The joy of Channel Island hopping
Seldom has a collective term been less appropriate: ‘the Channel Islands’ – as though these were in any sense (other than the geographical) a place. Entertained in my English mind had been a scatter of similar, pretty but perhaps over-manicured little islands stuck in the mid-Channel between Great Britain and France but sunnier, and where tax-avoiders are the indigenous population. Wrong, wrong, wrong. For family reasons I’ve just spent some time on Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney, sadly missing Sark and Herm. My island-hopping trip, though short, showed me how wide of the mark these assumptions are. Guernsey is by no means manicured and is in places pleasingly unkempt, while Alderney
