm kind of out of energy to describe it. More reproductions of period rooms, mostly nineteenth century (I was most interested in the kitchen, dairying, and laundry spaces), and collections of farm equipment and craft/professional tools (all men's crafts: tinsmithing, carpentry, etc.), and a whole series of dresses (and a few men's clothes) from the early nineteenth century through to the 1970s. The descriptions of how the older dresses had been repeatedly mended, and altered, and let in and out, were the most interesting to me there; obviously the ones that survived to be put in a museum a century or two later were the ones owned by people who never threw anything out if it could possibly still be used, but even if they're not fully representative (and certainly people kept clothes much longer then than they do now), it's fascinating to think about the human history sewn into them.

The rain had passed over while we were in the museum, yay! We caught a bus to St Peter Port and wandered out on a long pier at the south end of the harbor to Castle Cornet, part of which I think dates back to like the twelfth century, if I remember the signage correctly, and part of which was built by the Germans when they updated and extended its fortifications against the expected English attempt at recapture. The Channel Islands weren't in fact counter-invaded by the Allies, of course, but the signage told us that the Allies did attack Guernsey forcefully to neutralize Nazi intelligence and anti-aircraft capability in advance of D-Day. It wryly remarked that Castle Cornet is probably the only British castle ever to be strafed by the RAF... I got a photo that, if it comes out, should show the centuries-old stone walls, and buildings inside them that at a guess are nineteenth or early twentieth century, and then on top of the walls a concrete bunker that I'm confident was a German emplacement. (We didn't pay to go into the castle, so we were just spectating and speculating from outside.)

Then we wandered back through the pedestrianized shopping area and bought some sandwiches and drinks at the M&S food hall (is it no longer called Marks & Spencer?) to bring home and eat in our hotel room in lieu of another restaurant meal. A very welcome shower, food, a bitter beer for Geoff and the aforementioned pint of cider for me, and I've been blogging ever since!

And I believe that by now, two hours later, I have both caught up and sobered up.

gwyn

You know what isn't fun? Finding out you have a gas leak in your furnace. I had the plumber come out last week to look at a drain in my utility sink, which is next to the gas furnace and under the gas tankless water heater. Fortunately no drain problem (I was worried because it seemed to not be draining and I need to clean up all the cat stuff--and dog stuff, which I've held on to for too long when I should have donated it long ago), but the guy said as he was leaving that he smelled gas, but it had disappeared so he wasn't certain. I stuck my head back there and also had a brief whiff of it, so I called the gas company.

I guess they treat everything like that as an emergency even if you say you can't always smell it, so they sent someone out right away and he said as soon as he walked in the door "oh yeah, I smell gas." He was funny--very blasé about it all, but he worked on it for some time (while his meter beeped frantically and loudly the whole time OMG) and found that the threads were stripped on an elbow joint, which means it's been like that since October when it was installed.

Talk about nerve-wracking. I'm amazed that somehow my house hasn't exploded. This is the second time in the past few months that something could have burned down my house. Did you know that GFI electric outlets have a finite lifespan? I did not either! I found this out when I heard some racket from a GFI outlet in my kitchen and then this loud, terrifying pop. I had to replace four other outlets that were put in at the same time, at a fair cost, to avoid something like that happening again. Not that all GFIs fail as spectacularly, but they do fail I guess and it'd be great to not have your house burn down when they do—but apparently no guarantees! I'm also seriously side-eyeing the city inspector who signed off on the new furnace. I called the furnace folks and I was hoping they might call me back--I told someone what happened, but I would love to talk to the higher-ups more about it. I don't want to bust anyone's balls, but man, I think this is pretty important.

So that was fun. I've been trying to keep it together the past few weeks and mostly failing miserably--a lot of this stressful stuff might have been easier to handle if I didn't burst into tears on a constant basis. I just miss Blues so much. I keep finding myself starting to talk to him, and I tend to sleep really late because there's no need to get up and feed a cat. It feels weird to eat (especially a turkey sandwich, because he adored deli turkey and ham) without him pestering me endlessly to share. I'm barely going through my usual amount of milk and half and half because I'm not sharing it with him.

