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One of the initial brochures that we had picked up on Jersey had a listing of local events. One that caught my eye was a Royal Court and States Chamber Tour. You were to purchase tickets on Eventbrite. When I went to the site, there were no tickets on offer, so I reached out to the contact person to see if there was another site I needed to go to. She kindly opened up 2 more spaces, and Bob and I walked the 40 minutes to Royal Square this morning for the 2 hour guided tour.

The former library, with a pretty domed room and chandelier, is now used as an overflow courtroom when needed or to hold state dinners or other functions.

The Royal Court is the judicial arm of the state, with many trials decided by appointed or elected jurats instead of a jury.

The State Chambers holds the State Assembly or legislative arm of the state government. The Assembly is made up of 49 elected members, 12 Constables (one for each parish) and 37 Deputies, each representing about 3,000 Islanders, with less-populated parishes being combined to make for more equal representation.

After the tour, we walked to their high street, or main shopping area. The street goes by a few names including Queen Street and King Street. It was busy on a Saturday.

The words on the column of the sculpture are extracts from the Code Le Geyt of 1698 concerning crimes and applicable punishments. The toad on top of the column is the Jersey toad, which the dune covered and marshy island had a lot of when initially settled, so Jersey islanders have the nickname of toad.

From the high street, we walked towards the Opera House, as we had wanted to see that.

We continue to have very changeable weather with wind and bouts of rain and occasional sun. Today was much better than yesterday when the winds were positively Orkneyesque. So today, we headed back out to explore a section of another parish walk. This time we headed northwest of St Saviour Parish to Trinity Parish, the most rural of Jersey’s parishes, with only 84 houses per square kilometer.

We were most interested in seeing 2 of the sites — the Jersey Zoo and the Eric Young Orchid Foundation, one for a photo op and one to visit. It ended up being about a 6.5 mile walk with a little more rain than had been predicted on the weather app, but we were prepared.

Bob got us to the zoo, which was just a bit over an hour walk.

Besides big heads, Bob likes to photo fungus. We found a few interesting mushroom patches on the way to the zoo.

We chose not to go into the zoo purely on cost considerations. It would have been $55 for both of us to go, and there are other activities that we want to do, and most things here have an entrance fee. From what we have heard though, it is a good zoo with a conservation focus.

From the Jersey Zoo, we then began following the Trinity Parish walk route to the Eric Young Orchid Foundation.

Eric Young was a local man with a passion for orchids that led him to build a collection of world status. The Foundation is his legacy. We have been intrigued with these plants after a housesit in the heart of Texas, where we were tasked (Bob took this on) with the watering and care for over 600 orchids.

Some photos of the orchids and other plants at the foundation.

Bob and I decided that after our long parish walk on Tuesday, we’d treat ourselves to a visit to the La Mare Wine Estate Wednesday afternoon— before a storm was to blow through Wednesday evening. We purchased tickets for the 3:30 tour and tasting.

The wine estate is 8 miles from the house. We decided to walk the 40 minutes to the downtown bus station for a bit of a mobile outing and then catch the number 7 bus for the almost 30 minutes to ride to the winery.

Bob found us a new route into town, so we could see some new sites. Some scenes from our walk.

The 2:40 bus towards the winery was fairly full. We arrived at the La Mare stop a little before 3:10 and then had a short walk down a country lane to the winery. Our timing was good, as we had just gotten checked in for the tour and sent to the cafe to await the start when the rain started. It was really coming down when we went to leave at about 5:15ish, but we had already decided that we would call a cab for the trip back.

There were only four of us on the tour, as their season is winding down. Only their store will be open as of November 1. Maybe because of this we seemed to get a lot of extras. The tour description stated a tasting of 3 wines and their apple brandy cream liquor. We did get those, with the cream liquor served in small handmade chocolate cups, but we also got a small taste of their (hard) cider, a half a biscuit, a handmade cream-filled chocolate, and a small taste of fudge with another different chocolate. Crazy! The staff was very friendly, and it was a nice, relaxed tour with some very short films to explain more about the different processes. We highly recommend.

The cab ride home was an event onto itself, with a very friendly, very chatty driver, who seemed to be able to navigate the narrow roads in the rain at a good clip even while not apparently looking in the direction of travel. I was happy to jump out of the car to feed the cats and let Bob finalize the payment and conversation when we got back to the house.

St Clement is the smallest parish on the island, but it’s location on the sheltered south coast and proximity to St Helier have made it a popular place to live. St Clement was Bishop of Rome in 92 AD and is the Patron Saint of Sailors, having achieved martyrdom when he was thrown into the Black Sea with an anchor tied around his neck for providing water to fellow prisoners.

