Position: 49:27:21N     02:32:03W

St Peter Port, Guernsey

St Peter Port – in Guernsey, is a great place.  We picked a particularly great time to be in St Peter Port again. This second time the rain wasn’t as bad as the first but still you had be aware that rain could fall at anytime and did – but at least temperatures were a little warmer and it didn’t get in the way of doing all the touristy things!

As usual, the draught of our boat was a little too deep for a normal mooring so we had to stay on the visitor’s mooring in the outer harbour and use the tender. In fact, we had to raft alongside another sailboat for a few days.

We all had a few days to explore the island before we reluctantly waved “Cheerio!” to Bob & Cathy. We had a super time and look forward to the next. But we did get a chance to sample great cuisine, a very very wet open air music festival at the castle and explore St Peter Port’s own ‘folly’.

The ‘Folly”
A ‘folly’, remember, is a structure build for no purpose what-so-ever other than someone wanted to build something dumb as _expression_ of their personality or to show their wealth! England is full of them. Well, the town fathers of St Peter Port decided to build their own ‘folly’. A lookout tower for fine gentry that was completely unsuitable based upon the dress of the day (Queen Victoria’s era) and not particularly built in the best place. It was built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s visit to the island and paid for by private individuals. The tower is normally closed but if you ask nicely and offer your first born as a deposit, promise not to damage anything, promise not to jump off the top, then, they will give you - ‘the key’ -  to let yourself in. It had to be done.

“Please lock yourself in whilst you are in there too. Be back within the hour – and don’t let anyone else in while you are there!”
The curator at the nearby museum demanded as the key was ceremonially handed over.

We tramped up the hill to the tower. Lesley entrusted with ‘the key’.
Then Cathy, candle in hand, took the keys from Lesley and with all her might turned it in the lock, she pushed open the creaking door, brushed away the spider webs and carefully peered in side.
“What was that noise?
What it a bat ..or something more?”
From 2 meters behind Les, Bob and John provided all the morale support Cathy could ask for (ok, just a little artistic license!)

We entered a structure pretty well unchanged since it was built.
Tiny, dusty, dark circular rooms in stone and bare wood dominated by a tiny dark spiral staircase that was barely big enough to climb without brushing your arms on the sides and spider webs. Round and round we went, every footstep echoing throughout the whole tower. The wind whistled.
At the top we all tumbled out of the only other door in the tower! We had arrived at the open viewing platform. The view did turn out to be pretty amazing after all.

The Olympic torch comes bye.
As part of the London 2012 Olympics, the organisers arranged for the Olympic torch to be carried through St Peter Port on it’s way to London. As part of the celebrations, the bailiwick also decided to close the main streets and the harbor to all traffic and hold a complete day of community sports – all this happened whilst we were there. We were very excited to be within 2 meters of one of the torch handovers and Les was interviewed by the BBC amongst all the screaming – really! 

A Royal visit to see us?
Two days later Prince Charles and Camilla made the trip out to St Peter Port as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Unfortunately, we were busy that day so we couldn’t receive them but if only they had just let us know they were visiting ahead of time of their arrival we might have been able to change our schedule and fit them in – never mind.

Concrete Monstrosities
Oh, if you ever need advice for the best places to walk around Guernsey just ask our feet! We must have walked around all of the islands’ coastal paths.
There are 3 main things I learnt about Guernsey’s coastal paths;
 1.  it’s really hilly out there, and
2.   the Nazi’s  built a LOT of coastal battlements out of concrete, and
3.   that the builders of the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto should have taken lessons from them on how to build using concrete because none of the battlements in Guernsey look like crumbling away anytime soon unlike the Gardiner!
These battlements remain as an eerie reminder of a particularly nasty period in history and you can’t but think about the poor souls that were forced to build them.

Shoes OFF!
When we returned to the boat from one walk we found the whole of the harbor with wall to wall yachts. In particular, our boat had 4 other boats rafted to it!

A race of over 120 sailboats had descended upon St Peter Port for the night and the harbour looked like the M25 (in London) or the QEW (in Toronto) – one big lock solid car park!

It just so happened that I decided hang out on our deck that evening and, as it happens, I didn’t retire until very late, well actually until well after the partying had died down – all the crew of the rafted boats were very good in that they all remembered to take off their street shoes before they walked across our pristine teak decks. I’m sure my standing at the mast in bare feet with my shoes placed neatly at the gate had nothing to do with their good manners!
We heard the next day that one of the racers had taken a corner around the island a little too sharply, hit one of the submerged rocks and promptly sank his boat. The pilot went out to help him and then disabled his boat by wrapping his prop with the sailboats ropes! The pilot boat and the crew of the racing yacht were then picked up by the local life boat – this all made headlines in the local newspaper.

Ok, I give in!
By now I was beginning to get the message loud and clear from other Discovery owners, experienced live-aboards and professional skippers that, “I HAVE to have a passerelle when cruising the Mediterranean”. We had been quoted over $16,000 for a passerelle previously and I just couldn’t get my brain around this. So we didn’t have one spec’d on the boat. Anyway, there are better things to waste money on.
Of course we all know that a passerelle is a plank – just gang plank for when the boat moors up stern-to against the dock.
Think of a piece of wood about 2 meters long by a half meter wide – hmm.. a $16,000 piece a wood. Eyes shut tight, tensed muscles and grim-faced we gave in (well I gave in ‘cos Les had been telling me we had to have a passerelle for weeks ).
After a lot of searching, finally we found a less horrendously priced passerelle. It seems that changing the name to a “passerelle”, giving the “passerelle” hinges and making it in carbon fibre allows the suppliers to charge enormous prices.
Getting the passerelle fitted correctly and arranging a few minor modifications to the boat would mean a trip back to Discovery for a few days.

….. next stop back to Southampton