I missed the deadline again this year for signups for Into a Bar. I'm annoyed with myself, since I really wanted to do it this year so that I could get back into writing mode--it's a light challenge, low stakes, and so much fun that I felt it might really help. I owe two Fandom trumps Hate stories and I really want to start them, but I feel...shaky, I guess. It would be horrible to disappoint my bidders.

The reason I missed the deadline though is...maybe good? I don't know. I was heavily on the fence about whether I should get another pet what with my health issues. People are living up to 17 years or so with myeloma now, but the *average* life expectancy is still around 5 years, and often when it comes back (it does always come back after a remission), it comes back hard. But of course, Saturday night I drifted over to Petfinder...

I've always wanted a dilute calico (or tortoiseshell) and that was one of the types I am always looking at, but I figured the likelihood of finding a senior one was low since they are rare (I've looked at Petfinder sometimes and you don't see one anywhere at any age). But of course this exact time, there was a lovely senior dilute gal listed with a rescue way down near Chehalis, and the local gang, on our Sunday zoom calls, was like "do it do it do it" and saying it would be a mitzvah since she's 12, and next thing I know I'm trying to put in an inquiry. Petfinder just wouldn't work for me so I ended up using good old-fashioned email from their website and they got back to me last night. We set a time for a meet and greet for Wednesday, and it turns out this little gal is in Gig Harbor, actually, so since I live next to the ferry terminal, I can take the ferry over there.

I will let you know how it goes. I'm a nervous wreck about taking the ferry (it's the only ferry in a residential area and it's really stupid and challenging to get queued up for it) and I've never driven over there, only been a passenger. But it just doesn't make sense to drive over an hour south and then another hour north when I'm literally blocks away from the ferry. I still feel like I'm doing the wrong thing, I worry I could take a turn for the worse, etc. etc. But they say she's a total sweetheart and she's so pretty in her pictures. And I'm lonely.

Okay back to trying to de-doggify and de-cattify the house so she won't be overwhelmed if she does come home with me.

Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: Bigmouth Strikes Again

the_shoshanna

... before I fall over.

We got down to the hotel's cellar bar and restaurant a few minutes after the announced gathering time; the hotelier met us and showed us to where about twenty people were sitting in a circle and announced, "We have some Canadians!" He and his family are Dutch -- according to the hotel website, he/they moved here and started running it in 2004 -- and there are a whoooole lot of Dutch folks staying here! We fitted two more chairs into the circle, a waitress asked if we'd like drinks and I asked for a glass of merlot, and then I started chatting with the Dutch woman on my left. (I assume Geoff was chatting with the Dutch man on his right, but tbh I wasn't paying attention.) She said that she and many of the other Dutch guests were from the northern Netherlands, and there's a nearby airport with direct flights to Guernsey, so why not? And I imagine the fact that the hotelier is a native Dutch speaker doesn't hurt.

But we had only a few minutes to talk before everyone having tapas that night was called to go find their table: we're assigned tables here for meals, you look for the one with your room number on it. We were in a back corner of the cellar bar/restaurant area, right beside the actual bar (but this morning for breakfast we were assigned a different table, on the other side, next to big windows out onto the back garden that our room overlooks). The tapas dinner was excellent: hummus and rocket-and-herb salad and nice crusty bread; olives; patatas bravas; shrimp scampi (which I got all of, because of Geoff's aforementioned dislike of shellfish); lemon-roasted chicken; wee crispy Vietnamese spring rolls with a sweet chili sauce that leaned very pleasantly toward the "chili" side of that rather than the "sweet"; and for dessert, cream-filled profiteroles with chocolate sauce. And you could ask for seconds of anything; Geoff asked for one more piece of chicken and they brought him another whole dish of three. I refused to help him finish them, because I had to manage all the shrimp by myself, oh the horror.

And then we staggered off to bed.

