The Island of Jersey

Our last day still dawned a little on the overcast and cool side, although we had been promised better weather as the day progressed. Good thing, as we were only visiting until 2:00 in the afternoon!

Low tide. There are some huge tidal differences in Jersey,
ranking just behind the Bay of Fundy and Seattle

Our chosen shore excursion was to a winery, only because it seemed so strange that anyone would be able to produce wine on an English island off the coast of France. The ship's head sommelier, Tilmar, was also very curious as he was our tour escort.

Not only did we have a winery tour, but our bus driver and guide took us around about half of the island before dropping us back at the port for our tender.

For some reason, we didn't think that Jersey is as big an island as it turned out to be. It might be that the islands we saw from Guernsey on our last trip were the very much smaller ones of Herm and Sark. The trip to the winery took about 1/2 hour and wound up to the heights, through some very picturesque villages outside of St. Helier.

Jersey cattle. That breed made famous by a
chocolate bar originates here on the island

The La Mare Winery and Distillery is the only winery on the island. It is owned by a former wine merchant from London who decided, once he had moved to Jersey, to plant a few vines of the appropriate types of grapes and make a bit of wine. Now the winery has about 6 acres planted of 4 varieties, and their wines are a blend of various of them. Monica tasted a white similar to sauvignon blanc, another sweeter variety and then a red blend that was actually quite nice. Maybe that was because it was served with chocolate!

Apple trees from which they make their cider

The growing season is a bit different on Jersey because
of the climate. Harvest time is October to November
rather than September

Not only do they make wine, sparkling wine and apple cider, but the winery has a chocolatier on staff who had been challenged to go to France and create a chocolate blend that would go well with their red wine. They sell that chocolate, a few other flavours, and fudge made with cream from the local herd of Jersey cows.

A still that is used to make brandy at
La Mare

They happened to be corking the sparkling wine when we had our tour.
The extreme right side machine freezes the sediment and pops
it out of the bottle necks and the far side inserts the
corks and places the cages on the bottles.

Love that sign! This is the chocolatier's workspace

The owner's house is beautiful and the gardens around the winery are gorgeous. The hydrangeas were blooming profusely and in beautiful shades of purple and blue.

Once we left the winery, we had a bit of a whirlwind tour of the west end of the island. The winery is actually on the north side of the island, almost straight across from St. Helier. Since we made no stops, we don't have lots of detail on what we saw (we couldn't remember everything the guide told us, he crammed so much into the drive). We did learn that Jersey is a protectorate of Britain. The islanders make most of their own laws, and rather than having representatives at Parliament, they are answerable to the Crown instead.

Jersey was the only British territory that the Germans occupied during World War II, and they spent quite a lot of money on fortifications. Nowadays various of these buildings have been put to some rather ingenious uses - what used to be a watchtower can now be rented for a vacation home, and an old bunker by the sea has been turned into a fishmonger/restaurant:

Faulkner Fisheries out on that short spit of land

One of the many beaches

Les Mielles Nature Reserve

The La Moye Golf Course. One of the European Tour
Championship stops is on Jersey

La Corbiere Lighthouse. You can see that there seems to be no
way to get there...that's because the road is under water at
high tide. Hard to see here, but it's still there.

Some houses around the town of St. Aubin, near St. Helier

Yet another unexpected surprise at a new destination! The whole southern part of England needs some more in-depth exploration.

The only cloud over the morning was the long lineup for tenders to go back to the ship. This is practically unheard-of with Crystal, so there had to be another explanation. The port is rather busy with ferries, cargo ships and pleasure craft all coming in and out through a fairly narrow opening in the breakwall. Every time a larger vessel moves around, everything else has to stop, and of course there were two cargo ships and a large passenger ferry holding up all the other traffic just while we waited. There were lots of grumbles from the line around us until they saw that 3 of our 5 tenders were all coming in one behind the other to pick us up. We did end up leaving a bit late but we still arrived in Dover for our 3:00 A.M. docking.

The end of another wonderful cruise with Crystal. We renewed a lot of acquaintances with the staff - one of whom, Anthony, still remembered us from Harmony!! - and made some new friends among the guests. We hope to keep in touch and perhaps see them again on our next cruise.