Distance Walked: 21km, Time Taken: 6 hours (not counting a 1 hour break for lunch)
I had planned to sleep in this morning. After all, I am on holiday. However, fate had other plans. This is a non-smoking hotel but one of the other guests didn't want to wait until they were washed and dressed before smoking their first cigarette. They snuck a quick smoke in their bathroom with the extractor fan going. This just spread the smoke throughout the hotel's ventilation system and set of the smoke alarm. On the plus side, I can be confident there is no chance of burning to death in my sleep.
I had my first full English breakfast, including black pudding (so black even the white bits were black). This was far more food than I needed but I couldn't pass up the opportunity.
I then set off to walk clockwise around the island, with my first day's walk being the first quarter to La Pulente. The inital part, to St Aubin, was very dull as it was along the waterfront on a broad, tarmac promenade. I felt very silly in my full on hiking get-up with boots and hiking poles when everyone else coming towards me was in their regular working clothes as they were headed into the office. I felt like I ought to be telling people I wasn't being pretentious and all the gear really was necessary.
Once the route passed St Aubin it got more interesting as it left roads and pavement and headed off onto proper hiking paths. The whole route went around headlands from one bay to the next, sometimes dropping down into the bay to walk along the beach, while sometimes keeping to the cliffs above. The elevation map below shows the path I took. All up I climbed about 450m and descended by roughly the same amount. The map looks like it was harder work than it actually was due to the scale. The steepest climb was only around 70m. I'm impressed that I managed to start below sea level.
The photo below shows perhaps the steepest bit of path which was a doddle compared to the Amalfi Coast.
The weather was wonderful, pleasantly warm (low 20s) and sunny. It did cloud over briefly in the afternoon and look as if it might rain, but after 15 minutes it decided it was too much effort and didn't bother but went back to being sunny.
The beaches here are lovely - see the photo of Beauport Beach below. You are free to feel envious.
The only drawback here are the tides, which are serious. They move a lot of water in a very short amount of time. Below is a photo of Janvin's Tomb, as small rocky island just off one of the beaches. You can walk out to it at low tide but the causeway is underwater at other times. From the picture you can see the causeway. By the time I got down to the beach (about 10 minutes later) it was entirely underwater. There were signs warning you that if you got stranded you were to wait until the tide receded as the currents were so strong it wasn't safe to try to swim or wade back to shore.
I stopped at St Brelade for lunch. I had hoped to stop at a pub but St Brelade is renowned for having the best beach on the island and all the accommodation and most of the shops were suitably upmarket. I settled on fish and chips from the Crab Shack which I washed down with a pint of a local dark ale, the Mary Ann Best. The beer was excellent but the fish and chips, which came with peas and a side salad (look Ma, I am eating my veg), was just adequate. They had a distinct dislike of vinegar. There was only tomato sauce (ketchup!) as a condiment for the chips and the salad was dressed with oil. They may have waved the cork of a vinegar bottle over it (assuming they have such things) but didn't bother actually pouring any of the stuff on the lettuce leaves. It's not that expensive.
After lunch I tottered off to finish of my day's walk - tottering being the active word as I'd stiffened up after sitting down for an hour. I still managed to make it to La Pulente, arriving 1 whole minute before the bus back to St Helier. It was rather demoralising to spend 6 hours walking from A to B and then a whole 30 minutes on the bus to get back to A. It rather spoils one's sense of achievement.
After a long soak in the bath at my hotel, I once again tottered off, this time just next door to dinner at the hotel's bistro, Doran's Bistro. The windows of my room are at the very right, above the bow window. On the menu tonight were flirtatious Irish waiters which was most pleasing. However, I was given a very nice table in the corner by the toilets, which was not. The joys of solo dining. The more upmarket the restaurant, the more they segregate their customers by class.
For my entree I had crab and smoked salmon. The crab was a puck of crab meat with mayonnaise on a toasted brioche bun with a large piece of smoked salmon underneath it. This was a little disappointing as the flavour of the smoked salmon overwhelmed the more delicate crab. For my main course I had pork belly with beef tenderloin and a red wine jus (aka gravy), with cabbage, mashed potatoes and rhubarb chutney. The beef had been wrapped in bacon and then cooked just long enough to make the bacon crisp so it was very tender (as it should be given it was basically raw). The crackling on the pork was very good but the pork itself was a little dry. The cabbage was very tasty as it had been clearly fried in some tasty fat - pork at a guess. The mash had had a close relationship with a lot of cream and butter, so it was very fine. In short, everything on the plate was tasty but it wasn't obvious why they all needed to be served together. You could have left off the beef and the gravy and still had a very good dish, but an ordinary one I suppose. For dessert I had a black cheery (sic) and raspberry brulee which was excellent. I washed this all down with 2 glasses of Grange (du Midi).
A so to bed. Tomorrow I have to decide do I walk from B to C or from C back to B. I have two guide books. One does the route clockwise (hence B to C) and the other anticlockwise. I used the former today. Perhaps I should give the latter a try.
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