Jersey Our Island: One for the Road – Part 1

Published in 1950, this is an interesting snapshot of the Island and its customs as it was in the immediate post-war period, and not without humour. Most guide books of the time give the tourist information, or give the impressions of an outsider to the Island, but this is in "inside view", which is rarer. 

Jersey Our Island: One for the Road – Part 1

By Sidney Bisson

WITH the rising sun behind it, the granite north-west coast of Jersey lies grey along the horizon like the hull of a dismasted warship. A grimmer welcome for the home-coming Jerseyman than the white cliffs of Dover.

But the real symbol of home is not the first-sighted point of Grosnez. It is the Corbière lighthouse. However poor a sailor, you would not dream of staying below when the steward pops his head round your cabin door and announces, `We're just off the Corbière, sir.' Not that he need have bothered. There is something in the very nature of the ship's movement that tells you a wilder rhythm in the everlasting dance of the waves.

Like Nathaniel Gubbins you hold a conversation with your stomach.

`It's the Corbière, Tum. Could you lie very still for a couple of minutes while I go on deck?'

`Are you going to stop the boat?'

`No, but I promise IT walk as steadily as I can. And when we get ashore I'll send you down a lovely rasher of bacon and a new-laid egg.'

`Couldn't you send them now?'

`No. You wouldn't enjoy them now. Not while the boat's rolling like this.'

`But you promised to walk steadily.'

`Yes, but I can't promise to keep it up more than a couple of minutes. You'd regret it afterwards.'

`Then I'd rather you stayed put. Why do you want to see this Corbière, anyway?'

`Oh, Tum! Don't you realise it's home, Tum  Home!'

`Go on, then, you sentimental old fool. Only make it snappy. And don't forget that bacon and egg when this goddam ship stops rolling.'

And up you go. And there it is. A little white candle on a big brown rock.

`It's home, Tum. Home!'

In summer the cliffs between Corbière and Noirmont used to be purpled with heather. Most of it seems to have gone. Concrete observation posts and gun turrets are the first sign of the German occupation. Will they remain, I wonder, like the Martello towers of the Napoleonic wars, to tell their story to another generation?

St. Brelade's Bay looks much the same as it used to do, with its old church nestling in the corner. It is a favourite resort of visitors, and looks even prettier from the sea. Then the ragged cliffs of Ouaisne and Portelet bring us to Noirmont Point. I said you need not speak French to visit Jersey. I can hear you muttering that if all the place names are going to be French you had better polish up your pronunciation anyway. Not a bit. You will still get half of them wrong.

How are you to know that though Noirmont is given the full flavour of its French pronunciation, Corbière is never anything but Caw-beer? I shouldn't worry. If you ask a Jerseynian the way to St. Bree-laid, he will know full well that you want to get to St. Bre-lard, and he will not even bat an eyelid.

From Noirmont the coast swerves in a gigantic U to form the Bay of St. Aubin (O-bin, not Awe-bin !).

So many people have written that Queen Victoria compared it to the Bay of Naples that it seems a shame to insist on the truth. What she wrote in her journal was `I never saw a more beautiful deep blue sea, quite like Naples.' (She had obviously not seen the sea at Rozel.)

It was Albert who added that `this fine bay of St. Aubin, in which we lie, really is like Naples.' In any case, he was only repeating what the author of Stead's Picture of Jersey had said forty years before.

That gentleman, incidentally, had a much more eventful journey to the island than I have ever had, and if his style is anything to go by, he seems to have relished his little adventure. This is how he puts it:-

'I enjoyed the Sea-breeze upon Deck for about an Hour, and then descended into the Cabin, where I found two Gentlemen and a Lady; at least the former bore the appearance of Gentlemen: but the Surface was soon removed and the Subsoil exposed in its native Ruggedness.

One of them, who proved to be an Officer in the Army, requested the other, in the politest language and most conciliatory tone, to withdraw whilst the Lady, who was his Wife, made some necessary alteration in her Dress: judge of my Surprise at hearing for Answer, "I'se tell ye zur, I'se paid me munny as well as ye ha, and zo I zhall ztay where I am ye see; an I doant knoa no harm neather, for I'll lea a Pund 'tearnt the vurst time hur ha stript bevore yoke."

The Officer's Fingers immediately became in close contact with the Conductor to the olfactory Nerve of this well-dressed Ruffian, who, after several Attempts to extricate himself from the nervous Grasp of his athletic Neighbour, was hauled upon Deck, and would certainly have been thrown overboard but for the Interference of the Captain of the Vessel, who, partly by Dint of Intreaty and partly by manual Force, relieved the Offender from his justly incensed Adversary, and adjusted the Business by obliging the Culprit to ask Pardon of the Lady and retire to an humbler Apartment.'

Queen Victoria, surveying St. Aubin's Bay from the royal yacht, found ‘the colouring and the effect of light ... indescribably beautiful.' That was a hundred years ago, when the ground sloping down to the bay was largely open. Today the road from St. Helier to St. Aubin is lined with houses which tend to spoil the view from the surrounding heights. (Why can't architects make the backs of houses as attractive as the fronts?)

From the sea and from certain selected viewpoints (which I am not going to give away in case I am ever rich enough to buy one and build a house on it for myself) the bay still has a magic beauty. The beach, thank goodness, is not commercially exploited. And as most visitors prefer to get their money's worth and go as far away from St. Helier as possible, it is a paradise for children. Now the boat slows down as we thread our way between some fearsome looking rocks and the breakwater. The fishermen are still there, as they were in the old days, patiently dangling their lines over the edge. I expect they have been there all the time and did not even notice the German occupation. Fishermen have no sense of time.

Berthing the steamer is quite a tricky business. As it glides through the pier heads, the uninitiated flock to the port side, as half the population of the island seems to have gathered on the quay to our left, and that is obviously where we will land. Old stagers stroll nonchalantly to starboard and get ashore first. For no sooner are we in the harbour than ropes shoot out in all directions. A little boat carries them to the quay where gangs of dockers haul them up and run along until they come to a suitable bollard. Then the capstans start revolving and the steamer pulls itself round till it is facing the other way. Then it backs into its berth.

 For the last time (I hope!) I play a walking-on part in one of those little comedies that the Army sometimes stages for the diversion of its members. The N.C.O. who should be there to stamp our passes has not turned up. I expect he has gone on leave or reported sick, and somebody has forgotten to detail a substitute.

An officer passenger stamps and fumes, but the policeman at the gate will not let him through. The N.C.O. hasn't stamped his pass. The rank and file take it calmly. We are used to waiting. We have stood by our beds for hours waiting for the kit inspection that never took place. We have hung about on pay parades waiting for the officer who was always half-an-hour late. We have yawned our heads off in M.I. Rooms morning after morning waiting for the M.O. to turn up. (No, Doc Brown. This does not mean you. You were more considerate or better organised than most.) And now we are waiting for an N.C.O. to come and stamp our passes. It is only part of our inscrutable but infallible method of winning a war.

After about forty minutes someone comes. Hurrah ! We're off. Or are we? What is holding us up now? Only that the Lance- Corporal has forgotten to bring the ink pad for his rubber stamp, and it takes a long time to spit all over it before he stamps another pass.

As D. greets me at the barrier, Tum puts up a loud rumble for that egg and bacon. Not a very romantic beginning for a holiday. The trouble about spending a holiday at home is that you can always find all sorts of excuses for not going out. Particularly when the Germans have occupied your house for four years and planted cables and telephone poles in your garden.