Travel Blog: A Day in the Channel Islands

After a very comfortable transfer from London to Southampton yesterday, we boarded Caribbean Princess around noon and took some time to wander around, familiarizing ourselves with the ship. She is very similar in layout to the Ruby Princess, that we sailed on last year with Norm and Barb, but has a few differences. For one, it has the 'shopping cart handle' bar called Sykwalkers above the stern. We gave it a quick visit - you reach it via an inclined enclosed ramp of sorts; it even has a moving sidewalk in case you don't want to (or can't??) walk up or down the incline. Pictures of it will come later.

But first, today was our first port stop, in the lovely town of St. Peter Port, on the isle of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. The islands are situated near the western end of the English Channel, only 8 miles from the coast of France, and because of their location, they are a mixture of English and French in history and in language, which is a mixture of English and Norman French.

The Channel Islands are actually made up of 4 major islands: Guernsey, Jersey, Sark and Herm. Archaeological digs have proven that the islands have been inhabited since at least 3000 BC and were part of the Gallic province of Rome. After that, they became part of the Duchy of Normandy, owned by William the Conqueror even before he conquered England. According to the fact sheet we received, the Islands still are not part of England but are possessions of the royal family (which is not the same thing). Actually, the island of Sark is a fiefdom, ruled by a hereditary lord - one of the last few in all of Europe. The Seigneur of Sark holds the fief from Queen Elizabeth II.

After all of that, and the fact that tourism now makes up a large part of the Channel Islands' revenue, not everybody seems happy about it. Judy made a small purchase in a local drug store and got a chewing out from the salesperson because she wanted to pay in British Pounds (even though that is the official currency) and she insisted on giving Judy her change in the local island currency. Oh well, it takes all kinds...

But we had a very nice look around town nonetheless. Here are a few photos:

For those fans of the Murdoch Mysteries on TV, this is a familiar
name in a very odd place...

Of course, there had to be a few good wishes for the royals...

We stopped for a half hour at the Guernsey Tapestry display. The residents of Guernsey wanted to do something special for the millennium, and after a number of suggestions and discussions, they took the idea of making tapestries to depict the history of the island. It goes back to at least 1066, so the islanders had about 1000 years to cover. A good thing the island also has 10 parishes, so each one was given a whole century to condense into a tapestry. Working with a local designer, they chose the people/places/events they wanted to show, and designed the work down to the choice of stitches they would use in each area. The work is gorgeous and quite intricate; you listen to the audio description of each tapestry as you look at it. By the knowledgeable eye of an experienced handcrafter, it is wonderful work that took many skilled needles to finish, and serves as a beautiful way to make sure that Guernsey's history is not quickly forgotten. Unfortunately, we couldn't take photos of the tapestries, but they did have a small sampler in the shop. Here's what it looks like:

As a treat at the end of our walk, we all got ice cream cones from a local shop. The Guernsey and Jersey cows were first bred on these islands where they got their names, and are known to give excellent milk, and cream, and butter. That ice cream sure tasted good!!

Too bad it was a short port stop, otherwise we might have been tempted to try one of the waterfront fish/seafood restaurants for lunch. Everything sure looked and smelled great! As we left St. Peter Port, we agreed that we were pleasantly surprised by how much there was to see, and we hadn't even explored any of the rest of the island.