etched in stone

Sea kayaking!

Today we had an early breakfast, because we had to walk out the door at 8:40 to catch a bus to the place where our kayak tour would launch. The earliest option for breakfast at this small guesthouse is 8, which is what we'd requested, but we went into the breakfast room at 7:40, since the muesli and fruit and such were already out, and she'd said we could take milk from the fridge if we were making coffee or tea with the kettle and supplies in our room, so we figured the same would apply to taking it for an early muesli breakfast. She came in about ten minutes later and when we said we didn't need a cooked breakfast today, given our time limitations, she was having none of it! She pressed us ("You have to eat!") until I said I'd have one egg -- yesterday we had two each, plus baked beans and tomato and basically the full English™️ -- whereupon she brought out two eggs for each of us, plus toast, slices of cheese (Geoff's not a big fan of cheese and I didn't eat the cheddar because this was getting to be a lot of food! but I admit I delightedly chowed down on the Wensleydale with cranberries, mmmmmm), and sliced tomato and cucumber, not to mention trying to give us beans as well, but that we did manage to fend off. She's very enthusiastic!

Even so, we did manage to get out in good time, and walked down to the center of town to catch a bus to a stop called Ouaisne Junction, and if you think we had the slightest idea how to pronounce that, you're mad. We'd asked our host (who is from Latvia) and she took a guess as more or less "wash-neh," but when we showed the written word to the bus driver he pronounced it basically "way-nay" or "way-neh," so that's what we're going with.

Anyway, here on Jersey the buses only stop at a stop if a stop is requested, if someone on board presses the signal that they want to get off there or if someone is waiting there to get on; otherwise they just blow past it. Nor are the stops announced. So you can't just figure you want the ninth stop and count, and you can't always see the stop name as you blow by, and of course we have no idea what our stop looks like. Fortunately the local bus app can track you along a bus route map that shows the stops; it's supposedly also showing live tracking of the bus, but the "live" tracking is often a minute or two outdated, so our little location dot was often a stop or two ahead of the bus icon 😂. Still, I was able to track us and know when to signal that we wanted the next stop. Yet another way in which travel without a phone and a data plan just isn't really feasible any more...

We walked ten minutes from the bus stop down a country road to a lovely beach, and the van from the kayak company, towing a giant rack of kayaks, passed us on the way. We got there and meet up with our guide Derek, who was indeed the husband of Trudie who was our guide yesterday; we were already in bathing suits under our clothes, so we stripped down and got fitted with sleeveless wetsuits and windbreaker jackets and floatation vests and also helmets juuuuuust in case we dumped a kayak and landed headfirst on a rock, and put on the water shoes we'd brought from home (which we wear for lake kayaking there). There were supposed to be three other people on this morning's tour, but their ferry had been delayed, so it was just me and Geoff. And then we launched! The water was cool when we waded in to launch, I wouldn't have wanted to go swimming, but with the wetsuits and jackets -- and exertion -- we were perfectly comfortable.

We spent a good two hours paddling along the coast, with almost constant (and fascinating) narration from Derek. He pointed out Nazi fortifications (including what we'd thought was a seawall along the edge of our launch beach, but nope, it was an anti-tank barricade) and caves that were inhabited by Neanderthals for thousands of years, and different kinds of seabirds (many of which are experiencing population crashes) and geological features and formations, and told us lots of stories about life and resistance during the Occupation (which his mother lived through). The wind and water were active but not too strong or choppy; paddling was quite manageable even for us lake-kayaking amateurs.

Exxxxxxxcept when Geoff didn't see a barely submerged rock in front of him, bumped it, momentarily grounded his kayak, and then tipped and dumped it and himself trying to get unstuck! But Derek had walked us through how to get back in before we even put the kayaks in the water -- these were sit-on kayaks, so they didn't fill up with water or anything -- and he paddled over, righted the kayak, and steadied it for Geoff to hoist himself back into (onto) it, while I hovered a safe distance away. Geoff was drenched, of course, but not even bruised, and the helmet was not needed, and it was warm and sunny enough that he didn't get chilled or anything, and mostly dried off pretty quickly.

After two hours we returned to our launch point, stripped out of all our borrowed gear, and said goodbye to Derek with many thanks; both this and yesterday's walk were great experiences, well worth their cost, and we plan to leave some glowing Tripadvisor reviews. The beach had perfectly acceptable public toilets, which I ducked into to change out of my swimsuit into the bra and underwear I'd brought with me, a bathing suit not being particularly comfortable as everyday walking clothing; Geoff's suit, of course, functioned fine as walking shorts. Derek had told us the pub next to the beach had excellent beer, but we wanted food more and also, having had a very pricy though tasty dinner last night, didn't want to pay their prices, so instead we got a couple of sandwiches from the beach-shack cafe, plus a few handfuls of the trail mix we hit a grocery the other day to put together, and that did the trick just fine. Geoff had filled a water bottle at the guesthouse this morning, but unfortunately I really dislike the taste of the tap water there, so I only had a swallow.

