More catch-up
May. 18th, 2006 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringMy original itinerary for Guernsey went like this:
Sunday: drive from Bayeux to St Malo, Condor Ferries to Guernsey via Jersey, stay at St Georges Hotel.
Monday: appear on BBC Radio Guernsey, evening ferry to Jersey, stay at youth hostel.
Tuesday: taxi to Jersey airport, British Airways flight to Gatwick, stay at London youth hostel.
The problem was that British Air didn't fly in or out of Guernsey, so I had to get to and from by other means.
It was a bit of a mix and I could probably have benefited from some professional help in sorting out my intinerary. However, it got me to Guernsey in time for Jenny's show, and if I got to see other places along the way, this wasn't entirely unpleasant.
The big drawback was that I'd have to take a couple of buses to the hostel on Jersey, arriving after dark and leaving in the morning, followed by more buses or a long taxi ride to the Jersey airport.
By this stage I was getting heartily sick of heaving my luggage about, especially on and off buses, and I didn't really want to leave Guernsey quite so soon.
So on Monday before heading off to see Jenny, I asked the hotel manager if there was a way to stay on an extra night and get to Jersey the following morning. I was thinking of a ferry, but she mentioned that a flight over to Jersey wouldn't cost too much, and yes, they'd be happy to have me stay on another night.
The flight to Jersey was about 40 pounds (just over a hundred Aussie dollars, according to my credit card statement which has just arrived without managing to drain all the colour from my cheeks), so I made the booking, confirmed the extra night and headed off into the gentle drizzle to spend a day and evening with Jenny, returning in time for a good sleep in a comfortable bed in a private room.
If there's one thing Guernsey has besides beauty, it's a traffic problem. Not enough room for all the vehicles to be on the road at once, you see, and so rush hour is fairly brutal. I called up a taxi in plenty of time and was waiting in the foyer when it pulled up.
Jenny had mentioned the "H" stickers on some cars the previous day, and the taxi driver confirmed that they identified hire cars. "We call them horror cars," he said with a well-worn smile, and went on to describe some of the atrocities committed by ignorant foreigners on the narrow Guernsey roads and crowded streets.
For any Americans reading this, take note before you hire a car in Guernsey! Not only will everything be on the wrong side and you'll find driving a lot more cramped than usual, but all the locals will be able to spot you from a safe distance. No anonymous freeways in Guernsey.
States Airport in Guernsey is a tiny place, about the size of Canberra Airport. My "BlueIslands" airline lounge was about the size of a loungeroom, but it had a cheerful staff member to bring me coffee while I hopped onto the wifi.
At this stage I was still using my webmail interface so that when I got home I'd be able to move my messages into my normal email program for ease of later archiving.
This turned out to be a mistake, because I had to be connected to read and reply to my email, and my mailbox filled up anyway. I found that a lot of my rare and expensive internet time was taken up with handling email, when I should really have had it download to my laptop's client, allowing me to deal with it at leisure. Later on when my ISP's miserly 2 megabyte limit was exceeded and emails were being bounced, I switched over.
I dealt with the archive problem by exporting my mail messages in a bundled file to my home client when I returned home.
Flight time came, and a dozen of us were led out to a minibus for a short trop across the tarmac to a Britten-Norman Trislander. We were called out by name in groups of four so as to enter the aircraft in strict order. I missed my turn because the driver mispronounced my name, the noise from other aircraft was distracting but mostly because I was busy taking a photograph.
The bus driver (doubling as ground staff) opened one of the doors for my group of four and folded down the seat in front. I found myself wedged on a very flat double seat shoulder to shoulder with another passenger, my backpack on my lap (no aisles or overhead racks or footroom here!) and locked in behind the seat in front. I had to lean forward to get a narrow triangular view out of the window. Heaven help us all if we made a forced landing!
And didn't the thing rattle and shake as we made our takeoff roll and climbed away! But the views, such as I could get by nibbling on the ear of the passenger in front, were spectacular. Guernsey is a beautiful little island and I promised myself I'd be back one day.
