JERSEY - Sunny Island

You find me in Jersey at the end of 4 wonderful days here largely helped by some glorious late summer weather. I've been staying in the capital St Helier but have spent most of my time out and about exploring the island. Public transport here is good with a wide network of buses that run late into the evening, there is also a large network of paths and cycle ways although I would say that the signage on the coast path does leave a bit to be desired. One major disadvantage here is that unlike the Isle of Man, the Ordnance Survey do not include the Channel Islands in their map series which again means way finding can be a little bit irratic.

I've spent quite a bit of time in the South Western quarter of the island visiting La Corbiere, St Brelades Bay and Ouaisne Bay (pronouced Waynay). One thing you notice here is the French influence, a lot of the place names and most of the street names are in French.

La Corbiere Lighthouse

The causeway to the lighthouse

La Corbiere is the site of a lighthouse, completed in 1873 which was the first ever lighthouse to be built using concrete blocks. It is situated offshore but can be reached via a causeway at low tide. The area around Jersey and the adjacent part of France - around Le Mont St Michel - has some of the largest tidal ranges in the world, with the tide going in and out very fast and receding a great distance. It is regularly said that the tide here can out run a horse. This is even greater than normal at the moment because we are at the full moon nearest the Autumn Equinox. When the tide recedes it reveals wide expanses of sand and lots of jagged rock formations that are great for exploration, but you need to keep a careful eye on the predicted times for when it comes in again!

Walking from La Corbiere you can follow the coast path to Beauport Bay and then onwards to St Brelades Bay - definitely one of the most spectacular beaches.

Beauport Bay

St Brelade's has an ancient church that is almost on the beach, inside it is a stunning building which has a really interesting stone roof.

St Brelade's Church

St Brelades Bay

St Brelades Bay

Ouaisne Bay

There are some restaurants next to the beach which allow you to sit outside overlooking the sand, munching on local crab and scallops. St Brelade's Bay then leads into Ouaisne Bay and I can recommend the Old Smugglers Inn at the far end of that beach to!

On the east coast of the island, the village of Gorey is dominated by Mount Orgueil Castle. The guided tour here is excellent with the guide pointing out that as Jersey was part of the Duchy of Normandy at the time of William the Conqueror (and therefore on the winning side at the Battle of Hastings), England actually belongs to Jersey and not the other way round - Can we have the same tax system as you then Jersey??

Mount Orgueil Castle

Gorey harbour and Mount Orgueil Castle

The castle itself dates from the 13th century and is built from the local granite which like that on Iona in Scotland is a pink colour. It has been altered and added to over the centuries with the last alterations being made during the German occupation in WW2.

The north of the island is much less densely populated than the south. There is a coast path all along the rugged north coast that gives stunning views over to France, Sark and Guernsey. There were also patches where, like at the lighthouse in Dover, the phone signal switches to that in France. Rozel Bay is a picturesque fishing village at the eastern end, while further west is the Devils Hole an area which became a tourist attraction in Victorian times when a viewing platform was built for tourists.

The Devils Hole

Today, being my last full day here, I have traced the recent history of the German Occupation during the Second World War. The Channel Islands were the only part of Britain to have fallen under German control and learning about what life was like at the time was both interesting and disturbing. There were some pretty baisc changes to life that while logical given the circumstances made you think wow I never thought of that - for instance they had to put their clocks forward one hour and go onto European time and the Germans made them drive on the right. Towards the end of the war, with the Allies having cut off German supply routes after the invasion of Normandy, Jersey was brought to near starvation, eventually being saved by food parcels from the Red Cross. 

Not far from St Helier is the Jersey War Tunnels Museum situated in a series of tunnels contstructed by the Germans using forced labour from overseas. Towards the end of the war the tunnels were set up as a hospital. The museum charts life on the island from when the British government sent the message that the Channel Islands would not be defended through to liberation on May 9 1945, the day after the war officially ended in Europe.

