DAY 6 8 June Guernsey

Firstly, a stop at a local parish church of St Martin De La Bellouse which had a pre-Christian grave marker, with a Roman hairstyle but most likely even older. It cracked in the middle when they moved it to the outside of the consecrated church.

Next it was the enchanting Little Chapel, built entirely from seashells and broken ceramics, including Wedgewood.

Then onto the German Occupation Museum which was quite interesting and really well done for a private museum. Their tea and scones are great value.

We saw some of the German coastal fortifications.

This was a Martello Tower (Napoleonic Wars), built up by the Germans, you can tell by  the change in building materials.

We then had free time and visited the Castle Cornet. Luckily, entry to the museum was free today in honour of Queen Elizabeth II – thanks Liz. (this saved us £38!)

I doubt he is a relative but even so very brave as it wasn't a job with a long life expectancy.

Overlooking the coast from the Castle.

We had the opportunity to listen to a lady, Molly Bihet who lived through the occupation as a young girl.  It was incredibly interesting.

For dinner we found The Love Shack. Elizabeth had a chicken kebab while I had a lamb kebab. I think there was a lamb in it. Essentially it was a grated sheep. I estimated there was 400g of shaved meat. It could have fed both of us.

DAY 5 7 June Sark

This morning we took a ferry to the island of Sark which only has a population of 500. Each of the islands are quite independent of the others. Boarding was a little slow as they was a bit of movement between the dock and boat. It was very rough and Elizabeth was feeling quite ill. It was a longer than normal trip due to the waves and Nic our tour guide remarked that it was the roughest trip he had experienced. Disembarking took even longer, it was very slow as it was quite dangerous. Sometimes it could take 20 seconds before it was safe enough you hop off. Unfortunately the cancelled the last ferry so we had to leave the island earlier, cutting our visit short. You leave the pier and, go through a tunnel and catch a tractor with wagons attached. 

During our time there, our tour guide Nic introduced the Seneschal, Jeremy Latrobe Bateman, (just like our street), who is appointed by the seigneur who “owns” the island, to be the elected chairman for the island. One of his ancestors was a governor of Victoria. We visited La coupee which is a very narrow isthmus that links Sark with Little Sark. It was quite spectacular.

After returning to Guernsey on the ferry, which was not as rough. Our boat is the middle one, docked behind the local Lifeboat. 

We had a look at some of the monuments to lives lost during World War II. 

 The air raid happened because there was along line of trucks parked end to end at the docks. The German aircraft thought they were delivering ammunition to the island but the reality was they were loaded with tomatoes trying to get them to England before the Germans arrived.

Here the tide was out.

Here was even further out. They have 5 metre tides here.

We had dinner with our crew at a local restaurant called Christie’s. Elizabeth had Shephard’s Pie while I had The Three Little Pigs, not an especially vegetarian dish.

DAY 4 6 June Dorset – Guernsey

This morning we were up early at 4.00 AM for our 6.30 AM ferry to Guernsey from Poole Harbour.

It is a trimaran ferry built in Australia. We are actually crossing the English Channel on the 75th anniversary of D-Day. We arrived at the picturesque St Peter Port, and then ventured on a cliff walk.


One of the bays was a favourite haunt of Renoir to paint.

 Next it was off to Fort St, George to see the Red Arrow aerobatic display which was a real bonus. The air show here is usually in September but the Red Arrows are touring then, so they agreed to come for the anniversary of D-Day. There was a tribute to a Canadian pilot who was attacking ground positions in his Typhoon ground aircraft, which was shot down and the pilot killed. As part of the flypast one of the aircraft dips lower in tribute. The aircraft and pilot sadly remain at the bottom of the bay.

 We visited the Sausmarez Manor (pronounced Summer ray) and gardens with a guided tour. We were unable to take photographs inside for insurance purposes but they had an impressive array of tapestries, portraits and paintings of naval scenes and a number of other expensive looking knick-knacks.

We are staying at the quite ritzy Duke of Richmond Hotel, which is located not far from the harbour side. Apparently Victor Hugo lived on Guernsey in exile for 15 years, having been exiled from France for criticizing Napoleon III. He finished writing his book Les Miserables on the island.

We visited the German Kriegsmarine (Navy) Signals Headquarters had had a very extensive and interesting tour. Instead of being surrounded by concrete they were surrounded by timber.

Here I am holding a rifle that was used in the film "Saving Private Ryan".

DAY 3 5 June London – Winchester – Corfe, Dorset

After meeting the group in London, with our tour leader Nic, who bears an uncanny resemblance to David Tennant, including the beard. We travelled out of London to Winchester, which we have visited before and where a tour of the cathedral awaits us. It was incredibly interesting, walking over the original 12^th century floor tiles, the reconstructed stain glass windows shot out by the Parliamentarians during the English Civil war, the story of the deep sea diver who saved the Cathedral from collapse and the pilgrim steps.

