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the_shoshanna... before I fall over.
We got down to the hotel's cellar bar and restaurant a few minutes after the announced gathering time; the hotelier met us and showed us to where about twenty people were sitting in a circle and announced, "We have some Canadians!" He and his family are Dutch -- according to the hotel website, he/they moved here and started running it in 2004 -- and there are a whoooole lot of Dutch folks staying here! We fitted two more chairs into the circle, a waitress asked if we'd like drinks and I asked for a glass of merlot, and then I started chatting with the Dutch woman on my left. (I assume Geoff was chatting with the Dutch man on his right, but tbh I wasn't paying attention.) She said that she and many of the other Dutch guests were from the northern Netherlands, and there's a nearby airport with direct flights to Guernsey, so why not? And I imagine the fact that the hotelier is a native Dutch speaker doesn't hurt.
But we had only a few minutes to talk before everyone having tapas that night was called to go find their table: we're assigned tables here for meals, you look for the one with your room number on it. We were in a back corner of the cellar bar/restaurant area, right beside the actual bar (but this morning for breakfast we were assigned a different table, on the other side, next to big windows out onto the back garden that our room overlooks). The tapas dinner was excellent: hummus and rocket-and-herb salad and nice crusty bread; olives; patatas bravas; shrimp scampi (which I got all of, because of Geoff's aforementioned dislike of shellfish); lemon-roasted chicken; wee crispy Vietnamese spring rolls with a sweet chili sauce that leaned very pleasantly toward the "chili" side of that rather than the "sweet"; and for dessert, cream-filled profiteroles with chocolate sauce. And you could ask for seconds of anything; Geoff asked for one more piece of chicken and they brought him another whole dish of three. I refused to help him finish them, because I had to manage all the shrimp by myself, oh the horror.
And then we staggered off to bed.
Today we decided to do what is generally agreed to be the island's most challenging hike, along the southern coast. We started with an excellent breakfast (and I confess it's a bit of a relief not to be the only people in the breakfast room, with Elena our previous host chatting energetically at us and pressing food on us; she was very warm and friendly and enthusiastic, but at home Geoff and I don't even talk much to each other at breakfast, she was A Lot). We were shown to our pretty window-side table -- I would have been okay tucked into the dark back corner again if we had been, but I was very happy not to be -- were brought delicious coffee that would not punch Superman through a wall, and had our choice off a menu of about six different cooked breakfasts plus the spread of croissants, pains au chocolat, and white rolls; fresh watermelon, slightly stewed berries, and what I think were canned mandarin oranges and some other fruit; various cold cereals; packaged yogurts; and slices of cheddar, wedges of brie, and three kinds of cured meat. It was great, and I confess I wrapped a roll and a wedge of brie in my napkin and smuggled them out for trail food later. 😈
We planned to catch a bus from in front of the hotel to our hike's starting point, Portelet Harbour, just north of the island's southwest corner. Geoff's blog entry for today chivalrously fails to mention that I waved off the first bus that came because I misread the schedule and misremembered the route number and basically just screwed up and waved off the bus we actually wanted. No big deal, though; a different but equally suitable bus was supposed to follow in twenty minutes.
Please note the phrase "supposed to." It is load-bearing.
The other bus didn't come. We spent an hour waiting in chilly damp weather, while I vainly tried to shake bus information out of both Google Maps and the Guernsey bus app. I still have no idea if I misread that schedule too, or if the bus just didn't run for some reason, or what, but it wasn't a fun hour. Not that Geoff got cranky at me, he didn't, just that I was cold and frustrated and embarrassed! But finally a suitable bus showed up, and I was at least able to track our progress and know when we should get off. (So far the Guernsey buses also have electronic display screens, but the only thing we've seen them show is the time and the URL of the bus company, harrumph.)
The bus stop seemed a fairly bustling place, with a big hotel and a big bay and a snack kiosk and some very welcome public toilets, and also a welcome/refreshments tent for what seemed to be a fairly major organized run; when we set off along the coastal trail, counterclockwise, for the first while we met many runners in running vests and race pinnies/bibs coming the other way. A few of them were running with the help of poles, which I'd never seen runners do before. But considering some of the inclines they had had to run up, I can see why they'd want them!