Today we decided to do what is generally agreed to be the island's most challenging hike, along the southern coast. We started with an excellent breakfast (and I confess it's a bit of a relief not to be the only people in the breakfast room, with Elena our previous host chatting energetically at us and pressing food on us; she was very warm and friendly and enthusiastic, but at home Geoff and I don't even talk much to each other at breakfast, she was A Lot). We were shown to our pretty window-side table -- I would have been okay tucked into the dark back corner again if we had been, but I was very happy not to be -- were brought delicious coffee that would not punch Superman through a wall, and had our choice off a menu of about six different cooked breakfasts plus the spread of croissants, pains au chocolat, and white rolls; fresh watermelon, slightly stewed berries, and what I think were canned mandarin oranges and some other fruit; various cold cereals; packaged yogurts; and slices of cheddar, wedges of brie, and three kinds of cured meat. It was great, and I confess I wrapped a roll and a wedge of brie in my napkin and smuggled them out for trail food later. 😈

We planned to catch a bus from in front of the hotel to our hike's starting point, Portelet Harbour, just north of the island's southwest corner. Geoff's blog entry for today chivalrously fails to mention that I waved off the first bus that came because I misread the schedule and misremembered the route number and basically just screwed up and waved off the bus we actually wanted. No big deal, though; a different but equally suitable bus was supposed to follow in twenty minutes.

Please note the phrase "supposed to." It is load-bearing.

The other bus didn't come. We spent an hour waiting in chilly damp weather, while I vainly tried to shake bus information out of both Google Maps and the Guernsey bus app. I still have no idea if I misread that schedule too, or if the bus just didn't run for some reason, or what, but it wasn't a fun hour. Not that Geoff got cranky at me, he didn't, just that I was cold and frustrated and embarrassed! But finally a suitable bus showed up, and I was at least able to track our progress and know when we should get off. (So far the Guernsey buses also have electronic display screens, but the only thing we've seen them show is the time and the URL of the bus company, harrumph.)

The bus stop seemed a fairly bustling place, with a big hotel and a big bay and a snack kiosk and some very welcome public toilets, and also a welcome/refreshments tent for what seemed to be a fairly major organized run; when we set off along the coastal trail, counterclockwise, for the first while we met many runners in running vests and race pinnies/bibs coming the other way. A few of them were running with the help of poles, which I'd never seen runners do before. But considering some of the inclines they had had to run up, I can see why they'd want them!

It rapidly got sunnier and warmer, and I peeled off a lot of layers as we went, and in general it was the usual gorgeous hike, with spectacular views along the cliffs and over the ocean, and several German defensive emplacements (one with a biiig gun still mounted), and lighthouses and occasional signs explaining the historic thing we were looking at. (In general I've been impressed with the authorities on both Jersey and Guernsey who maintain these things: the trails have been in great shape and pretty clearly marked even though I've been glad to have GPS backup, and the signage of historical markers has been good.)

The trail wasn't challenging in the sense of being technically difficult, but it had a lot of ups and downs, as it navigated its way through places where the ocean has gouged deep bays into the cliffside. And the ascents and descents got longer and steeper and more common as we we went on, especially after we reached the southernmost point and turned to follow the coast east. At one point, as we stood staring up at what must have been at least our fifth extremely long and extremely steep stairway roughly cut into the face of a cliff, I told Geoff, "There will be a short delay while I pause to hate everything." He allowed that that was perfectly reasonable.

(Another conversation:

Geoff: Why do we have to go up and down and up and down and up and down all the time? Why can't we just only go down?

me: Next year we'll go to Escher Island. We just have to make sure we only walk around it counterclockwise.)

But there were also amazing views of those cliffs, and frequent benches on which to sit and admire the views, and profusions of flowers growing on the south-facing banks next to the path, and sweet-faced cows grazing or resting by the fence that separated their field from our pathway (one was industrially licking another one's ear! Other than mother cows with calves, I don't think I've ever seen cows groom one another), and five ponies of which two were flopped on their sides asleep and looking kind of ridiculous. And plenty of walkers coming the other way to say hello to, especially if they had friendly dogs. Plus we had plenty of trail mix and I had my bread and cheese from breakfast, and two full water bottles; I like the tap water here, thank goodness.

But after almost four hours we were ready to call it. So when our cliffside trail reached a German observation tower that could be accessed by road, we cut inland to walk the roads home to our hotel. It took us another 45 minutes to get there, but at least cars, unlike hikers, insist on reasonably level transits! And the roads (other than the main ones, which we were not on) are so small, and have so little traffic, that it's no problem to walk along them even though there's no sidewalk. At least, in daylight.

We staggered in, and I generously let Geoff have first shower, because that meant that I could spend twenty minutes not standing up. Anyway he's faster than me, so I usually want him to go first anyway -- but the prospect of just being able to collapse was very nice too.

Them it was back to the pub down the road for their Sunday carvery dinner -- slab o' meat! slab o'meat! as the VividCon gang used to chant. We had our choice of any or all of beef, lamb, gammon, and chicken, plus Yorkshire puddings, roasted carrots, roasted parsnips, potatoes both roasted in chunks and baked whole, cauliflower and cheese, broccoli and some other greens I wasn't sure of, a sort of mash of I think carrots and turnips, and other veggies that I don't even remember, plus two kinds of gravy and about six sauces. It was amazing. Also the barman gave me a guided tour of their draft ciders; I was sorry that I disliked the local one, which was quite dry, but I very much liked a hazy cider from an English brewery and had a whoooole pint of it.

We sat near several tables of other Dutch guests at our hotel; I mean, the pub is the closest restaurant and it has that 15% off deal! The couple next to us started chatting with us, which was nice except that I occasionally had trouble understanding their English (and of course we have no Dutch). She told us that one reason so many Dutch people were at the hotel was that there had just been a newspaper article on it back home, so she and her husband, and presumably a bunch of other folk, had figured: easy well-recommended vacation at a hotel run by a countryman, why not?

And then back home and omg to bed. Geoff went to sleep at 8:45, he was really wiped; I have stayed up to finish writing this, and also because I don't want to wake up at four am!

In news that may not surprise you, we are not doing a long ambitious hike tomorrow. I'm not sure what we're doing, in fact; my collapsing this evening took the form not of falling asleep before nine but of declining to do any planning or logistics. Whew!

the_shoshanna

I forgot to say that, as we were making our way along the wooded trail south, I saw a little spur track jut off it to the left (i.e., toward the edge of the sea cliff) and peering down it I saw a small building with a historical-marker sign, so we went to look. It turned out to be a stone two-room hut built as a watch post against the French in, iirc, the late seventeenth century -- and right behind it (that is, on the landward side) was a 4,800-year-old passage grave! Just minding its business and its dead for almost five thousand years. (This is it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Couperon_dolmen) It's so cool to be somewhere where we can just stumble upon such things!

the_shoshanna

Concluding the story of yesterday, beginning the story of today (NB: some non-graphic discussion of seasickness)

We finished our official hike at Mount Orgueil Castle, which is a huge ruin towering imposingly over the bay and the town of Gorey, which is of course why it was built there. Settlement on that spot goes back to Neolithic times, if I remember the signboard correctly, but this castle was primarily built to defend against the French, after the Channel Islanders had decided to maintain loyalty to King John (of Robin Hood legend fame) instead of the French. The negotiations around that decision are why the islands are still not part of the UK today, but remain "direct dependencies of the British crown." I bought something small with a British ten-pound note early on in our stay, and got change in Jersey pounds, which are different.

(Also, castle ruins like that sometimes make me think about how the ability to scan a bay and determine the likely approaches of both friendly and hostile arrivals, and know where and how to build a fortification to control passage, is a skill completely foreign to me.)

