June 27, 2013: St. Catherine’s Tower to St. Helier

Mt. Orgueil Castle

Once again we were able to make an early start on the day’s walk – though with only eight miles or so to go perhaps this was not necessary. The great weather we had experienced for so much of this expedition was again in evidence as, at 9:10, our taxi deposited us in the forecourt of St. Catherine’s Tower. Across the water France seemed very close.

The road apples deposited by a beach-bound horse yesterday were still there to be gingerly bypassed as we made our way down to the shore. From this perspective we could see the sleek rescue vessel of the RNLI and Adrian paused to have a close look and to engage crewmembers in conversation – they told him that much of their work involved rescuing stranded landlubbers from cliffs!

Our route followed a sea wall initially but forward progress was impeded by a sign warning that the route ahead was obstructed. This meant that we had to return to the main highway for a while – but we had returned to the sea wall well before arriving at the prominent Archirondel Tower. More road walking followed but there was a nice verge this time as we rounded the headland of La Crête and entered the tidy precincts of Anne Port.

The road climbed uphill but, opposite a half-timbered house, we were soon able to leave it for an even more substantial rise – on a switchback path through woodland up to the heights where the Victoria Tower stood. (It was our only uphill section on this day.) We offered Adrian a small diversion to a nearby dolmen but (remembering last year) he said, “I’ve bumped my head on better dolmens than this one.” Tracks brought us further inland but now, opening up on our left, we had the first glimpses of the dramatic bulk of Mount Orgueil Castle – standing over the northern end of Gorey Harbour. A steep road brought us down to walk in the gardens at the foot of the castle and we entered the busy, tourist-choked precincts of the harbor town itself. We decided to pause for some refreshment and chose a sidewalk perch outside a place called Danny’s Gorey. I had a passion fruit and orange concoction.

There were lots of people to dodge as we worked our way along the esplanade and past the Gorey Gardens. As we neared the Beach Hotel I had my first encounter (on this island of dogs) with a Schnauzer – a fourteen year-old female. There was some ambiguity on how best to move forward from this point as we floundered around amid sand dunes and sea grass looking for a solid path that might provide more solid footing than the sands below. The instruction that we “walk along the sea wall” makes sense only if for “along” your understand “beside” – since the wall itself has a triangular top. Naomi did take to the back of the beach while Adrian and I persevered on a path that ran along the margins of the Royal Jersey Golf – as Fort Henry at last appeared.

Approaching Ft. Henry

A concrete promenade permitted further progress as we encountered the first of a series of towers – in this case Jersey Tower Number Five. I intended to take a photo of each of these towers but plans were soon thwarted. Tower number four, conjoined with a private house, actually blocked the promenade and it was necessary for us to retreat a bit (the tide too high for beachside progress) and use a narrow chasm between back fences to reach a parallel road. Road walking would now come to dominate forward progress as we neared Jersey’s southeast corner, the Seymour Tower surrounded by the waters, and switched from a southerly direction to a westerly one at La Rocque.

Seymour Inn at La Rocque

Nearby was the Seymour Inn and, as it was 12:30 or so, we decided to enter its dark interior for lunch. We seemed to be the only indoor customers and it didn’t take too long for our food to arrive. Adrian was again thwarted in his attempt to find some local specialty on the menu. I had the local cheeseburger and chips, washed down with a pint of lager. Above us MTV Classic was broadcasting the 50 greatest rock idol tracks – I could understand why these chaps entranced the teenage girls of yesteryear but the music was often deeply boring.

We now used the loos and headed out into the bright sunshine to complete the last lap of our journey.

I must say this was the least interesting part of the project; we rarely even saw the sea and often, as we wandered along tacky suburban front yards, there was no verge. It was also hard to figure out how far we had come – in the absence of useful signage – but we did emerge for a while at a final tower at Le Hocq. From this point there was always pavement for the walker but the route paralleled the coastal highway at many points and this was not the most pleasant form of progress. We used another set of loos as St. Helier itself was at last spread out before us.

Our task was now to find a route back to our hotel and we were aided by the presence of a large street plan on the back side of the OS map. Such assistance was thwarted, however, by the rarity of street signs themselves. When we decided to turn our backs on the sea we could find no indication of where we were. School kids, all in uniform, were clogging the pavements as well and we stopped several people to ask them what street we were on. In fact, after floundering along for a while on back streets we were returned to the slipway at Le Dicq.

A second attempt to penetrate the interior was a bit more successful – when another pedestrian identified the street we were walking on as St. Clements. From this we knew we could continue in a mostly northwesterly direction, busy traffic always at our elbow, in order to reach the malls and shopping precincts of Jersey’s capital city. Naomi and Adrian had spent some time down here prior to my arrival and so they had a sense of what to look for. They even found a branch of Stanley Gibbons, the philately entrepreneurs whom I visit on the Strand in London, but we got no further than the front window, which promised wealth, prestige and exclusivity to its customers, but, as the place was locked up tight, there were no customers.

After battling the crowds for a while we sat down outside a Coffee Republic and had a nice rest. Adrian took my picture next to a frog-topped column and, a few minutes later, I took a picture of my companions in front of our hotel as we completed our fifty-mile coastal circuit of Jersey.

I had a bit of nap (foreshortened by a call from the dining room asking me if I didn’t want to eat in tonight). Instead we walked down restaurant row, finding that Doran’s was full-up, and choosing Little Italy instead. Adrian and I both had the fried calamari and the lobster linguine. I drank two gin and tonics.

At the hotel the ever-efficient front desk helped me print my boarding pass and I spent my last night at the Savoy, departing the next morning at 9:00 when a Citicabs driver pulled up. There was plenty of time to do a puzzle before boarding and my flight was on time. The next morning (after a day of sightseeing at Elizabeth and Mt. Orgueil Castles) Naomi and Adrian had poorer luck – fog delaying their journey by three hours. They spent six days with me in London before returning to Philadelphia. We were all sore and very tired after our encounter with the Jersey cliff path. My relatives were particularly gratified, however, to hear me describe our route as “strenuous” for they were uncertain whether they could undergo a similar excursion in the future. Now reassured that this walk was unusually tough in many ways they changed their minds immediately and began to talk about another walk next summer.

Footpath Index:

England: A Chilterns Hundred | The Chiltern Way | The Cleveland Way | The Coast-to-Coast Path | The Coleridge Way | The Cotswold Way | The Cumberland Way | The Cumbria Way | The Dales Way | The Furness Way | The Green London Way | The Greensand Way | The Isle of Wight Coast Path | The London Countryway | The London Outer Orbital Path | The Norfolk Coast Path | The North Downs Way | The Northumberland Coast Path | The Peddars Way | The Pennine Way | The Ridgeway Path | The Roman Way | The Saxon Shore Way | The South Downs Way | The South West Coast Path | The Thames Path | The Two Moors Way | The Vanguard Way | The Wealdway | The Westmorland Way | The White Peak Way | The Yorkshire Wolds Way