Peckish Travels

There are a plethora of museums on Guernsey related to the German occupation during WWII. The castle near the harbor has four just on its own. We prefer to take advantage of as many free sites when we travel as we can; however, we don’t want to not get a sense of the place in which we are staying. We have been significantly helped during our stay with all of the WWII information that is out and freely available for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the island. But we decided today to visit the Signal Headquarters Museum as it relates to the encoding and decoding of messages, which we enjoyed learning about at Bletchley Park in England a couple years ago.

Before we headed to this museum, however, we wanted to right an oversight we had made on our first visit to the Candie Gardens, which was to miss seeing the statue of Victor Hugo that is there.

The Victor Hugo statue is in the gardens in front of the Guernsey Museum and Art Galkery in the Candie Gardens.

We had a relatively short walk (about 10 minutes) from Candie Gardens to the German Signal Headquarters Museum. As the name suggests, the museum was the headquarters for the German Naval Commander of the Channel Islands during WWII. The Signals HQ handled all the important radio signals traffic for the German forces during the occupation. The bunker complex was completed in February 1944 and housed powerful communications equipment and Enigma encoding machines.

The tour began with an 11 minute film, which showed how former German Naval Signals Officer Oberleutnant Willi Hagedorn, the lead officer for this command during WWII, returned to Guernsey to help guide the restoration of the bunker to accurately portray how it looked during the war.

Of course, the work that went on here is fascinating. The safe communication of war strategies seems like basic war planning 101 (no Signalgate here), but I also found the cooperation between the Germans who had served in Guernsey during the war to assist in the development of the museum and the receptiveness of the people whose island had been occupied by them to be just as interesting.

Before I talk about today’s walk, I wanted to share one of the cutest pet rituals we’ve seen while house sitting. Below is a photo of Daisy with her white stuffed bear toy. She goes to her basket every afternoon between five and six, picks up this toy and proceeds to walk the yard with it. If it’s raining, she just walks in the house with it. When she’s “patrolled” enough, she puts the toy down and doesn’t bother with it until the next day at around the same time.

The focus of today’s outing was a visit to The Little Chapel, a colorful miniature grotto created in 1914. More on that later. We did get to it via a sidewalk that happily ran the length of a main road and then continued on all the way (about 45 minutes one way) to the chapel. On the way there and back, we were reminded in various ways about the cows for which the island is famous.

The Little Chapel is aptly named at just 16 ft by 9 ft. It is covered in broken pieces of pottery. It was built mostly by Brother Deodat Antoine of the Order of de la Salle. This was a Roman Catholic French Order founded in 1680 for the education of boys. The Order left France in 1904 when the French government banned all faith schools. Brother Deodat built The Little Chapel after having a vision to create his own version of the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. In 1914, he made his vision a reality, and we’re still talking about him.

Bob and I managed to see the chapel as we happened to time our visit in between two fairly sizable tour groups. The chapel is free to visit but takes donations. Also, posted signs indicated that ceramic pieces for the steps were donated by Wedgwood Barlaston, so likely added after the original chapel.

We walked the same route back and stopped at a Coop to pick up some groceries. I snapped a photo of the iconic gingham Guernsey milk cartons. I don’t think I’ve seen any other brand of milk in the stores.

If I had blogged yesterday, this would have been entitled gray and gusty Guernsey. Happily, today is a different story and just in time for their bimonthly summer themed seafront festival. The theme for today’s event was art, so lots of craft booths as well as music and food trucks or tents.

Before heading to the festival, we walked the dogs at Fort George and then headed towards Castle Cornet for a better photo of this important structure.

Castle Cornet has guarded St Peter Port for over 800 years. Construction was started in the 13th century and it has been extended and altered over the years as war and weaponry has changed. The Germans used Castle Cornet as part of the air defense cover of the harbor, and it is probably the only British castle to be strafed by the Royal Air Force.

Our version of D-Day had us walking the dogs after some more morning showers and then heading off to see some more sites in Guernsey that we had read about.

First a couple of photos of the very photogenic dogs.

We wanted to visit the Candie Gardens, which also contain the Priaulx Library, but we found a tower and cemetery as well.

We also went into a small green space with Victoria Tower and some WWI military guns. The tower was built in 1848 to commemorate Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s trip to the island in 1846. The German military guns were part of what England received or took after WWI. The best relics were kept for the British National War Museum and others given to dominion countries.

Across the street from the tower is the Candie Cemetery. It is a public cemetery which also contains five war graves as well as graves for the 60 victims of the 1832 cholera epidemic. Some photos of the different types of graves are below.