We wanted some lunch, and we knew that lots of buses would go through Gorey on their way back to St Helier (there's a reason we did the hike north to south, to end there!), so from the castle we wandered down to a semi-circle of shops and restaurants facing Gorey Pier, and strolled their length comparing menus until we settled on the one at the end, because for some reason I was craving pizza. We split a really good pizza with pepperoni and spicy ham and fior di latte, and another pint of beer. I'm generally not much of a drinker, but somehow traveling with Geoff leads me to regular day drinking! We like trying local brews, and we have few or no responsibilities (except for me keeping track of the logistics, and both of us having to stay on top of a few things at home), so it's one of the pleasures of a trip, for me. Except that I do still have a teensy weensy tolerance level, so I'm careful about amount.

Which can mean that I'm occasionally amazed at how much others can put away! At the table next to us at lunch there sat down a man and woman, probably a bit older than us, whom I initially, reflexively assumed to be a couple. They initially caught my attention because he ordered a beer and she ordered a bottle of wine, and I thought to myself how I could not imagine managing to finish a bottle of wine by myself, at lunch. Then he finished his beer, had some of her wine, and they finished that bottle and started on a second. Before they'd had any food, even. I would die.

At the point where they were just about finishing the first bottle, they asked if we would take a picture of them with his phone, which I willingly did, and we got to talking. They turned out to be an Irish brother and sister who had lived on Jersey for several decades; he was a schoolteacher and she was retired but I think she said she'd done something in the cosmetics line. Anyway, I started to wonder if there was something about us that attracted conversation from tipsy Irish Jerseyites! It was the kind of conversation where they talked much more than we did, but Geoff did manage to wedge some contributions in, and I mostly made interested murmuring noises. They were the first people we'd talked to who, on hearing that we were going from Jersey to spend ten days on Guernsey, cheerfully approved and told us we'd have a wonderful time! Also, iirc, that the produce is better on Guernsey. Also, on hearing that we'd been to Ireland (separately) in the distant past and might go again (together), she told us all about this pamphlet she'd found while she was digging through all her cupboards and shelves trying to find a lost credit card; she had turned up so much forgotten stuff, among which was this pamphlet listing guesthouses and homestays in Ireland. We got on the subject because when we told them we were staying in a guesthouse in St Helier -- I mean, that's in its name, it's the Franklyn Guesthouse -- they were astounded that there were any guesthouses left, they said they'd almost all been replaced by hotels. Anyway, we all agreed that guesthouses and B&Bs and small independent hotels are more fun to stay in than chain hotels, and she told us we had to see this wonderful pamphlet, so Geoff gave her his card with his email address and maybe she'll send us some scans or something. I confess I wonder how old this pamphlet is, given that she uncovered it while doing a big clear-out, but certainly it's not impossible that Geoff and I will want to go to Ireland at some point; a branch of his family came from Ballymoney, in fact.

(We asked them to take a picture of us, too, which Geoff has posted in his blog.)

The brother spent quite a while telling us about the big rugby match that would be played the next day (i.e., today) between Jersey and Guernsey: the Siam Cup (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siam_Cup). He urged us to try to see it, but it's not really our kind of thing so we made polite noises, and I made a mental note that pubs would probably be madhouses that evening.

Having finished our lunch and our half-pint of beer each, we left them to their second bottle of wine and caught a bus back to St Helier. By the time we pulled in, the pepperoni and spicy ham had made me extremely thirsty, so I was delighted to see that a small market of French vendors had been set up in one of the squares we walked through: a cheese dealer that I admired from afar, and sausages, and jams, and someone selling leather goods, and, as I had hoped, someone selling cider! I got a half-pint of a very refreshing "summer cider" for £3.50, I think it was. Since the vendors were all French, there were signs everywhere warning that credit card transactions would be billed in euros, but I was able to avoid that complication by paying with my five-Jersey-pound note.

We detoured a little on our way home to locate the hotel we'll be staying in on our last night; we have to come back from Guernsey to fly out of Jersey, and the Franklyn Guesthouse was full that night, so we have one night in a different place. Having located it, we went back to our current place to rest up and also pack, since we would have to be out the door at 6:45 am to walk to the ferry terminal. The ferry company had sent me several dire warnings that check-in opened an hour before sailing, and if we hadn't checked in by T minus thirty minutes our bookings would be canceled, no arguments no refunds no recourse. The crossing was to take a little over an hour.

