A Lap of Jersey

on the ferry over I had a lot of thinking time apart from dwelling on the duty-free and it's utter for utility I was considering how we visualize holidays and how we consume them emotionally this was brought to Sharp focus by this tourist video which plays on a loop both in the waiting room and on the ferry itself so you'll have plenty of time to contemplate it now in it you see a white family having a blissful white middle class for time and having all these Pitch Perfect evenings on the beach I mean as these things go it's modestly well shot they're packing fast Superior kit that I'm using to shoot all these episodes so I shouldn't throw stones in that particular glass house but let's be honest here in the UK we are kind of love sick for the sight of the Sun and that makes us very easy marks for selling holidays we'll all pay a remarkable premium just for the suggestion that there might be some sunshine now when I went to Guernsey last time I pretty much hit the jackpot with the weather now I was acutely aware this is something of a novelty now it was great for me especially when I'm trying to shoot nice footage but there's a rather heavy your experience may vary parenthesis hanging over all of it this was brought home rather keenly as the ferry was approaching Jersey this is Jersey at least Jersey is in there somewhere but yeah when the weather is more UK standard suddenly the channel has become a lot less attractive I know this doesn't sound like a particularly profound apotheosis like what rain can spoil a holiday yeah there's an exciting thesis to examine but while I'm aware that in fair weather the Channel Islands are Bliss that's mainly because of the cliffs the beaches and The Great Outdoors in the Rain the islands lose a lot of their appeal so he pulled into hell yeah uh oh wait I haven't done the intro reel yet I've got at least vaguely stick to a format who knows maybe one day we'll have some credibility to go with it so I was a bit lukewarm on some Pete's support last time which I'm kind of reconsidering now so on the journey this time to avoid confusion I did stop off in Guernsey first before we headed over to Jersey and this time around when we pulled it to Peter's I was like oh wow that's uh what a great view it's great to be back whereas when we pulled into some Helia I was more like wow seriously now I know most ports aren't Fame for being an edifice of artistic Wonder but still sinhalia is not all that promising on first view by the way it's well known there's quite a inter-island rivalry between Jersey and Guernsey so naturally being a gentleman I will absolutely be stoking that Coral with lots more side-by-side comparisons so yes and Helia seemed like a pretty poor start it kind of reminded me of Southampton oh there's a low bar to clear there's a fort on the hill above which had the potential to be pretty and I mean goodness knows I love a good Fort but in a textbook move of 1960s town planning some bright Sparkles were like hey let's take a huge dump on the heritage of the town and build a Leisure Center here Leisure centers are the future guys no one wants historic sites so complimenting the architecture rather like an unaccompanied toddler with air horn compliments an evening at the Royal Ballet they dumped some white domes and Windows on it yeah smooth move there really future proof but hey it's not all bad news for Centralia more on that in a bit Now spoiler alert these episodes are getting released uh very much out of sequence due to me being another compulsive liar who makes television but the day previous we'd be doing lap of Sark something you'll be seeing pretty soon now my mate had suggested you know hey your bike hire sounds like a good shout and I was like oh no no no we'll just walk it it's like no distance at all and well yeah you can wait to see how that turns out but if you recall I didn't quite complete my lap of Guernsey last time despite that oh so catchy title and the odds of me making around Jersey bearing in mind it's about half as large again as Guernsey we're very slim indeed so this this time we made strength of the bike higher now there's quite a number of bike hire guys to choose from these guys were close to the port but they wanted something like a 25 pound deposit whereas these guys hooked us up with a bike 1pm till 1 pm the next day for just 15 quid now I'm not a frequent horror of bikes so maybe that's just standard but getting the better part of two days on the bike 15 quid was pretty great also in a Twist that neither mean or the weather forecasts are coming about an hour after stepping off the ferry the weather had gone from this to this so that's a curveball I'd mark this day down as the rainy day but a short cycle to St braylee's Bay and are you kidding me [Music] now we've been through this before when you have a beautiful view it's most commonly accompanied by violently average food at an inflated price because captive audience however sticking out like an anomalous date point on an otherwise tiny best fit curve Kismet Cabana the view is ridiculous and what's this a restaurant with some great thought into design and serves nice food lots of vegan options and and they accept card and they accept Paypal how did this happen so yeah I have a lot of love this place we had a delicious lunch please please go and support these guys just for actually doing