Moving on to more regular things for this blog - Real Jersey Ice Cream is a definite winner with the top flavour being Cocount that has a PIneapple ripple through it. As for the money - its still paper, the notes are bigger than we now have at home - I'd forgotten that the old £20 notes were difficult to fit in your wallet - and if you thought the Isle of Man was weird in keeping the old round £1 coins, Jersey hasn't got that far as it still uses £1 notes.

Lastly there is a maximum 40mph speed limit throughout the island and in most places it is actually lower than that. The flash cars you see driving around are definitely more for posing in rather than speed.

Next trip will be after Christmas probably still in the UK but travel restrictions are gradually lifting so watch this space ........

SCOTLAND - Isle of Bute

For today's trip I took a train to Wemyss Bay (pronounced Weeems) and caught a ferry to Rothesay on the Isle of Bute. The railway station at Wemyss Bay features a large circular concourse that flows into a curved covered walkway down the pier providing a seamless transition from train to ship - the curves were to aid the flow of large numbers of Edwardian tourists travelling from Glasgow to the island in summer. It was restored to it's original splendour between 2014 and 2016.

The ferry crossing takes about 35 minutes and  although it feels like you are going out into the ocean technically Bute is one of the islands in the Firth of Clyde. My ultimate destination was Mount Stuart, ancestral home of the Marquess of Bute but because of the glorious weather rather than take the normal service bus from Rothesay, I hopped on the open-top bus for a tour of the island on the way.

Mount Stuart is a large Gothic Revival mansion that is completely "over the top" but to be honest I knew it was like that as I have visited two Bute homes already. The family made their money in South Wales, owning the land in Cardiff on which the docks were built which as a result meant that they earned a fee for every ton of coal and other products that passed through the docks. The area of Cardiff between what is now Cardiff Bay and the city centre is called Butetown and the Marquess of Bute owned both Cardiff Castle in the centre of the city and Castell Coch to the north - both of which are also "over the top" 

The Marble Chapel

The Red Lantern in the Chapel

The Marble Hall

Drawing Room Ceiling

The Drawing Room

The extensive grounds slope down to the Firth of Clyde and are mainly given over to trees, there is very little formal or floral planting.

The shoreline below the house

The Rockery is one of the few areas of formal planting

By the time you read this I should be at home, having flown down as it was cheaper than the train. My two recent trips - probably because of the excellent weather on both - have really whetted my appetite for more of the west coast of Scotland so watch this space.

Finally I will bring you up to date on the ice cream flavours sampled - you will recall that last year Iru Bru ice cream was not a flavour I considered a success. This year I have tried two execllent ones - Whisky Marmalade and Tablet - if you don't know what Scottish Tablet is, it's like fudge but harder and more grainy.

There are more trips to come this year as I have some lost time to make up - see you all in Jersey in September!

SCOTLAND - Glasgow

As much as I love it, Edinburgh is rather twee. Like Bath or York it is a city that thrives on tourism and it does manage its tourist industry very well. Glasgow, however, is much more workaday. It's history as a mercantile city can be seen in its imposing buildings - stand in George Square surrounded by statues of its fathers and benefactors and look at the City Chambers and you can see this is a city that means business. Being realistic though it has to be acknowledged that like our other major port cities, Bristol and Liverpool some of Glasgow's wealth came from what we now see as "dirty money"

City Chambers

Rear of the City Chambers

George Square

The statue of the Duke of Wellington outside the Gallery of Modern Art has become the symbol of the city because of the traffic cone that is almost permanently on the statue's head. You can even buy postcards of it. Almost soon as the council take the cone down, naughty (and probably drunk!) Glaswegians put another up there - according to Wikipedia the council spend (I say waste) £10K per year removing the cones

Down by the River Clyde, Glasgow was much more industrial but  today the docks have closed and the shipbuilding has moved downstream meaning that the area has had to be regenerated. Walk along the Clyde today and you will see a clean river lined by modern steel and glass buildings. The building below is the Clyde Auditorium designed by Foster & Partners and nick-named by the locals The Armadillo. Interestingly Foster & Partners also did the design work for the stations for the Bilbao Metro in Spain. The station entrances take a similar shape to the Clyde Auditorium and have been nick-named by the the people of Bilbao - Fosterillos.

