Insight Guides Great Breaks Guernsey

Insight Guides

• Publisher: Insight Guides
• ISBN:
  9781786717092
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

Beautiful beaches, a relaxed pace of life, the sunniest climate in the British Isles, fascinating history and superb seafood... Guernsey is the ideal destination for a traditional summer holiday. Handy, pocket-sized Great Breaks Guernsey is packed with useful information on how to spend your time.

We suggest five easy-to-follow walks and tours around Guernsey, starting off in the quaint capital St Peter Port with its excellent restaurants, then taking in castles, wartime fortifications, museums and manor houses. There are also day trips to the tiny islands of Herm, Sark and Alderney, each with its own character and all accompanied by vivid full-colour photographs, clear maps and plenty of recommendations for where to eat and drink. Features on the local culture focus on what makes Guernsey unique - its festivals, shipwrecks and fishing traditions - to immerse you in island life.

Each tour has its own colour map for easy orientation, and beautiful photography on every page vividly bring the islands to life. The travel tips provide all the practical information you'll need, with plenty of ideas for unique places to stay, themed holidays and outdoor activities.

Tour 1: St Peter Port

Explore Guernsey’s endearingly quaint capital on foot, taking in the colourful port, old town and museums. Allow a whole day for this 3.75-mile (6km) walk.

Highlights

Castle Cornet

La Vallette Underground Military Museum

No. 26 Cornet Street

Hauteville House

Candie Gardens

Guernsey Museum

Hugging the slopes that rise steeply back from the sea, St Peter Port creates a spectacular vista as you arrive by sea. Church steeples and steep-roofed granite houses are stacked on the hillside while in the harbour below the forest of boat masts jostle for attention, lending the capital an almost Mediterranean air.

This is the oldest community in the Channel Islands, and it shows. The discovery of a Roman wreck in the harbour in 1985 indicated that this part of Guernsey’s coastline was a refuge for seamen even in ancient times. The Town Church existed as early as 1048 and a castle has stood here since 1206, though today’s town is made up mainly of finely preserved late Georgian and Regency buildings.

From the 12th to the 16th centuries fishing was the main activity, and St Peter Port was merely a small quayside settlement. It was through privateering that the town grew in size and wealth. In 1778 alone local privateers brought in £343,500 of booty. Wealthy merchants built fine houses and new buildings spread up the slopes around the town and onto the plateau above. The granite houses appear piled on top of one another. The seafront Esplanades are lined by tall and unadorned warehouses, most now converted to shops, pubs and restaurants. The grander houses of 18th-century merchants, on the hilltop above, have also undergone conversion – some of the fine houses along Grange Road and The Queen’s Road now belong to wealthy banks and financial organisations, but their conversion has been carried out with sympathy for the original buildings.

View from St Peter Port across to Castle Cornet.

Mockford & Bonetti/Apa Publications

St Peter Port

The Waterfront

A good place to begin exploring the town is the excellent Guernsey Information Centre 1 [map] (tel: [phone]; www.visitguernsey.com; Mon–Fri 9am–5pm, Sat 9am–1pm; also Sat pm and Sun am June–Sept), on North Esplanade, with its informative displays and helpful staff. The centre is housed in a building of 1911 whose grey granite makes it look rather austere – perhaps deliberately so, as this was once Guernsey’s administrative centre, where all the departments needed to run the island were based. The information centre sits on land that was reclaimed at the beginning of the 20th century.

The centre organises interesting walks, with accredited guides, some departing from their office in St Peter Port. Themes include ‘Ghosts, Graves and Famous Men’, ‘Smuggling’ and ‘On the Trail of Victor Hugo’. During the annual Spring and Autumn Walking Weeks, an extensive programme on the island includes history, flora and fauna.

Walking down the Constitution Steps in St Peter Port.

Mockford & Bonetti/Apa Publications

Originally ships docked right alongside the warehouses that line Quayside. This allowed cargoes of wine, citrus fruits, spices, sugar and wool to be lifted straight from the ship’s hold into the tall Dutch-style warehouses, whose large loading doors have been replaced by windows. Most of them are four or five storeys tall, with one set of shops on the lower two floors, entered from Quayside, and another set of shops on the upper floors entered from the High Street. Linking Quayside and the High Street are a number of steep lanes, called venelles (Guernsey-French dialect for ‘little passages’). Look up as you explore them – some are roofed over using massive timbers from broken-up ships.

The harbour of St Peter Port is still an active port for local fishermen, who provide the freshest catch to local restaurants.

Mockford & Bonetti/Apa Publications

The harbour

On the opposite side of Quayside is the harbour 2 [map] , with a mixture of yachts, cargo ships and inter-island ferries. With the advent of the steamship service between Guernsey and England, new facilities were called for; in 1853 the harbour area grew from 4 acres (1.6 hectares) to over 80 acres (32 hectares), with two long breakwaters installed 13 years later. Albert Pier and North Pier enclose the Old Harbour, where yachts are moored in the marinas.

Profiting from piracy

From the late 18th century, St Peter Port prospered from the practice of privateering. This was a form of legal piracy whereby ships were licensed by the British Government to capture enemy vessels and confiscate their cargoes. As England imposed duty on imported luxury goods as a means of funding its wars with France, Spain and the American colonies, Guernsey became a major supplier in the smuggling trade, shipping large quantities of captured brandy, perfume and lace to England.

Guernsey’s proximity to France made it an ideal hideaway for pirates.

Mockford & Bonetti/Apa Publications

The less picturesque St Julian’s Pier to the north was added in the 1920s to make way for cargo ships and ferries. Today, high-speed catamarans sail for mainland Britain and France. At the landward end of the pier you’re unlikely to miss the Travel Trident booth selling tickets for ferries to Herm, the diminutive car-free island which you can see in the distance. Further along the pier you can purchase tickets for Sark, another popular day trip island, one stop further to the southeast.

The Liberation Monument was designed by Guernsey artist Eric Snell.

Mockford & Bonetti/Apa Publications

Liberation Place

Close to the Travel Trident booking kiosk...