things you know well they really deserve it I just hope they haven't packed in in the time it's taken me to cut this video together so from there we headed back towards Saint Helia and let's talk about Jersey more generally and let's get that low angle shot of the flag in again most people have got some awareness of Jersey you know Channel Island somewhat rural tax Haven yeah one thing struck me about Jersey is how neat everything is there's perfectly manicured flower beds exploding from just about everywhere even the traffic islands and the railings look like they've been freshly polished only a few minutes ago also striking how many of the houses are new builds and yet there is a lot of wealth on display in Jersey Yachts tall iron gates to fortify your house perfect Lawns and even private Lakes our elitism is hilarious so even though the island does have that somewhat more relaxed old-fashioned politeness going on don't expect to be able to move there in time soon I'm pretty sure the only way you can afford property there is by trafficking in Narcotics humans or human organs still I wouldn't want you to think I was leaning left now I'm sure only some of the inhabitants are the fetid spawn of late capitalism Jersey is also noteworthy for having a big tidal range and this really is insane the difference between high and low tide is 10 or even 12 meters on some of the most extreme cases that means if you dropped a fairly average two-story house at the water's edge at low tide at a fairly normal high tide the sea would be two meters over the roof the south coast of Jersey is dominated by Saint Albans Bay which is a beach that cuts a three mile Notch from snorbins in the west to sahelia on the East it's a spectacular geographical feature but I'm using it just having this huge area of beach doesn't actually make it a good beach to sort of Lounge on when the tide goes out it's probably a short walk to the airport than to get to the water and as you can see it exposes a lot of rocks it's a little bit surreal actually and there seem to be a pretty big deposit of algae Left Behind uh yeah it did smell pretty bad so this wouldn't be the place to Lounge on the sound necessarily you know not stopping you just there are nicer spots we'll explore later so we cycle across the scoop of the bay which is pretty expensive uh balancing my camera on the handlebars and attempted to film was gonna be about a sensible as practicing firepoint at a petrol station so no GoPro style point of view footage sorry guys uh we cut Inland just a couple hundred yards to go to a local park to see this uh now while we're in Jersey I had a bit of a side quest collect-a-thon kind of going on you saw the guerns he had quite a number of Neolithic sites and for this time around Jersey Heritage are very obligingly put together a PDF to show where they all are now of course I'm far too sexy and important to bother trying to see all of them on the list just kidding not only am I neither sexy nor important I smashed that list like it was dispensing free money and espresso however if I go through every single one I'm reckon I'm going to lose most of my viewers so I'll just show you the highlights in this video but I'm already hoarding footage for some sort of Neolithic compilation one day just don't be shocked if it's not anytime soon we pretty much headed back to Helio at this point which means coffee now if you recall I was a bit lukewarm on the coffee in Guernsey uh not horrible but not exactly choirs of angels singing either still the one bonus from all the people hoarding wealth here is the coffee game is this is locks and they definitely knew what they're doing uh we wheeled our bikes through the town center it's pretty nice it's a welcome break from the chrome and glass and motorways that you see when you get in the actual field the channel lines are trying to portray themselves you know this will focusing quaint yeah that kind of comes across here so yeah it's it's all right we weaved our way to the other side of the town we timed our stretch along this South East part of the island with the tides so we could walk out to here this is La mote it's one of the tidal islets that's a little more than just bare rock it's actually on the PDF as a site but you can't really see a lot of Neolithic stuff you'd have to be content with just the gorgeous if weird kind of tidal landscape instead if you were making a low budget sci-fi film this would be a good spot we ducked Inland a little way to hit another on the PDF then kept going east to aim for our accommodation as the evening was still a ways off we passed a patchwork of church yards and Fields eventually making it to the coast to be greeted with views of Mont Argyle In the Evening Sun and before long we were just below it in the rather picturesque Village of gory it was named after a massacre of 900 Islanders in the 17th I'm just kidding that's like never can resist an obvious plan the castle did successfully hold out against French invasion several times though so it probably did get a bit bloody around here so we were staying here I didn't really take much footage of this at all it's uh it's one of those things I only discovered this when I sit down try and cut these together accommodation generally looks really dull on camera compared to I don't know castles beaches and monuments older than the pyramids but it does mean