Of course the highlight is the Winchester Bible which took over 11 years and a lot of money to create with gold leaf and lapis lazuli drawings. I guess that makes it both a first edition and possibly the first audio-book.  We also saw where they buried Jane Austen in the cathedral. Her wall plaque was organised by her nephew some 40 years later.

Along the way we stopped at the ruins of Knowlton Church and embankment. It was built on a Neolithic henge site. Not long after, an inattentive driver pulled out in front of us and our driver Gabriel, (from Slovakia but living in Budapest) slammed the breaks on and averted disaster.

We stopped at the former Tarrant Rushton RAF Base, the former aerodrome from where the Halifax bombers towed gliders that captured the Pegasus Bridge on D-Day. Our tour guide Nic in front of one of the original hangers, explains that the two pilots on the first glider landed are regarded as the first allied soldiers to land (of the first wave) on D-Day. The glider landed too steeply and both were thrown out the front windscreen.

We then arrived at 4 PM at Corfe Castle. We saw it in 2018 so we decided to explore the town instead. We visited the town museum which is about the size of a bedroom – I kid you not! We made our way to the model village which was quite OK.

Here pictured is a skull of a budger. We assume they mean badger…or perhaps they don’t.

No doubt you have heard of the game of Croquet, what we played I am not sure as we didn’t have instructions. Usually it is played on a smooth flat surface. Our surface had a lot of lumps and was on a slope. We visited the local heritage railway station that operates steam engines and was used for the film "Dunkirk". The ruins of Corfe Castle on top of the hill is visible in the background.

Tonight we had a welcome dinner at our hotel with our new tour buddies who include 1 Canadian, two Kiwis and the rest Australians.

DAY 2 4 June 2019 London

We planned to see four art galleries today. The first one was the Wallace Collection. It was an amazing collection. Especially the extensive Sevres porcelain collection with the odd Canaletto thrown in. A lot of the material was bought as a consequence of the French Revolution with the Republican Government selling off the contents of the Trianon Palace to fund their activities. Some of the items had belonged to people like Marie Antoinette and Madame Pompadour. The items were of the highest quality and they allege that it has the best collection of Renaissance weapons in Britain, and it was very impressive.

Our next visit was to the London Guildhall Museum. Their art collection was small, nice but the more interesting was the remains of a Roman amphitheatre – not Pompeii by any stretch of the imagination but it was imaginatively presented. It was an opportunity to donate some loose change and get rid of those old 1 pound coins that we couldn’t get rid of.

We then made our way to Tate Modern, via the Guildhall Church where we listened to the beginning of a very good organ recital. The Tate Modern was worse than we could have ever imagined, any bits of junk strung together is regarded as art. Check out this installation which looks rather like surplus NHS (National Health System) stock.

By this stage it was a little wet and the umbrella was out. We made our way across a different Waterloo Bridge that Elizabeth remembered from the film. We walked along the embankment to see Cleopatra’s Needle and the Battle of Britain memorial and the tail end of a protest against Donald Trump who was in town. We finished at the Tate Britain and we saw so many Turner paintings it was rediculous. It was a very productive day, and apart from the rain, it was a very good day, finished off with an Italian meal.

Day 1 3 June Brisbane - Hong Kong - London

Our free limousine service arrived at 9.15PM and we left Brisbane on time at 00.50AM. They fed us dinner at about 2 AM and then breakfast about 4 hours later. We slept most of the way. We arrived in Hong Kong after 8½ hours, amid dark and rainy skies. We thought we would have lots of time to get to the departure gate for our connecting flight. A young fellow from the Gold Coast who had sat next to us, was lost, so we were able to take him with us. The only thing I had not counted on was that the maps of the airport were definitely not to scale! We were leaving from the same terminal that we arrived in, but it was so large that we had to catch a train - really! Our next haul by plane was a ‘short’ 13.5 hours, which seemed to be rather endless. Once we got to Heathrow we were pleasantly surprised that it did not take long to go through passport control and customs. We were even more pleasantly surprised that our luggage had actually arrived with us. What took the most time was walking to the bus station. The maps were not to scale here either. A taxi was very tempting at this point, but at $130-140, we opted for the bus instead, for $40 and a 25 minute walk from the coach station to our hotel in overcast but perfect 20 degree Celsius temperature. We arrived at our hotel at 6 PM. Still full of airline food we skipped tea and had a McDonalds thick shake instead. I tried to pay in change and apparently I had old 1 pound coins, which they won’t accept. The same thing happened with 5 and 10 pound notes in 2018. When we walked back to our hotel, we walked along Horsferry Road where the 1^st AIF HQ were located in London during WW1.  It’s an area that would have been well known to the diggers but it has since been demolished and replaced with Channel 4 studios.