The View from our Apartment

Time to move across to Jersey. We were obviously late for the ferry check-in as there were three vehicles ahead of us. The ferry left early. It doesn’t do to leave it to the last minute for boats round here. The voyage was uneventful and we disembarked to the challenge of finding our accommodation. Finding things has not gone well so far this holiday and I am panicking about the somewhat vague key collection instructions that we finally received after several requests to the agents. I have identified the road we need on the map. My companion is burbling on about Chinese restaurants. I think he has invented this but no. Sure enough, embedded in the small print (who reads small print?), are instructions to travel ¾ of a mile and look for a Chinese restaurant. What it fails to say is ¾ of a mile from where. Nonetheless, we find our way. We are too early and after a swift food shop in a nearby Co-op, drive along the coast to sit in the sun until it is time to collect our keys. The apartment is adjacent to the genial owner’s home and is on the sea front. We have a balcony from which we can admire the coast. Okay we can also admire the main road and the Chinese restaurant but there is, beyond doubt, a sea view and not just a glimpse of a distant ocean if one stands on one leg. The one bedroom apartment has no fewer than three televisions and our host is very apologetic that only one of them has Skye! No swimming pool here, so no obligation to freeze ourselves in order to get our money’s worth.

We unpack and ponder the mysterious disappearance of a packet of chocolate biscuits, which, to the best of our knowledge, have never been removed from the food parcel we brought with us. Tempting though it is to doze on the settee in front of the balcony, we decide to suss out St Helier. Parking is more of an issue on Jersey than it was on Guernsey and we have to guess how many hours we may possibly want to park somewhere in order to purchase scratch card ‘dials’. I can imaging that endevouring to not scratch off the wrong date might prove stressful.

The apartment is about 1½ miles from the centre of town and navigating on foot is slightly easier than by car, so we decide to walk. When I say slightly easier, I did have a near miss with a lamp post and late fell off a kerb that I didn’t notice as I was consulting the map but we did not get lost. St Helier itself is a little too large and city like for us. We found the tourist information bureau and spotted the venue for my talk on Monday and then went to find the location of the super league triathlon, which is being staged today.

In England, an international event such as this would be advertised from several miles distant but the triathlon is a well kept secret until you reach the course itself. Nowhere is the route advertised, not even in the tourist information bureau. It is being staged in a move to increase interest in Triathlon, I think they may therefore have missed a bit of a trick here. We enquire of a policeman, who looks like an immature twelve year old and position ourselves for the start of the women’s elite race. This is not a traditional triathlon, all the stages are much shorter and are repeated three times with ten minute breaks between each round. It begins at 4.00pm, expect when it doesn’t. We are some twenty feet above a very murky looking marina where the swim is being held. During the twenty five minute wait for the start, I am feeling less and less comfortable gazing down from this dizzy height – I get uncomfortable standing on a chair. Finally, we see the women set off and then we are able to move round to get a clear view of the circuit where the cycling and running take place. I am a bit sorry that this isn’t the men’s race and that we are going to miss Johnny Brownlee but I am pleased to be part of the event.

We have acquired a slightly larger scale map from the tourist information bureau and manage to retrace our steps to the apartment in time for an evening of Strictly Come Dancing, as the sun sets over the bay.