Then we walked along the long wide sweeping curve of the beach in the opposite direction from where we'd kayaked; we'd gone south and east around a point, and now we walked north and west, passing a variety of people enjoying the beach, a group gathered and getting ready around a rack of canoes whose towing van identified them as Healing Waves Ocean Therapy, pretty cool! and also a number of waterfront hotels, one of which Geoff just looked up as I'm typing this and informed me costs about $400 a night, jeepers.

We ended up at St Brelade's Parish Church, which had a beautiful stone ceiling inside, and very warm and welcoming flyers and info posted, and also a vast and fascinating graveyard around it, with stones as old as [illegible] and as recent as last year. There was also an older side chapel building with partially preserved paintings on the ceiling that the posted info said dated from 1375 and 1425, mostly too faint to fully appreciate but including a beautiful and well-preserved (or perhaps well-restored?) Annunciation.

By that time we were pretty wiped, so we walked up to the main road and waited only ten minutes or so for a bus back into the center of St Helier, the capital, where we're staying. No need to paranoically track our progress when we're taking it to the end of the line! We wandered homeward through a big shopping area, and I seized the opportunity to check the backpack options at the local outdoors supply store, but my ideal unicorn backpack remains sadly mythical. We weren't terribly hungry, but stopped at the same nearby cafe we went to before, where we split a really good teriyaki salmon bowl, and Geoff got a pint of a draft beer he'd liked the other day and I tried a bottle from what Derek had told us is now the only craft brewery still operating on the island. The brewery is unappetizingly called Stinky Bay, but the IPA I got of theirs was delicious.

Then we staggered home at about five-thirty, showered (unfortunately both the water pressure and the hot water supply could be better here, but it's a functional shower and that's what we needed), and started writing up the day. And here we are!

If you're enjoying my trip blog, you might also enjoy Geoff's, which is at https://geoff-hart.com/fiction/Channel-Islands-2026/index.html -- he sets up the outline in advance, so click each day that has actually happened to see his writeup. Eventually he'll probably post some pictures, which I won't be doing (except maybe after we get home); I'm the logistics officer of our trips, but he's the photographer.

Tomorrow is Liberation Day! Our plan is just to head into the center of town after breakfast and try to find a place from which we can watch the ceremonies and reenactments, and then hopefully there will be festivities and whatnot. Also hopefully it won't rain much; today's weather was spectacular but it's not going to last.

Turns out that trepkos lives nearby! We've been internet acquaintances since forever, and this morning we met in person at the same cafe where Geoff and I had dinner last night: a great time chatting, and she has kindly offered to show us around some favorite places on Sunday!

But today she went to run errands and we headed off to catch a bus to a three-hour guided walk across the seabed where huge swaths are exposed at low tide (the sea floor slopes quite gradually and some of the tides are quite huge). I don't have time or brain to write it up properly but it was wonderful: lots of information about shellfish (our guide showed us a live limpet! I've always heard "clung like a limpet" and so on, but she knocked one off a rock so we could see the actual animal. And then put it back, and we could see it shimmy about a little as it resettled itself), and about neanderthal and later early human inhabitants, and anecdotes of people trapped by the rapidly rising tides, and just incredible views across the exposed sand flats and rocks, and channels still running with the tide going out (and later in again), and some commercial oyster beds. There were nine other folks on the tour, and we enjoyed chatting with them too.

Bus back to the main depot in the center of town, where we located the place to catch another bus at 9 tomorrow morning for our kayaking tour with a parallel branch of the same company (probably led by today's guide's husband; she's originally from Germany and met him when she came here and went on a kayak trip he led!). Then we stopped for dinner at a likely looking restaurant in a square on the way home: also very tasty. I pulled out my phone and booked us a table at last night's cafe for Saturday night (day after tomorrow); Saturday is Liberation Day, the 61st anniversary of the island's liberation from Nazi occupation, and there will be big celebrations (the guy in the tourist info centre said ten thousand people would be in town!), and we don't want to have to worry about finding a place that evening.

And now it is late and I must go to bed. The time change and being brain-fried yesterday led me to break my 220-plus Wordle streak, darn it!