We flew out from Guernsey Airport in 'Joey,'
a bright yellow airplane that sports a red nose and is
adorned with eyes and a smile. The little plane is one of
the Channel Islands' celebrated characters and is featured
in a series of children's books.
The 'Islander' plane takes only fifteen minutes
for the hop across to Alderney (the third largest of the
Channel Islands,) and it was quite exciting to look over the
pilots shoulder we dropped down towards the runway.
As we trundled in toward St Annes the bus
driver told us that Aldernay’s population is only just
over two thousand three hundred and drew our attention to a
number of cars that had seen better days.
"Rust buckets we call them" he
said. "Occasionally the Constabulary comes across to do
checks, but word gets round and the cars disappear until
they are gone."
They are independent people and have their
own stamps and coins. You post your cards home into blue
post boxes and phone from yellow kiosks. There are no cash
dispensers on the island and no nasty taxes like V.A.T.
I passed a sign for 'Puffin Cycles' which
invited us to "See Alderney the healthy way!" The
‘puffin’ was nothing to do with the effort required to
pedal up the narrow roads, more to do with the sea birds
with the comical face, that are resident on the off shore
island of Burhou.
There are many rocks, a great number of them
just below the surface of the sea plus a tide that can race
at up to 13 miles an hour so it's hardly surprising that the
area has a great number of ship wrecks. One of the more
interesting, is The Elizabethan, which after four
hundred years is revealing it’s secrets. A large cannon
and other artifacts that divers have raised from her are now
in the local museum. Interestingly, it was found to still be
loaded with cannon ball, wadding and gun powder!
There is a full gauge railway 
on the island
and a hundred and fifty years after Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert took their ride on it we climbed
aboard. In the windowless rail car and we clattered our way up
to the light house near the quarry. Surprisingly our
ride was perhaps more comfortable than theirs as they made
the journey on two chairs nailed to an open wagon. The
initial purpose of the line was to convey great blocks of
Alderney stone down to the harbour.
[ We rode up past Fort Albert, a massive
fortification which next year will become the viewing base
for the many astronomers who will visit the island to view
the total eclipse of the sun. (Alderney is one of the few
places on the predicted track of the moon's shadow on the
11th of August.) ]
The island has open access for walkers and
ramblers and we headed across to the light house where we
got a fascinating guided tour. Climbing up the ever steeper
steps we were rewarded with a magnificent view of the water
raging over the rocks and looking inland,
saw the extent of
the fortifications that the Germans left behind after their
wartime occupation. The concrete constructions were
irremovable and a huge sinister looking gunnery control
building dominates the coast.
A mass of underground bunkers and
installations were constructed by slave labour. Of the sad
camps in which those people lived (and many died) nothing
remains. On a happier note holiday tents and houses now
cover the ground.
St. Annes the main town of Alderney 
has
brightly coloured houses lining the cobbled High Street.
Opposite The Elizabethan Pub a notice in the local
eighty seat cinema announced that "the second projector
has arrived." There is now really no need to have an
interval midway during the film, but they like the idea of
having a drink in the pub while the reels are changed so
they keep the break and ring a bell when it's time to pop
across and resume the show.
One local traditions is the serving of free
milk and rum punch to anyone who buys a drink in any pub on
the first Sunday in May. I am told it can be quite potent.
Other peculiarities are that you are allowed to take an egg
from under any hen or milk a cow in a field. I'm not quite
sure if these ones are practiced much now. At The Rose and Crown
pub we listened
to accordion music that would not have seemed out of place
in France. Normandy. Incidentally, it is only eight miles
across the water, but the atmosphere in the pub could not
have more British and I found that the lady on the next bar stool was the writer Elizabeth Beresford the creator of the
Wombles.
She now lives on the island and we could understand
why. I too was beginning to get ‘The Alderny Feeling’ 
and was reluctant to leave the but out at the airfield Joey
was waiting to whisk us away and alas we had to fly!
