By Marcus Scriven
|
At sunset, La Corbiere lighthouse looks like a toy floating in the sea, buoyed by make-believe rocks.
The impression of unreality lingers at dawn’s low tide, when a causeway â€" linking lighthouse to land â€" appears to have been pencilled over knuckles of pink granite, past rock pools splashed a varnishy green.
Gulls coast in, cawing and crying in triumph. This view is glimpsed through four slim, rectangular window panels, each about five inches high by two-and-a-half foot wide, slashed deep into a tower of reinforced concrete overlooking Jersey’s south-west tip â€" a tower erected at Hitler’s behest.
Celebration: Mont Orgueil Castle over the town of Gorey in Jersey, which will mark its liberation from Nazi rule next week
A year after German forces occupied Jersey on July 1, 1940, he ordered the Channel Islands to be made an ‘unassailable fortress’.
Liberation came on May 9, 1945 â€" a date still fervently celebrated with parades and thanksgiving services.
Hitler had intended post-war Jersey to be a holiday island...for Germans only. You soon see why. This speck of rock and sand, just 45 square miles in size (nine miles east to west; five north to south), contrives a landscape as varied and improbable as the island’s quirky history.
Just 14 miles north of France (and 100 south of mainland Britain), Jersey threw its lot in with England in the 13th century, despite its inhabitants’ linguistic preference: Jèrriais, an antique form of French, is still favoured by older islanders today.
Summer scene: Tourists sit outside restaurants and bars in Gorey harbour
Streets and sash-windowed, stone-built houses appear authentically English, but bear Gallic names, as do the single-track lanes that trace a haphazard pattern as they plunge downhill through meadows and woodland, past manor houses and churches.
You meet few cars, especially on the road high above Gorey, the town on Jersey’s east coast with its very own Hogwarts, Mont Orgueil Castle.
Cliff paths lead on for 15 miles, but for those who prefer a sea-level stroll, there’s the fabulous expanse of St Ouen’s beach, a mile or so to the south, with its Martello tower, dogs and owners, horses and riders, serious surfers, and its backdrop of almost sepia-toned landscape climbing to a ridgeline of pines.
Holiday with history: The Radio Tower was used by the Nazi occupiers but is now a holiday let
At low tide, when Jersey’s land area increases by almost half as much again, St Ouen is at least 200 yards deep â€" undoubtedly the place for the Allied landings, or so Hitler and his generals supposed.
There are 13 infantry strong points and 53 ‘resistance nests’ around the island, but St Brelade’s Bay, in the south, was spared.
A Daphne du Maurier-meets-Enid Blyton stretch of untainted sand, beach cricket and kayaks, its church remains lit until midnight, like a distant stage-set; at L’Horizon, a waterfront hotel, you drift to sleep to the thump of the incoming tide on the promenade wall.
The islanders eat well, too â€" not just on cream and potatoes, and not just in the panelled grandeur of Longueville Manor, requisitioned by the Wehrmacht as officers’ quarters, and now a Relais Chateaux hotel, but on addictive, affordable seafood, courtesy of Faulkner Fisheries’ oysters at 36p each and mussels at £1.50 a pound.
It’s based on St Ouen’s beach in a converted wartime bunker. Another of Hitler’s defences looms near â€" one of the towers unique to the Channel Islands, a cylindrical, slightly sinister structure, with five successive observation slots, like hooded eyes, from which German soldiers estimated the range to Allied ships.
It is called the Radio Tower. Jersey Heritage has converted it into highly unusual self-catering accommodation.
The first of four flights of 11 steps leads to Bedroom One and an adjacent, cork- floored shower-room. Bedrooms Two and Three are stacked on successive floors above.
Dimensions are constricted; the height of the doorway to each bedroom, for instance, being 5ft 8in at most. But the conversion exploits every inch, with beds (very intimate doubles) crafted flush against the sea-facing wall with its chain of window panels, two of which can be opened.
Rocky outcrops: Jersey is characterised by rugged landscapes and rustic houses
The fourth flight leads to a well-equipped kitchen and a platform from which a spiral staircase corkscrews upwards for another 26 steps, leading into an octagonal pod â€" the tower’s only post-war addition, bolted on during its days as a shipping news radio station.
But the glory is the view. Seven sides of the pod are glass, presenting an irresistible panorama: pink granite, stacked like oversized gambling chips, to the east; La Corbiere directly west; and St Ouen’s beach to the north.
‘Best views in Jersey,’ say island friends, guests for supper. A few miles inland lie the Jersey War Tunnels, a network two-thirds-of-a-mile long, hewn from shale, where there’s a dusty, slightly peppery tang to the air inside.
It’s far colder, too. Wartime photographs are compellingly juxtaposed with the bric-a-brac of occupation life: shoes fashioned from wood, bare-rimmed bicycle wheels, toothpaste of crushed cuttlefish and ivy, a meat ration of 4 oz a fortnight, a 9 ft boat in which an islander rowed to freedom.
On top of this, there is a crystal set, barely bigger than a mousetrap â€" possession of which could be fatal, as it proved for father and son Clarence and Peter Painter, betrayed by anonymous informant.
It’s the starkest reminder that this was a police state: in Occupied Europe, there was one German soldier for every 100 civilians.
On Jersey, it was one for every four. Back outside, in the warmth of the sun, you’re aware of how right the people of Jersey are to celebrate â€" as they will next week â€" the reclamation of their special, precious island with undying fervour.
Travel Facts
The Radio Tower, sleeping six, can be book ed through Jersey Heritage Lets (01534 633 304, jerseyheritage. org). A seven-night stay costs from £1,108 per week. Double rooms at L’Horizon start from £240 halfboard (handpickedhotels.co.uk) Flybe (flybe.com) flies from Gatwick to Jersey from £36.99 each way including taxes and charges.
-
The moment British woman was mauled by 'tame' cheetahs at... -
Woman, 22, given two life sentences for allowing professor,... -
Princess Charlene 'depressed' at failure to give Monaco... -
Billionaire father of Linda Evangelista's son reveals Salma... -
Bad hair, soft focus, lots of leather and FAR too much... -
Tantrums, Target and (of course) a trip to the tanning... -
Woman, 48, 'had sex with a boy twice a week for two years... -
Mother 'made sex tape with her son, 16, and sent him naked... -
Bad dads and moronic mums: More shocking pictures of the... -
Teenage mother 'intentionally burned her 15-month-old son's... -
'He looked alarmed and fell out of the picture': Moment army... -
Man 'stabs stepdaughter, nine, to death in church parking...
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar