Seldom has a collective term been less appropriate: \u2018the Channel Islands\u2019 \u2013 as though these were in any sense (other than the geographical) a place. Entertained in my English mind had been a scatter of similar, pretty but perhaps over-manicured little islands stuck in the mid-Channel between Great Britain and France but sunnier, and where tax-avoiders are the indigenous population.<\/p>\n
Wrong, wrong, wrong. For family reasons I\u2019ve just spent some time on Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney, sadly missing Sark and Herm. My island-hopping trip, though short, showed me how wide of the mark these assumptions are. Guernsey is by no means manicured and is in places pleasingly unkempt, while Alderney is quite dishevelled. Mid-Channel? No \u2013 they all but hug the French mainland, hours by sea from the English coast.<\/p>\n
\nWhatever Guernsey thinks of Jersey (and vice versa), we English met only pleasantness<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Jersey alone is sunnier than Dorset; wealthy tax-avoiders exist but you hardly see them, and everything and everyone feels local. Not only is there absolutely no collective sense of Channel Island identity, but at least two of them \u2013 Jersey and Guernsey \u2013 actively dislike each other.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m fond of Jersey, loved Guernsey (my first visit) and love Alderney best of all; but if they weren\u2019t all dependencies of the British Crown (relics of the Normandy we once claimed) then they might as well be hundreds of miles from each other. Indeed, to travel between them it\u2019s sometimes easiest to fly via Southampton and, as I write, the only inter-island ferry is between Guernsey and Alderney. We took it, arriving drenched, storm-tossed and giddy. Air links are better, but mist, fog and a deeply unhurried attitude mean that when you are on a Channel Island, make no assumptions about when you\u2019ll be able to get off it.<\/p>\n
Jersey comes closest to our English preconceptions, reminding me of those swaths of Surrey that are not quite country yet not quite suburban.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seldom has a collective term been less appropriate: \u2018the Channel Islands\u2019 \u2013 as though these were in any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,24954,393,4884,1920,1144,712,183,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-45335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-channel-islands","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-jersey","15":"tag-northern-ireland","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-travel","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114390360743001887","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}