I set two alarms juuuuust in case, but we woke up spontaneously eight minutes before they went off, go us. Pulled on clothes and staggered off to the ferry -- where I was very glad that we'd met that brother and sister the day before, because we turned out to be on the ferry with the Jersey rugby teams, going over for the cup match! The terminal isn't big but it has security like an airport; we didn't have to take out our liquids but we had to pull all our electronics out of our bags and empty our pockets, and they confiscated and bagged Geoff's pocketknife and multitool and told him he could get them back when we disembarked in Guernsey. Then we waited for almost an hour in a gate area that was jammed with scores of young men and women in Jersey RFC rugby uniforms, mostly ridiculously fit (I have never seen calf muscles like that in my life), some clearly support staff or friends/family rather than players but every bit as energized, many of them hauling huge bags of gear, a few of them clearly on whatever the rugby equivalent of "injured reserve" is (arm in a sling, leg in a cast, etc.), and all of them talking nonstop at maximum volume and yelling excited greetings at one another.

Eventually we boarded the ferry, and Geoff and I were directed to a seating area in a big cabin at sea level where we dumped our giant hiking backpacks in a luggage rack and, carrying our day packs, managed to snag a left-side window seat and the one next to it in a row of four; then there was a middle row of something like six, and then another row of four on the right side of the cabin, and maybe twenty or thirty of those rows in the cabin in all, like the coach section of a very wide plane. The seats were basically airplane seats, in fact, except that they were fixed at a slight angle of recline.

I was glad to have a window seat because I wanted to watch whatever view there was, but I was EXTREMELY GLAD to have a window seat (and also that given the morning's time crunch we'd skipped breakfast) once we really got going, because I don't know if that was an unusually rough crossing or if that's what they're all like but we were heaving up and crashing into the water, sending up big impact waves that would wash over the windows and completely block the view for a few moments as though we'd briefly submerged. A few of the crest-and-crash movements were forceful enough that people lifted right out of their seats yelling like they were on a roller coaster -- and then people started getting queasy. There was a lot of hasty passing around of extra sick bags, in addition to the ones in the seat pockets. At least one person two rows ahead of us puked. The guy on Geoff's other side started looking very worried and pulled out his bag, whereupon I started ignoring him and everyone else as hard as I could and looking rigidly out the window at the horizon -- when I could see it; it was frequently completely obscured by the waves crashing against us -- because while I've never had a problem on a plane and only very very rarely in a car, I do have problems on boats in rough seas when I can't see a horizon and especially when I have to hear-- you know what, let's just move on. I sang a bunch of Gilbert and Sullivan to myself ("I am the monarch of the sea!") and made a mental note to pick up some Dramamine or Gravol or whatever they call it here before getting on another ferry; as well as going back to Jersey on our way home, we want to take at least one day trip from Guernsey to one of the smaller islands, Herm or Sark or both. Also I will shank someone for a window seat if I have to; if I had been in the middle section I'd have been doomed. Geoff has an iron stomach, lucky man.

Anyway we all survived and staggered off the boat in St Peter Port, the capital of Guernsey. I did hear someone assuring one of the people who'd been sick that the return journey would be smoother, because the boat would be going with the wind instead of against it. The rugby people quickly regained their raucous enthusiasm, including one woman in the crowd two rows ahead of us who started loudly honking a bicycle horn as everyone was slowly shuffling forward in a packed excited mass toward the single exit from the cabin, and, well, there's more than one reason to shank someone on the ferry, is all I'm saying. No wonder they confiscated Geoff's knives. (He did get them back with no difficulty from a staffer at the end of the disembarking gangway.)

We walked about ten minutes through town to the visitor information centre, where I was told that they don't have printed maps of trails or hikes available (except for a fairly pricy book) but there's an app plus some printed maps that should do us fine, and where I saw with great interest that they were selling jars of chili crisp made with Guernsey seaweed -- I am definitely coming home with some of that! I fell in love with chili crisp a couple of years ago when it was the hot new trendy condiment, and it sounded intriguing so I tried out a few varieties. (The one I settled on as my favorite is Hot Crispy Oil https://hotcrispyoil.com/, fyi.)