It rapidly got sunnier and warmer, and I peeled off a lot of layers as we went, and in general it was the usual gorgeous hike, with spectacular views along the cliffs and over the ocean, and several German defensive emplacements (one with a biiig gun still mounted), and lighthouses and occasional signs explaining the historic thing we were looking at. (In general I've been impressed with the authorities on both Jersey and Guernsey who maintain these things: the trails have been in great shape and pretty clearly marked even though I've been glad to have GPS backup, and the signage of historical markers has been good.)
The trail wasn't challenging in the sense of being technically difficult, but it had a lot of ups and downs, as it navigated its way through places where the ocean has gouged deep bays into the cliffside. And the ascents and descents got longer and steeper and more common as we we went on, especially after we reached the southernmost point and turned to follow the coast east. At one point, as we stood staring up at what must have been at least our fifth extremely long and extremely steep stairway roughly cut into the face of a cliff, I told Geoff, "There will be a short delay while I pause to hate everything." He allowed that that was perfectly reasonable.
(Another conversation:
Geoff: Why do we have to go up and down and up and down and up and down all the time? Why can't we just only go down?
me: Next year we'll go to Escher Island. We just have to make sure we only walk around it counterclockwise.)
But there were also amazing views of those cliffs, and frequent benches on which to sit and admire the views, and profusions of flowers growing on the south-facing banks next to the path, and sweet-faced cows grazing or resting by the fence that separated their field from our pathway (one was industrially licking another one's ear! Other than mother cows with calves, I don't think I've ever seen cows groom one another), and five ponies of which two were flopped on their sides asleep and looking kind of ridiculous. And plenty of walkers coming the other way to say hello to, especially if they had friendly dogs. Plus we had plenty of trail mix and I had my bread and cheese from breakfast, and two full water bottles; I like the tap water here, thank goodness.
But after almost four hours we were ready to call it. So when our cliffside trail reached a German observation tower that could be accessed by road, we cut inland to walk the roads home to our hotel. It took us another 45 minutes to get there, but at least cars, unlike hikers, insist on reasonably level transits! And the roads (other than the main ones, which we were not on) are so small, and have so little traffic, that it's no problem to walk along them even though there's no sidewalk. At least, in daylight.
We staggered in, and I generously let Geoff have first shower, because that meant that I could spend twenty minutes not standing up. Anyway he's faster than me, so I usually want him to go first anyway -- but the prospect of just being able to collapse was very nice too.
Them it was back to the pub down the road for their Sunday carvery dinner -- slab o' meat! slab o'meat! as the VividCon gang used to chant. We had our choice of any or all of beef, lamb, gammon, and chicken, plus Yorkshire puddings, roasted carrots, roasted parsnips, potatoes both roasted in chunks and baked whole, cauliflower and cheese, broccoli and some other greens I wasn't sure of, a sort of mash of I think carrots and turnips, and other veggies that I don't even remember, plus two kinds of gravy and about six sauces. It was amazing. Also the barman gave me a guided tour of their draft ciders; I was sorry that I disliked the local one, which was quite dry, but I very much liked a hazy cider from an English brewery and had a whoooole pint of it.
We sat near several tables of other Dutch guests at our hotel; I mean, the pub is the closest restaurant and it has that 15% off deal! The couple next to us started chatting with us, which was nice except that I occasionally had trouble understanding their English (and of course we have no Dutch). She told us that one reason so many Dutch people were at the hotel was that there had just been a newspaper article on it back home, so she and her husband, and presumably a bunch of other folk, had figured: easy well-recommended vacation at a hotel run by a countryman, why not?
And then back home and omg to bed. Geoff went to sleep at 8:45, he was really wiped; I have stayed up to finish writing this, and also because I don't want to wake up at four am!
In news that may not surprise you, we are not doing a long ambitious hike tomorrow. I'm not sure what we're doing, in fact; my collapsing this evening took the form not of falling asleep before nine but of declining to do any planning or logistics. Whew!