Sunday: drive from Bayeux to St Malo, Condor Ferries to Guernsey via Jersey, stay at St Georges Hotel.
Monday: appear on BBC Radio Guernsey, evening ferry to Jersey, stay at youth hostel.
Tuesday: taxi to Jersey airport, British Airways flight to Gatwick, stay at London youth hostel.
The problem was that British Air didn't fly in or out of Guernsey, so I had to get to and from by other means.
It was a bit of a mix and I could probably have benefited from some professional help in sorting out my intinerary. However, it got me to Guernsey in time for Jenny's show, and if I got to see other places along the way, this wasn't entirely unpleasant.
The big drawback was that I'd have to take a couple of buses to the hostel on Jersey, arriving after dark and leaving in the morning, followed by more buses or a long taxi ride to the Jersey airport.
By this stage I was getting heartily sick of heaving my luggage about, especially on and off buses, and I didn't really want to leave Guernsey quite so soon.
So on Monday before heading off to see Jenny, I asked the hotel manager if there was a way to stay on an extra night and get to Jersey the following morning. I was thinking of a ferry, but she mentioned that a flight over to Jersey wouldn't cost too much, and yes, they'd be happy to have me stay on another night.
The flight to Jersey was about 40 pounds (just over a hundred Aussie dollars, according to my credit card statement which has just arrived without managing to drain all the colour from my cheeks), so I made the booking, confirmed the extra night and headed off into the gentle drizzle to spend a day and evening with Jenny, returning in time for a good sleep in a comfortable bed in a private room.
If there's one thing Guernsey has besides beauty, it's a traffic problem. Not enough room for all the vehicles to be on the road at once, you see, and so rush hour is fairly brutal. I called up a taxi in plenty of time and was waiting in the foyer when it pulled up.
Jenny had mentioned the "H" stickers on some cars the previous day, and the taxi driver confirmed that they identified hire cars. "We call them horror cars," he said with a well-worn smile, and went on to describe some of the atrocities committed by ignorant foreigners on the narrow Guernsey roads and crowded streets.
For any Americans reading this, take note before you hire a car in Guernsey! Not only will everything be on the wrong side and you'll find driving a lot more cramped than usual, but all the locals will be able to spot you from a safe distance. No anonymous freeways in Guernsey.
States Airport in Guernsey is a tiny place, about the size of Canberra Airport. My "BlueIslands" airline lounge was about the size of a loungeroom, but it had a cheerful staff member to bring me coffee while I hopped onto the wifi.
At this stage I was still using my webmail interface so that when I got home I'd be able to move my messages into my normal email program for ease of later archiving.
This turned out to be a mistake, because I had to be connected to read and reply to my email, and my mailbox filled up anyway. I found that a lot of my rare and expensive internet time was taken up with handling email, when I should really have had it download to my laptop's client, allowing me to deal with it at leisure. Later on when my ISP's miserly 2 megabyte limit was exceeded and emails were being bounced, I switched over.
I dealt with the archive problem by exporting my mail messages in a bundled file to my home client when I returned home.
Flight time came, and a dozen of us were led out to a minibus for a short trop across the tarmac to a Britten-Norman Trislander. We were called out by name in groups of four so as to enter the aircraft in strict order. I missed my turn because the driver mispronounced my name, the noise from other aircraft was distracting but mostly because I was busy taking a photograph.
The bus driver (doubling as ground staff) opened one of the doors for my group of four and folded down the seat in front. I found myself wedged on a very flat double seat shoulder to shoulder with another passenger, my backpack on my lap (no aisles or overhead racks or footroom here!) and locked in behind the seat in front. I had to lean forward to get a narrow triangular view out of the window. Heaven help us all if we made a forced landing!
And didn't the thing rattle and shake as we made our takeoff roll and climbed away! But the views, such as I could get by nibbling on the ear of the passenger in front, were spectacular. Guernsey is a beautiful little island and I promised myself I'd be back one day.