Then we caught a bus a little ways out of town, to our hotel/B&B. When I was looking for places for us to stay on Guernsey, everywhere that looked good in St Peter Port itself was eyewateringly expensive, so I booked us into what looks like a nice place ten minutes' drive away but on several bus lines. It's right near the airport, and I had a moment of "oh no, maybe I should try to research flight patterns" and then I got a grip and asked myself how busy the Guernsey airport was really going to be? So far we've heard a couple of planes but it's fine.

We arrived at about 11 to find a sign saying that the front desk wouldn't be staffed until 3, but early arrivals were welcome to leave their luggage in the front hall entry while they went off to do whatever. (There were a lot of suitcases already stacked to the side.) Another note gave the wifi info, so Geoff and I prepared to unload some luggage, ensconce ourselves on the big comfy couch, and check email for a bit before heading to the pub down the road, which would open at noon and which gives a 15% discount to guests at this hotel, for our first meal of the day. But staff came through on their various morning errands and asked if they could help. At first they said our room wouldn't be ready until three (unless we wanted twin beds, which we did not), and of course we said no problem, we certainly didn't expect it to be ready this early though it would be a lovely surprise if it were, we're fine waiting. And then half an hour later they said they had a room for us! It's big, with a big window overlooking the courtyard, and we have a mini-fridge and a full bathtub rather than just a shower stall even though the hotel's website says that only "superior" rooms have them. So I guess they upgraded us! Sweet. I mean, I would be cheerfully polite anyway, and I absolutely understand that a booked hotel room probably won't be available until mid-afternoon, but it's awfully nice to be rewarded for cheerful politeness!

Geoff noticed a third note posted at reception saying that there were still a few places available for tonight's tapas dinner: meet in the hotel bar at 5:30 for intro drinks and then [list of delicious dishes I don't remember except that they looked yummy]. And we were up early, and not having to hunt around for a place to have dinner sounded great, so we booked in for that. Then we dumped our stuff in the room and went down the road to the pub for a good lunch and a shared pint of Butcombe ale, which we hadn't tried before except that at some point Geoff had a fish and chips where the batter was made with it, but that hardly counts. The pub was advertising its Sunday roast dinner, and Geoff wants to experience that, so we booked in there for six tomorrow evening. (It was also advertising that Monday is "pie night", with five different kinds of savoury pie on offer, which we also find verrrrry intriguing.)

Many of the restaurant staff we've met, both here and on Jersey (as well as the host of our guesthouse there), have clearly been nonnative English speakers; I imagine a lot of people come here from continental Europe to work in the tourist industry. At the Spanish-Asian fusion restaurant we went to twice, Geoff had a fun conversation about Spanish beers with the Spanish waiter. Today at the pub I ordered a ploughman's lunch, and the waitress didn't know what I meant, so I pointed at it on the menu and she said (more or less), "Oh, the plockman's."

And now we are tucked up in our room, blogging and otherwise farting around on the internet. There are people chatting loudly in the courtyard under our window, but I'm sure they won't be there after dark. There's also a jacuzzi and a barrel sauna in the courtyard; I wonder if they're free for residents, or if there's a charge? We brought our bathing suits for kayaking, after all, and weren't expecting to get any other use out of them...

But now it's time to get ready for dinner.

the_shoshanna

More about yesterday, and also about today

I (we) didn't blow off dinner last night, in the end; we went back to that Spanish-Asian fusion place and I had scallops and also some of Geoff's duck gyoza and crispy beef tataki roll, which latter was so good (and food had woken me up enough) that we split a second one. Also a pint of Liberation ale, and I also had some of his dessert. We do like sharing food. (Though I eat several things he doesn't care for, and there's almost nothing he eats that I won't, so I generally get the better of the deal! He did taste a bit of a scallop since he'd never had one before, though he usually detests shellfish, and while he didn't detest it he didn't much like it, either. So they were mine all mine.)

We were eating outside -- well, the restaurant had basically enclosed their entire dining patio in transparent plastic sheeting for warmth and against the possible rain, so it wasn't really "outside" any more, but it was certainly better ventilated than inside, and the only people eating out there were a couple who finished and left soon after we arrived, and a woman who sat down a few tables away and had a couple glasses of wine which going through her various bags. The restaurant had draped cushy blankets over the backs of most of the outside seating, for the use of customers who might be chilly, and also had a couple of outdoor heaters going: very civilized! Plus the seating on the side the woman was on was more like couches and coffee tables than chairs and dining tables; it was clearly meant for socializing more than meals. Anyway, by the time we were finishing dinner and she was finishing her second big glass of wine, our eyes met and we started chatting. She was from Ireland but had lived on Jersey for like forty years; she basically told us her whole life story, but I've forgotten almost all of it (look, I was really tired) except for her saying to me, "I lost my virginity here, darling." Oooookay, enough wine for you, maybe? She was yet another person who, on hearing that we're going to Guernsey for ten days, boggled at the idea. She said that Jersey is, like, ten years behind the UK, and Guernsey is fifteen years behind Jersey, but she didn't specify what scale she was measuring on, and I didn't want to ask... Look, Guernsey has decent bus service and wifi in our hotel, it's modern enough for us. (Also, during dinner I did a bit of phone research and turned up this page https://www.visitguernsey.com/articles/2023/local-beverages-tours-and-tastings-in-guernsey/ which looks like it can keep us entertained for a while 😀)

Then we came home and I slept really well, although I had climate-catastrophe dreams. Kind of like living in a disaster movie.

Today we did our last serious hike on Jersey, from Rozel at pretty much the northeast corner to Mount Orguiel castle and the town of Gorey below it, about halfway down the east coast. It took us maybe three hours? More of the same, basically: footpaths through woodland and small roads through residential areas and great views across the rocky and/or sandy tidal flats across the ocean to France on the horizon; one road was scarcely a car-width wide but was officially two-way and had a couple of tiny pullouts marked "passing place", but if you encountered an oncoming car anywhere else, one of you would be backing up a looooong way! I'm also interested by how it's completely unremarkable to park facing oncoming traffic (on what we in the US and Canada would call the wrong side of the road), and the way that parked cars can legally just take up the traffic lane, so that the two-way road functionally narrows to one lane and cars have to take turns going through. I think a lot of Jersey traffic patterns are only workable because there isn't much traffic in the first place.

We walked past the same enormous breakwater we had gone to with

trepkos, but we didn't go out on it this time. The wind and water were much calmer than they'd been on our previous visit, and Geoff got an ice cream and we sat and watched the bay for a bit. Further down the coast we enjoyed a rocky promontory called Jeffrey's Leap (or Geoffrey's; different authorities give different spellings) where a malefactor named Jeffrey or Geoffrey or Geffray or Geffroy was supposedly condemned to death and thrown off the rocks; the story is that he landed in the water, survived, boasted that he could do it again, jumped, hit the rocks that time, and died. Geoff took a picture of the site marker but did not replicate his namesake's foolhardiness.

And that only gets me halfway through today, but it's six-thirty and we have to go to dinner because we have to get up at crack of dawn tomorrow for the ferry. So I will continue this later...

the_shoshanna

Took a sleep aid last night, slept pretty well but not long enough. Today we went to the zoo, saw gorillas and capybaras and poison frogs and ducks and cranes and skinks and many other things, but sadly did not see giant otters or tamarins or a few other things that were apparently hanging out in inaccessible parts of their enclosures. Then we came home and I have been struggling mightily to stay awake because if I nap I'll probably just screw my sleep schedule even worse (and we have to be fully packed and out the door at 6:45 am the day after tomorrow to catch a ferry to Guernsey). We may just blow off dinner. I may fall asleep while typing this.