that when I try and talk about these things I suddenly have to tell rather than show I'm actually not entirely sure what to tell you about accommodation so I don't like paying lots of money on this so paying only 33 quid for a night felt good I can't remember if it was the cheapest I found on the island but it was definitely close so it was a tick from me thing is I don't really understand you people who drop a couple of hundred quid on a hotel just to have someone awkwardly flatter you and bring you things I mean I just want somewhere to lay my head where the blankets won't give you an STI and paying more than 40 or 50 Quid a night is completely alien to me so you're welcome to not take my advice and there are definitely no shortage of Jersey hotels to overcharge you but this is great if either you or just a bunch of mates just want a cheap place for a night um I got off especially early to catch the sunrise and well [Music] when I think back this morning I have to fight the impulse to not just leap on a ferry and go back I mean of course these are conditions that you can't just instantly recreate a summer morning when the Sun not only shines but Rises at ten to six but it was just one of those perfect moments where everything just seems right this was my chance to see the whole east side of the island uh there's quite a bit of up and down use of pass from one Bay to the next and then another my eventual goal was this I mean of course it was this is Lake Cooper on dolman not huge but you know not nothing either and continue the fine tradition of spoiling my own videos uh this is the furthest north and west I got so no I did not complete the lap of Jersey I'd already pretty much given up on the idea of a complete circuit I could have done it if I just focused on doing that and didn't stop to see anything else properly but all told the 30 or so hours I had on the island were not enough to complete the entire perimeter and film a travel episode and I'd know maybe enjoy myself at some point so I completed a lot more of it than I thought I would we'll be back to the North Coast later for now I was freewheeling it back down the hills and back to our accommodation and oh catching this other dolman on the way back which was obligingly located in the field opposite uh we got a bit of a close at Mount Argyle Castle though we had to be on our way before he actually opened his doors we were aiming roughly for the middle of the island to catch this uh this is pronounced hugby you could be forgiven for calling it the huge B if you're not entirely sure what you're looking at it's a man-made Mound and one of the largest European passage Graves but the Normans thought the top was missing a chapel so they built one up there making the site of a bit of a weird mashup you can go into the passage it's pretty low to keep my backpack on was a mistake um it's a bit too dark to really get proper footage it's probably too far away to walk comfortably but only about a 20 minute cycle away we were back in Centralia for a spot of coffee and we were here this is dandy it's small it makes really good coffee uh we grabbed a bit of an early lunch at Cafe Panda which was brilliant another coffee at cargo coffee bar so I'd be able to make some sort of informed comparison fuel but between the three we dropped in on which is locks Dandy and cargo it was a complete Dead Heat I couldn't pick between them they were all really great so any of them you know would do just fine that's not very interesting it's a hot take but that's what it is it was almost time to return the bike so we were heading back the other way across the bay and with the tide in it couldn't have been more different than the previous day now while I'm not a military strategist um out in the bay you have two Fords there's Fort Elizabeth on the Eastern end of the bay and Saint Albans fort on the west now the water is a great defensive feature strong position that Advantage does kind of disappear pretty frequently though I mean for about half of the day you can pretty much stroll over there twirling a cane so yeah I don't know I don't really get it it was at this point that Rick and I were parting company uh he asked not to be on camera which I mean I understand I've stopped putting myself in these episodes too but minus bike it was now time for a change I put on a quick stride to make it a long distance relates Bay uh once again it was a glorious day and got to see the town we glimpsed across the sound that previous day again the perfect flower beds the uncharacteristic modern houses of the rich but oh what a beach briefly had a glimpse of Saint berelay to church which goes back as far as the Normans and then hopped on a bus to the north of the island on the way got a glimpse of the western side of the island which is pretty much one massive Beach but we're back that way in a bit the bus is pretty great use them they are frequent pretty inexpensive can't complain hopped off at lagrev De lek I'm not really bothering to do the gerace kind of pronunciation just assume it's more French than I'm pronouncing it it's actually pretty crowded considering the sheer square footage of beach that Jersey has on basically every point of the campus but this was just a start point so I wasn't looking for a space to spread a towel I mean who needs beaches when I had a PDF to complete uh what followed was quite an