Tues 22 / Wednesday 23 July
If you have never been to Alderney, you should try to get here one day.
It’s like the Scillies, rocks, sandy beaches, beautiful coasts and a bit further South
But it’s more wild and there’s hardly anyone here
It hasn’t always been so empty though: There are a lot of forts – and most predate the Germans, although they beefed them all up and added lots of bunkers and anti-tank walls. Some bunkers now double as bird hides
The Romans started the fort building, this one has Roman, Napoleonic and German bits all rolled into one.
And more were built in Napoleonic times
Then n the 1850s the French expanded Cherbourg into a massive naval harbour and the Victorians went bonkers and built 18 (!) huge forts on Alderney as they wanted to maintain control of the channel.
There must have been hundreds of troops marching all over to man them and lots of ships bringing provisions.
Nowadays the main delivery arrives on a big ship on Tuesdays and we saw them taking off lots of containers and cars.
The main town is St Anne’s in the middle of the island,
We saw lovely cows and I hoped they were Alderneys
but very sadly the little Alderney cow died out when the Germans were here – all the locals were evacuated to Weymouth in June 1940, just before the occupation, so there was no one here to protect the cows from the nasty invaders.
The saddest history of Alderney is the slave labour camps here in the war to build all of the ugly concrete defences the Germans put everywhere
But today Alderney is peaceful and stunning
The blackberries are very sweet and there are beautiful rock pools
The huge rocks behind Fort Clonque are absolutely covered in gannets. We saw lots of them flying in formation.
It’s amazing what you can come across on your travels – we found a womble (!)
And an old friend, Polar Star, she used to race with us in the Contessa fleet 30 years ago!
