An Island Adventure With Visit Guernsey
“I dedicate this book to the rock of hospitality and liberty of that portion of old Norman ground inhabited by the noble little nation of the sea, to the Island of Guernsey...”
— VICTOR HUGO, THE TOILERS OF THE SEA
So, we knew a few little things about Guernsey, before we partnered with Visit Guernsey and agreed to escape London for a long weekend in their open waters. We heard that Victor Hugo spent some 15 years there in exile. And that his book ‘The Toilers of the Sea’ featured a protagonist who was at one point pitted against an enormous octopus. Calum had read up on the sudden terror of Nazi invasion, when the harbours were bombed and the Channel Islands fell under occupation. I also knew that this was an island of stoic swimmers, after a team from Guernsey smashed through and won the Movember ‘SwimTrek 60k Challenge’, which I ran back in November 2020.
Other than that though, we flew in pretty much blind and had our first sight of the island announced - on Thursday, September 16, 2021 - by a boulder-strewn coastline and a rounded patchwork of stone-walled fields, country houses and pubs, among those usual hidden plots of semi-dismantled barns and discarded machinery, which we knew well from a roving childhood in Cumbria.
The folks at Visit Guernsey put us up in the La Fregate Hotel near some of the best watering holes in town. The hotel was widely described as being in the ‘best location’. All floors were wrapped in tall-windowed rooms with balcony views over the harbour and the other southwestern Channel Islands, including the green ridges of Sark. Later, the pristine fine dining and breakfast area also served up an amusing contrast to mornings spent being punched from all directions by the seething Bailiwick’s seas.
Our weekend mission was to meet as many local island swimmers as we could and help wield the magic of digital media to promote their favourite spots - guided and protected under the wisened open water tutorage of Jacqui and Jennifer from Guernsey Swim Adventures…