From the cemetery, it was a short walk to the Candie Gardens, which were established in 1894 in the grounds of Candie House, now the Priaulx Library. Admission to the garden is free.

The library and gardens are participating in the Liberation Trail, section 7 of which we saw at the downtown library the other day, so we got to learn some facts from section nine of the trail, re-occupation and recovery.

The following are some pics from the gardens.

After visiting the gardens, we walked to Cambridge Park, which ended up being a lovely green space with some sports fields and a nice walking trail. On the way we got more views of the Channel.

Where are we exactly? I often need to remind myself. Bob and I are currently in Guernsey, the second largest of the Channel Islands and located 27 miles from the coast of Normandy. The island has a land area of 24 square miles.

Guernsey is administered as part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, a self-governing dependency of the British crown. It is not part of the United Kingdom. The island’s parliament and government is the States of Guernsey, and it has one town, St. Peter Port, where our current housesit is located.

Some fun facts about Guernsey that you may or may not know. While the island’s current largest industry is financial services, it is known for its cattle. Guernsey cattle are a breed of dairy cattle,and we passed a large dairy on the way in from the airport.

Guernsey was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. After 5 years of occupation, it was liberated on May 9, 1945, which is still celebrated as Liberation Day here.

Finally (at least until we learn more), the author Victor Hugo spent 15 years in exile on Guernsey, where he wrote “Les Miserables” among other of his works.

Since we are located in a small cul-de-sac type residential area, we got our first taste today of downtown St. Peter Port by walking about 30 minutes to their High Street to see their Old Town area and a bit of the harbor.

If you’ve hung on through all of that, the pics from today are below.

We stopped into the unassuming Guille-Alles Library and learned some information about its history as well as more about the German invasion of Guernsey during WWII.

The library is one of the official stops on Guernsey’s Liberation Trail in celebration of their 80th year of liberation. There are 10 stops on the trail that we stumbled onto. The library stop is #7 called a Dark Chapter. One room of the library tells the story of the 2,500 Channel Islanders who Hitler ordered to be sent to internment camps, mostly in Germany. Individuals interned were those who were non-native Channel Islanders and specifically those born in England. The exhibit discussed what life was like in the camps, the resilience of those who endured them, and the history of the library during the occupation. It was an interesting exhibit.

Bob and I had a good night at the Hilton Hotel near the Gatwick Airport on Sunday night. We had a drink in the lobby bar and then had dinner from groceries we had picked up in the M&S market in the airport. We had learned earlier Sunday that our scheduled 11:05 am Aurigny flight to Guernsey on Monday was delayed until 1:20 pm and had let our homeowners know.

Regardless of the delay, the airline still wanted us through security by 10:20 am. Being the overachievers that we are and the easiness of the check-in and security processes, we were through security by 9:20. We decided that with all the time to kill maybe we should have a breakfast at an airport restaurant.

I don’t remember the name of it, but the food and service were great. Bob had salmon and an egg on toast, and I had smashed avocado.

Gatwick is one of the airports that doesn’t post the departure gate for a flight until so many minutes prior to boarding, so our gate information wouldn’t be available until 12:40 or so. But we noticed that other flights to Guernsey were going from gates 1-5, so we decided to head there. We spent the next 3+ hours mostly in that area. I read a couple of free newspapers that were available, a UK paper and “The New York Times.” At one point, we checked to see if there was availability on the 11:20 flight, which was leaving at 12:40, but no luck.

Long story short, we started boarding about 1:20 and got into the Guernsey airport about 3:00 on a fairly small plane about 70 seats). The delay was due to staffing shortages/illnesses. The weather was great, and we got some good shots of the island as we landed.

Our homeowners picked us up from the airport, showed us a couple of parks to walk the dogs and the closest grocery, and made us a lovely meal, including some peas from their garden.

But most importantly, we got to meet Rosie and Daisie, their adorable Westies that we’ll be caring for until the 21st while their owners are having a belated birthday trip to Barbados.

Beside Coventry’s bustling shopping district is the Cathedral District, at least that’s what I am calling it. It has a church, the cathedral, the cathedral ruins, and the old historic council chambers as well as cute narrow cobblestone streets. It was definitely our favorite part of Coventry and what we would highly recommend for a visit.

The first church we saw was Holy Trinity Church. A church stood on this site as early as 1113 but was destroyed by fire in 1257. The north porch survived but the rest of the existing church was rebuilt during the 14th century.

The next few photos deal with the old Cathedral, the new Cathedral, and the destruction of Coventry during World War II. I’ll just apologize now that my history will be incomplete and the photos don’t do justice to the ruins or the new cathedral. Bob and I were beyond impressed and also moved by the horrors of war and the resilience of the local people.

