Day 4 - Around St Helier

Beer drunk: 0 pints, Wine: 2 glasses
Distance walked: unknown

Today there was a craft fair in St Helier with stalls with items from local artisans and food producers. This sounded rather interesting and I have a spare day so I decided to take it now.  Unfortunately, the fair was very dull.  Half a dozen stalls with nothing much to see or sample.  The highlight was a young Jersey musician playing a guitar and singing to entertain the crowd.  He entertained me but perhaps not in the way he intended as he kept missing the high notes and once managed to forget the words to the song so he had to start over again from the beginning.  And I thought I wasn't much of a morning person!

The locals here are very protective of their islands.  You can't just move here from the UK.  You have to either be the child of a local or married to one or be sponsored here by an employer.  Fairly ordinary conditions.  Where it gets more interesting are on the rules regarding property.  Only locals can buy property and most places can only be rented by qualified residents.  To be qualified you have to have lived here for 5 years.  Where you live while becoming qualified is not clear.  I remember in the first episode of Bergerac, the hero (not a local) is asked if he has somewhere to live. He shrugs and says "no, but you know how it is on Jersey".  Now I understand what he meant. Bergerac still seems popular here.  I heard someone's mobile ring the other day and the ring tone was the theme from that show.

After the disappointing fair I headed out of town to the Samares Manor which is a large property nearby with fantastic gardens.  Below is a picture of the water garden from the top of the waterfall looking down.  They had monstrous gold fish in their pond.  Easily a couple of feet long. I wonder if mine would get as large if my pond was on the same scale as this one.

They also had some other animals, mainly lots of ducks but also some sheep.  They hadn't docked the tails of their sheep.  I've never seen a sheep with a normal tail.  I had no idea that is how a sheep is supposed to look.  I'm definitely a city girl.

The gardens (water, kitchen, long, rose, herb, ...) were lovely but it didn't inspire me to take up gardening as a hobby.  Instead, it has inspired me to win Tattslotto so I can have a large property with an army of gardeners to keep them looking perfect.

I had lunch at the cafe at the manor - a salad of roasted butternut pumpkin, onions and tomatoes with mozzarella and pine nuts and greens.  It was quite good and would have been lovely if the Jersiaise could just get over their fear of vinegar.

After lunch I headed back into St Helier and went to the Maritime museum.  I had great time here. Lots of displays explaining what 'abaft', 'abeam' and 'athwart' mean and how long a fathom is and about watches and dog watches. They also had a model of the brig the (Marie) "Sophie"

and a letter of marque!

They also had a lot of interactive displays to entertain the children (and me).  In one there was a selection of hulls, sails and ballast.  You got to build your own boat and then get it to sail in a large tank of water with a fan blowing at one end.  Mine tended to sink.  There was also another display with a yacht where you could adjust the sails and the angle of the wind (from another fan) to get it to sail from one end to the other.  Mine got becalmed.  One where I wasn't such a useless landlubber was a knot tying display with a the knot properly tied (and glued down) and the same coloured ropes below for you to tie them.  I can now do a reef knot and a bowline!  Don't know when I will ever need them but I now know how.

After this I went to have some genuine Jersey ice cream (apple and cinnamon and toffee crunch) which was pleasant but unexceptional and do a little light shopping.

Heading out for dinner put a dampener on my day.  It was a Saturday night and the town was full of people and solo dinners were not welcome.  The first two places I tried just said they had no tables free. The first I can believe as it was very crowded but the second was half empty.  I hope it stayed that way.  The third said they were terribly sorry but had just given the last table away to the couple who came in before me (I believe that as again it was crowded).  However I was welcome to sit at one of their outside tables if I didn't mind the heat!  It was perhaps 22C after having reached about 25 or so during the day.  As the sun was setting the temperature was dropping so by the end of the meal I was wishing I bought my jacket.  In hindsight I'm guessing the waiter (whose first language was not English)  meant temperature not heat.

The restaurant who did condescend to feed me was the Vecchia Milano.  I started with a huge slab of the home made pate which was quite tasty.  I believe it was home made as the texture was between a pate and a terrine.  The accompanying bread was just regular white sliced bread cut very thinly and toasted with was a bit odd.  For main I had spaghetti bolognese.  Again the serving was enormous and it can with tourist quantities of sauce - i.e. the pasta was swimming in sauce rather than lightly coated. But the sauce was delicious so I didn't complain.  For dessert I had tiramisu.  Again, clearly home made as it was a (very) large spoonful from a big bowl.  It was almost as good as mine but lacked the appropriate dusting of cocoa.

Back to walking for real tomorrow.