The Cylde Auditorium and the SSE Arena both designed by Foster & Partners

Glasgow Science Centre

On the east side of the city centre in a piece of higher ground stands Glasgow Cathedral. Although the cathedral has a Church of Scotland congregation it is in fact crown property and is managed by Historic Scotland. Behind the cathedral is the Glasgow Necropolis a hillside cemetary for the good and the great of the city. 

SCOTLAND - Lunch at The Willow

Stuart Cranston was a very successful tea importer, based in Glasgow. In 1871 he decided to put some tables and chairs in his shop inviting people in to taste his wares at 2d per cup, with extra charged for bread and cakes - and so the Tea Room was born.

His sister Kate, seeing that there was an opportunity to provide a venue for ladies to mix socially without chaparones - this was Victorian Scotland after all - took the idea further, eventually opening four tea rooms in the city. She became a very successful businesswoman worth millions of pounds in today's money as a result. One of her tea rooms was in Sauchiehall Street (which apparently in gaelic means Alley of the Willows) and was called the Willow Tea Rooms, today the building has been restored to its original splendour and is open for both guided tours and for you to take tea or have lunch.

Why is this all so special? Well Kate Cranston was a great admirer of one Charles Rennie Mackintosh and he was commissioned to design the Willow from scratch. Some of the original features remain in the building but where they are missing everything has been painstaking recreated from drawings, photos, known artifacts and newspaper cuttings. The result is stunning.

Detail from the wall on the ground floor

Now before we go any further I should point out that the high backed chairs in the photo above are available to buy in the gift shop at a cost of £3995 each. If anyone wins the lottery I would like 6 for my dining room!

I went to Mackintosh at the Willow as its now called at 11am today for a one hour guided tour of the building and then afterwards went in for a two course lunch. The tour was good, the food good and the surroundings outstanding so I would recommend it if you ever go to Glasgow.

SCOTLAND - A house in a box

The stags and hens were having a well deserved lie-in this morning after their escapades of the night before, but I headed out of Glasgow on the train on a Sunday jaunt to Helensburgh - a well-to-do resort and commuter town where the Gare Loch meets the Clyde Estuary.

Helensburgh has a long south facing Esplanade - which provides a nice place for a stroll or a sit and the town slopes up the hill behind.

We all have our own favourite architects, artists and designers - in terms of modern architects I like the work of Sir Norman Foster and Santiago Calatrava - but for me there is one stand out architect and designer Glasgow's Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In Helensburgh he designed The Hill House, high up above the town, which the National Trust for Scotland is currently facing a mammoth task to try and safeguard for the future.

In the words of the NTS The Hill House is "dissolving like an aspirin in a glass of water"

What has happened is that Mackintosh used a cement render on the outside of the house and unlike traditional lime render which allows a building to breath, the cement has allowed water in but then trapped it. This has in turn made the building incredibly damp and after over 100 years of Scottish weather the structure of the building is now disintegrating. What the NTS have therefore done is built a big metal box around the house to keep the rain out until such time as the building dries out. Once the building is dry they can then decide what to do to weatherproof it for the future. The "walls" of the box are chainmail and it is in fact the worlds largest chainmail structure.

It is all very impressive and you can walk around the metal structure and get views of the house you wouldn't normally be able to get. The box was erected 2 years ago and currently the NTS has planning permission for the structure for another 4 years, but the house is nowhere near dry yet so it will probably take longer.

Inside the The Hill House it is pure Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the library, drawing room, hall way and bedrooms, even the servants area - pantries and kitchen - all demonstrate his style and that of his artist wife Margaret McDonald with whom he worked on the project. It's not all about Mackintosh either as the house was built for publisher Walter Blackie and his family as their home so a visit also enables you to get an insight into how it was to live in the house and actually use the wonderful furniture and furnishings designed by Mackintosh and his wife.

The Drawing Room

Detail from the Drawing Room wallpaper

Sofa in the Drawing Room

Kitchen

The Master Bedroom

The high backed chairs are a famous Mackintosh design