h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just had a very pleasant week's holiday with the family in Guernsey - one of the Channel Islands situated off the northern coast of France (but affiliated to the UK). If you ever get the chance to visit, I highly recommend it.

I'll post a few journals about some of the interesting things we saw on Guernsey, as well as the neighbouring islands of Herm and Sark. Today, I'll post an overview of Guernsey for the visiting motorist.

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Well, it's a small island, sort of roughly triangular, with coasts to the East, South and a hypoteneusal North-west. It's maybe 7 miles across in either direction.

Depsite that, for a holiday island of beaches and rocky cliffs it's surprisingly densely packed. Around 60,000 live there, most have cars, and to pass the time they drive them around the network of narrow roads.

Actually, there are three grades of roads, generally marked in different colours on a map. The widest (marked in green on my map) allow two cars to pass each other, so long as neither has its wing mirrors extended. The intermediate roads (yellow) generally allow two bicycles to pass, but not those with paniers. The narrowest sort (white) may allow two slim pedestrians to pass if they clamber over each other. Most tourist car parks are situated at the end of this latter sort.

One other thing you need to watch for is the Filter junction, marked on the road with yellow cross hatching. My guidebook, in way of explaining these, said that if visitors couldn't work out the priority at a filter junction, then maybe they shouldn't have brought their car in the first place.

If you stand and watch the locals at a Filter junction, then it's a beautifully coordinated ballet as each vehicle knows instinctively when its turn is due and moves accordingly while others wait. Sadly, there's no logical axioms on which to base their fine judgment. It's a complete mystery to the uninitiated.

When a tourist in their UK-plated car or H-plated hire car approaches a filter junction, it's mayhem, as tempers rise, horns sound, and cars end up facing sideways across the road. Some maps have a little F marking these junctions, so you can choose to avoid them if you wish.

Having said all this, there are two good things for the visiting motorist. Parking is free and fuel is cheap (about 15p per litre lower than the UK, owing to some dodgy tax arrangement Guernsey negotiated with the UK in the past)

Yes parking is free, but it's time limited - you need to buy a little blue card on which you can set the time you arrive. Don't attempt to outstay the time limit or change your time, though - they'll pursue you and trap you at the next Filter junction.

Ah yes... Guernsey, I remember it well.

Seasick on the car ferry going out... Seasick on the car ferry coming back.

Highlights of the weeks stay: Powerboat racing. Seeing all these monster boats at the quayside and nothing but distant plumes of spray on the horizon during the race. God knows who won.

A visit to the Tomato museum.. Bored witless. Is that still there?

Around the island in half an hour.

Occupation Museum, not bad but unable to get into any of the WW2 fortifications. (Which I would have liked to have seen).

Shell Beach? On one of the other nearby islands... Isolated.

Hi Deke,

No Tomato Museum, sadly, unless you mean the Farmers' Market, which performed the function admirably.

She'll beach is on nearby Herm. I'll describe that in due course.

No Tomato museum? That is sad. It was a 'must see' exhibition of the development of tomato marketing and sales development in Guernsey. The place won't be the same without it.

She'll beach. My memory betrays me. I would have sworn it was on another island and I got there by boat. I see from Bing it is on Guernsey. I see from your post that you too have auto fill-in.

Bing's quoting the state, not the island. Shell Beach is on Herm, but that island is administered as part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey (as are the islands of Sark and Alderney)

It's no worse than saying "The Needles, England", I suppose.

Yes, the Tomato Museum is no more - see this link:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lcBHY_mtCG0C&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91&dq=tomato+museum+closed+guernsey&source=bl&ots=Q2Q--3SEeM&sig=Kloa9RrgxyzIMz1GwSKihkb3K6I&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UVq-U-nYF8WjPfn-gZAJ&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=tomato%20museum%20closed%20guernsey&f=false

Well, in its day it seems to have made an impression.

http://thinkofengland.blogspot.com/2009/11/guernsey-tomato-museum.html

Thanks BG - I enjoyed that

I think someone there was alluding to British Rail's perpetual museum of sausage roll victoriana, to be found at most stations.

They were certainly quoting A590302. Did you see the first post under that blog entry?