Here’s a thumbnail description of my understanding of the history of the Coventry Cathedral. The Church of St. Michael, the parish church of Coventry, dates from 1300 AD. It didn’t become designated a cathedral until 1918 and was mostly destroyed (except for the tower) during the 11 hour air raid on Coventry on November 14, 1940.

Currently, you can climb the tower that is connected to the ruins of the old cathedral. The new cathedral is attached to one of the walls of the old cathedral, creating an impressive courtyard which was hosting a car show today. There is an underground museum in which you can (and we did) watch a video detailing the events of November 14, 1940, and view artifacts from that period.

One final note on the Coventry bombing. The film noted that it was learned after the bombing that the Royal Air Force had been notified that Coventry was being targeted, but there is no evidence that the city was warned. One theory was that Churchill was willing to sacrifice Coventry so that the Germans wouldn’t know that England had broken their code. There is no proof that was the case either. The air raids on Coventry’s killed an estimated 568 people and injured another 1200.

Another great walkabout in another interesting city in England, and Coventry is officially a city, as recognized in its charter of 1345! With a population of a little over 345,000, it is the 10th largest city in England and the 13th largest in the UK. These are fun facts from Wikipedia, which also noted the city’s industrial importance in the manufacturing of bicycles and then of the British motor industry, which made it a target for the Germans during the Second World War. We learned a bit more about that and other parts of the city’s history during our walk.

This is the first of a two part post. The second part will focus on the cathedral area of Coventry and what happened to it during the war. I do have to note that while we had a lovely walk, much more interesting than we expected, there sadly appears to be a large unhoused population, and we did not feel comfortable going into one, otherwise lovely, park.

Also, beautiful weather today, mix of sun and clouds with temps in the 60s F.

Spon End is a diverse section of the city with a real mix of old and new, from medieval buildings to highrise buildings. It is the oldest surviving residential area in Coventry. We snapped some photos of the older buildings we liked.

There are a number of malls in the city centre. The Lower Precinct Mall also contains the Coventry Market, which has a range of stalls from food (produce, meats, seafood, spices, ethnic groceries) to fabrics, purses/wallets (Bob bought himself a new one.), perfumes, etc.

Bob and I are fascinated with the canal system in the UK and the narrow boats. We had to check out the canal basin when we saw it on the map. There were a few boats moored in the canal, and the canal side was lined with groceries and a couple cafes.

The cattle have been successfully herded and are now comfortably ensconced in their roomy motel room with a separate sitting and sleep area and plenty of sitting options. It was quite the traveling process and to throw in another metaphor we felt both shaken and stirred.

Long story short, two late, very crowded trains. I stood for the full 2+ hour journey in the entry area of both trains unable even to enter into the seating compartments due to no room for my bag and/or no room to sit. Bob was able to get a seat on the first train but had to hold his big but more flexible bag.

On the 2nd journey when we were both standing in the entry compartment with at least 4 others and their bag, one young man spent the entire trip talking loudly on his phone, including proving a username and password to something.

Once we finally arrived in Coventry, we had to search for a kiosk to print out our tickets for Sunday which will have us on both a train and then the tube to get to our hotel at Gatwick Airport.

A couple of views from our room on the 16th floor of the Ramada Inn in Coventry, which is part of another of our hotel programs (Wyndham).

Yesterday afternoon we went back out to find the two sites we had wanted to see but didn’t in the morning — Shrewsbury Castle and Laura’s Tower. The entrance to both was directly across from the library which we had been at in the morning, but we had gone back to walk up the Castle Gate which actually took us away from the castle. Ah well, it was better weather yesterday afternoon anyway.

We have had a great trip to Shrewsbury and would definitely recommend it as a stop on a visit to the UK. We are having a leisurely morning today waiting on our 12:30 train that will take us to Coventry once we change trains in Wolverhampton. We should arrive in Coventry about 2:30 this afternoon. Since we had a bit of time, we went out for breakfast to a cute cafe called House Coffee, another place we would recommend.

Bob had an avocado sandwich, and I had a grilled halloumi sandwich with a side salad and an Americano coffee. Bob had already had his coffee in the room while I was running.

Our only complaint with our stay in Shrewsbury is the poor Wi-Fi service in the Premier Inn Hotel and our inability to open a window or get any kind of real air flow in the room. We don’t stay in these hotels very often and wouldn’t recommend this one. The location is great but staff have been nonexistent or rude (likely a shortage of them) as well as the other issues.