St Clement Parish is southeast of St Saviour. It was about an eight mile walk, but since we walked to the start and then back again, it made our mileage total for the day about 11 miles. We had a bit of everything on our walk — sun, cloud, and rain, but it was definitely less windy than yesterday.

Jersey is having an unsettled weather week per the weather people on tv and what we are experiencing. Apparently, a series of fronts are coming through, so we’re having rain off and on with lots of wind. We thought it made for a good day to visit the free-to-enter Jersey Museum, and we took the #3 bus each way. We did, however, walk back and forth to the gym this morning.

The museum covered a range of topics about Jersey, and we spent 90 minutes there. We started with a 20 minute intro film, which provided a quick history from Neanderthal times to current day. This is a scattershot of items that I found of interest.

When we researched “our” parish of St Saviour the other day, one of the main claims to fame was the actress Lillie Langtry. There were a few items in the museum related to her.

There was a whole section devoted to the almost five year German occupation and then liberation and rebuilding. It was interesting the views of the different ways Jersey residents spent the war and the impact during and afterwards. There were Island residents who left the island before the occupation because they didn’t want to live under German rule. There were the Islanders who stayed and lived under the occupation, and then there were Island residents who were sent to German prisoner of war camps because they were not native Islanders (born in UK, France, etc.). Hard feelings arose in trying to get everyone back in a hard economic climate and a shortage of housing.

And some happy new unions…

Yesterday, Bob and I had a good 8+ mile walk from the house in St Saviour parish through St Helier parish, St Laurens parish, St Peter parish, and into St Brelade parish to an artisan market in the St Brelade Parish Hall near St Aubin’s Bay before heading back along the waterfront trail to St Helier where we caught a bus back to the house.

Today, Bob and I walked 1.9 miles into the center of St Helier, the capital of Jersey and most populous town on the island. We wanted to take advantage of what may be the latest sunny day for a while, if the weather forecast is correct.

Jersey was liberated from almost five years of German occupation on this site on May 9, 1945. The statue by Philip Jackson was unveiled on the 50th anniversary in 1995.

There are 12 parishes on the island of Jersey — 10 of them named for saints. “Our” house is located in St Saviour, which is the second most populous parish after St Helier (home to the largest city on the island). St Saviour is a virtually landlocked parish (only 100 meters of coastline) in the eastern third of the island.

It is the only parish with 5 other parishes as immediate neighbors. Other fun facts about the parish — it is the birth and burial place of Lillie Langtry, a British socialite, stage actress, and producer. It is home to La Hogue Bie, one of the most important Neolithic sites in Europe, and the Lieutenant Governor, who represents the Crown on the island, also live in St Saviour.

Our homeowners have a booklet of different parish walks, so we decided to walk the parish walk for St Saviour, which highlights undiscovered lanes, to get a better sense of the larger neighborhood.

We did the 5 mile walk in late afternoon when the cleaner was scheduled to be at the house. Some photos from our walk…

As per usual, our first day at a new house finds us doing errands like grocery shopping and laundry. Check and check, but the more interesting parts of our day are getting into our new routine with our new pets. Currently, Bella and Lu are letting us be their humans. They are indoor and outdoor cats going through an open kitchen window into the garden. Bella hangs out in the garden when she goes out and then prefers to have you let her in the back door. Lu goes further afield and tends to come back in through the window as well. They both stay inside over night.

We are back in the Channel Islands, located in the English Channel between England and France. In June, we were on the island of Guernsey. We are on Jersey now, the largest of the islands, and much closer to France, within 14 miles at the closest point. Jersey has a population of just over 103,000 people. In addition to their regular residents, pets, tourists, and housesitters, they also have these.

The island is 5 miles long and 9 miles wide. Interestingly, the island almost doubles in size at low tide.

As with all of the Chanel Islands, it is a British Crown Dependency, so it is self-governing but its defence and international relations are handled by the UK. Like Guernsey, it was also occupied by the Germans during WWII.

We’re looking forward to exploring more beginning tomorrow.

Last night Bob and I had a great walkthrough and home cooked dinner with our homeowners after they picked us up at our hotel, but before that we had a lovely walk to a lighthouse on the southwest coast of Jersey.

We left the hotel via a series of steps off of their terrace and then through a small park.

From the park, we crossed the street and began walking on the impressive trail along the beach. For a good portion of this trail, there are separate bike and pedestrian lanes.

Shortly after entering St Aubin, we turned inland to walk the Rail Trail which took us all the way to the lighthouse. We started our walk at 12:45 and got to the lighthouse about 2:50.

After walking down near the lighthouse but not crossing over to it as not low tide, we caught bus 22 back to the Cristina Hotel near the Cobiere Phare Hotel and German Naval Tower.