TELGEN
VACATION REPORT
Jersey, October, 1999
Unlike our trip to Switzerland, we had planned our trip to Jersey
several weeks ahead of time, in order to take advantage of David's fall school
break. Great Britain's Channel Islands, of which Jersey is the southernmost,
are actually off the coast of France. Although the last weekend of October was
the end of the tourist season, we actually had fairly pleasant weather most of
the time.
Jersey
has a very interesting history. It was part of the Duchy of Normandy at the
time of William the Conqueror, so it and the other Channel Islands became
aligned with the British crown when William became King of England. When King
John lost William's lands in Normandy, the inhabitants of Jersey chose to
remain a part of Britain. Being much closer to France (14 miles) than England
(100 miles), however, the island has an interesting combination of French and
English influences. It was inhabited before there were such things as England
and France, as evidenced by this interesting structure at the right. In
Neolithic times over 6000 years ago, Jersey was part of mainland Europe, and La
Hougue Bie is a 40-foot burial mound built by those early inhabitants around
3500 BC. David is standing at the entrance to the burial chamber, and on the
top of the mound are two Christian chapels dating to the 12th and 16th
centuries. The site also has an archeological/geological museum, as well as a World
War II bunker left from the German occupation.
Being an island in the North Atlantic, Jersey has some beautiful
coastlines, reminiscent of others we have seen in Ireland and Cornwall. There
was "Devil's Hole," a spot where the roof of a former cave has been
eroded, leaving a deep chasm. In the mid-afternoon, when we visited, there was
enough sunlight to see further along the northern coast. There were waves
crashing upon rocks—rocks that incidentally helped to give the site its name.
It seems that in the mid-19th century, a French ship sank in the area and its
figurehead washed up upon the shore. The wooden figurehead was sculpted into
the figure of a horned devil, and some version of a devil has been placed along
the steep path down to the hole ever since. The current incarnation is a fairly
cheesy representation of a buff goat-man with horns and trident. Not
particularly scary, but the scenery was evocative enough on its own.
We continued our circumference around Jersey with a stop at
Groznez Point, the most northwesternly part of the island. In the picture above
you can see what little remains of the castle that once stood upon the site.
(It was extremely windy, which explains Bill's peculiar posture.) The castle
was built in the 14th century and destroyed within the next hundred years,
probably by the French during one of their occupations of the island. The
nearest land to this part of Jersey is the fellow Channel Island of Guernsey,
and on good days you can see all of the chain from this site.
In this photo you can see yet more evidence of Jersey's history as
an occupied state. La Rocco Tower was the first of nine towers built in the
early 18th century, around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Jersey has often
been subject to invading forces, most recently during World War II, when the
Nazis held the island for some five years. They damaged this tower by using it
as target practice, so it is only one of three of the original nine towers that
survive.
Another fascinating remnant of the
German occupation is the Underground Hospital, which the Germans built with
forced labor during the war. Prisoners of war hauled out some 43,900 tons of
rock to build a network of rooms and tunnels that was designed to protect a
garrison of 12,000 troops. The Germans never faced an invasion, however, and
the complex was converted into a hospital. There are other reminders of
Jersey's interesting past around the island, and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay
there—and hope to return, perhaps on a biking tour, sometime in the future.
Copyright
© 1999 by Diane Telgen. All rights reserved.