afternoon I was swelteringly hot and I had a sizeable bag on it was on foot through what was definitely a more rural quarter of Jersey from the North Western tip you can actually see Sark and the other Islands just quite clearly in the distance admittedly time was pretty tight and I was trying to Circle navigate the island on foot and the final whistle was going to be at 7 pm uh the next Neolithic site wasn't quite as impressive in terms of material remains but it's set in a very impressive sort of Cliff setting eventually it brought me out to this view ah looks how I did it looking back I was a little too scorched to be basking in the glory of it but even then I was still appreciating just how incredible the tour was snake down the hill with all the Bear exposed rock the landscape seemed very different to the rest of the UK it reminded me more of well Greece actually I had to head Inland to take off the next one off the PDF uh follow the path that scarcely even looked like a path got there eventually but at this point the heat was finally getting the better of me oh extraordinarily thirsty and not particularly close to a shop so abandoning the lap just out of pure pragmatism and for now I headed to the nearest civilization more Farms along the way there is a really puzzling habit of letting your chickens just loose to wander around in in the road not just one random Place either no one seemed to be that fast about cooping them I mean never mind cars I have no idea how you gathered them all in again but I guess they must become of some sort of sense to it I was still somewhat out of my way and I still had a couple of things I wanted to see before my flight back so I linked a couple of buses together Vice and Norman's to get me back on track and it did surprise me how in the three hours since I'd been there since Orbitz had once again transformed utterly with the tide so another bus got me out here this is La corbie famous for a couple of lighthouses the sun was just perfectly in the wrong place to get a proper shot of that without it being complete out for this one well I can't decide if it's beautiful or crazy ugly maybe somewhere in between now I'm trying to include this last corner of the island it meant walking what was supposed to be an hour and 45 minutes to the airport in just over one hour now what times on Google are often a little on the pessimistic side they're not hard to improve on but this was going to be tight so I'm pretty much running by the side of the road like a total nerd once again the view from only a few hours ago was completely transformed with the tide going out I pretty much jogged up the side of the hill to get to this uh this last sergeant and um scarcely even stopping I then jogged my way alongside the expansive Rock I was on the home straight obviously this wasn't peak time for filming as it turns out this was the one thing I hadn't accounted for when I was on this route that this bit here is a pretty sizable Hill the actual entrance seemed to be forever away but I finally made it to the airport I swear that I have never sweated to the extent I did that day my back was so wet that even my bag was sodden I was a bit later than I'd usually like to be for a flight but like Guernsey airport this is not a large space barely three people in front of me at security clear in less than five minutes and finally we can rest it had been an incredible day at one of the most memorable slices of the summer we took off just after Sunset so I missed that but never mind it had been a beautiful day stop everything the Sun is setting for a second time I just couldn't process this I mean how unrealistically amazing is that okay rounding up still can't really believe that what starters this became this honestly can't tell you for sure if this is what a standard Jersey summer feels like but perhaps out of blind luck the sun Shone and I had the most amazing 30 hours I think I could have had whilst still in UK territory 30 hours is not sufficient to see everything kind of as life proved my final lap looked like this by the way with some caveats and not in one contiguous line mine but that was my lap and hey I mean I'm still pretty pleased with that so for example I didn't really get a chance to look at the World War II stuff even though it's kind of literally everywhere like Guernsey it has some war tunnels you could visit oh and a hamster at that pot in a while so Jersey is Richard Guernsey is cuter Jersey has the insane beaches and tidal range and the Castle's more impressive Guernsey is easier to get to Jersey has the coffee Guernsey has a bunch of mates I'd know the if you had to pick one dichotomy is always a dumb one they're really cheap to get to so unless you're planning on getting so wasted that you get banned from the Channel Islands in perpetuity just go and see both when the opportunity arises but start again otherwise it would feel like a slight step down wait does that count as uh well you know whatever this is taking too long it's really hard to keep the runtime down on these so next time Sark uh go and listen to the EP of the music you've been hearing the background and we'll catch you guys for the next one [Music]

Channel: Forest Archaic Collective

Views: 11,462

Keywords: Channel Islands, Jungle, Melodic, Travel, English Channel

Id: a2HNpav4mxI

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2020