Alderney East

Breakfast at the Georgian House, scrambled egg and smoked salmon, was a repeat of yesterday’s, and we also went back to the same bread shop for provisions for lunch. It was another lovely day.

We retraced our steps out of St Anne to the east, descending to Saye Bay by way of a monument to the foreigners who lost their lives here, in German ‘slave labour’ during the war. Not the island’s finest hour. We got down to the campsite at Saye Bay, but had some difficulty in finding the way down to the beach. It was lovely when we got there!

We walked through a tunnel to Corblets Bay (which some maps into Arch Bay and Corblets Bay). It was low tide and so we were able to walk across the beautiful beach all the way to Corblets Fort. We walked around the fort to emerge by the Mannez Lighthouse.

There were forts everywhere – we passed the ruined Fort Les Homme aux Floraines and followed the narrow causeway to Fort Hommet Herbe. Near the causeway we encountered one of Andy Goldsworthy’s "Alderney Stones". They are actually made of mud, so not surprisingly (and deliberately?) they are in various states of disrepair.

Just before Fort Raz (another Fort with a proper causeway), we followed a route inland through a Victorian rifle range, then we crossed the road and wandered across boggy ground towards Longis Pond and back. We reached ‘The Nunnery’ (never a nunnery) and stopped for lunch on a bench with good views of Longis Bay and Fort Raz. Then we turned left by the garden centre and climbed towards Essex Castle, with superb views opening up behind us.

We followed a path, sometimes wide and grassy and sometimes narrower through the gorse, along the south coast, with lovely views in all direction (if you ignore the tip!). We saw our first cows of the trip – are these Alderneys? The answer we discovered later is, technically, no - Alderneys are no longer a separate breed if they ever were; these are Guernseys. As we approached our starting point a plane came in to land, but had to loop round twice before managing it. We went inland slightly, past more cows, then reached the coast at the bench we came down to yesterday. Unfortunately someone else was sitting there!

We walked back to the hotel and I did some work whilst Richard went for a walk, then we went for tea and cake at Jack’s Brasserie and I had a rest whilst Richard went for another walk. There was a band playing at the hotel this evening (joy of joys…) and our plan was to go out for fish and chips, but we got down to Braye to discover the fish and chip shop ... shut. Instead we had a lovely meal at Mai Thai, then returned to the hotel and the noise…[though actually we slept fine].