The joy of Channel Island hopping

00:00 07:22

Matthew Parris has narrated this article for you to listen to.

Seldom has a collective term been less appropriate: ‘the Channel Islands’ – as though these were in any sense (other than the geographical) a place. Entertained in my English mind had been a scatter of similar, pretty but perhaps over-manicured little islands stuck in the mid-Channel between Great Britain and France but sunnier, and where tax-avoiders are the indigenous population.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. For family reasons I’ve just spent some time on Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney, sadly missing Sark and Herm. My island-hopping trip, though short, showed me how wide of the mark these assumptions are. Guernsey is by no means manicured and is in places pleasingly unkempt, while Alderney is quite dishevelled. Mid-Channel? No – they all but hug the French mainland, hours by sea from the English coast.

Whatever Guernsey thinks of Jersey (and vice versa), we English met only pleasantness

Jersey alone is sunnier than Dorset; wealthy tax-avoiders exist but you hardly see them, and everything and everyone feels local. Not only is there absolutely no collective sense of Channel Island identity, but at least two of them – Jersey and Guernsey – actively dislike each other.

I’m fond of Jersey, loved Guernsey (my first visit) and love Alderney best of all; but if they weren’t all dependencies of the British Crown (relics of the Normandy we once claimed) then they might as well be hundreds of miles from each other. Indeed, to travel between them it’s sometimes easiest to fly via Southampton and, as I write, the only inter-island ferry is between Guernsey and Alderney. We took it, arriving drenched, storm-tossed and giddy. Air links are better, but mist, fog and a deeply unhurried attitude mean that when you are on a Channel Island, make no assumptions about when you’ll be able to get off it.