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

So you've made it to Guernsey. You avoided seasickness on the car ferry (I make a point of not reading anything on a boat - I take an MP3 player, close my eyes and and listen to something instead). You've mastered the Filter junction and you've found your hotel at the end of a long narrow unmarked road. What is there to see and do?

The best beaches are found in the bays along the length of the north-west coast, punctuated by rocky foreshores. The scenery is stunning, there's plenty of parking, and there's a kiosk for drinks and ice-creams every few hundred yards. If you want recommendations, then Port Soif has a nice kiosk doing crab sandwiches, Cobo has good fish & chips, and L'Ancresse has a nice beachside cafe, as well as a toilet block in the style of a German WW2 observation post.

That's the other thing about the Guernsey coast. It's heavily fortified. Many installations date from the Napoleonic wars, when the islanders feared a French invasion. Of these, the round Martello towers are the most scenic. And then Hitler's forces took the islands in 1940 before building many more concrete towers and gun batteries.

The islanders were liberated in 1945, and, well, they've dined out on it ever since. You can still visit the forts, the military hospital and the occupation museum. You can buy countless books of islanders' memoirs. You can drink the Liberation Ale, and you can join the Occupation societies.

When you get bored of the beaches, then there's a wonderful coastal path that runs along the south coast. It rivals anything in Cornwall (and that's saying something). You'll find scenes painted by Renoir, a profusion of wild flowers and birds, and stunning clifftop views. From Jerbourg Point at the south-east corner you can, on a clear day, spot all the other Channel Islands, as well as the French coast.

There's one major town on the island - St Peter Port, and this has all the facilities you might need from the point of view of shopping and eating out, as well as gardens, museums and art galleries to visit. It's also the main harbour, from which you can catch regular ferry services to the nearby islands, of which more later...

Hey, Icy - this fits in beautifully with the July Creat challenge.

Any chance you could do some quick GuideML and send it on to the Post?

Sure, Dmitri. What's the deadline?

No deadline - anytime it suits you. But this month wouldb e nice.

If you'd like to make a short series out of it, that would be cool, too - and pictures welcome, of course.

Are the strawberry greenhouses still there Icy?

Plenty of greenhouses, but a lot of abandoned ones too. Many of the bungalows look like they were built in the last 30 years, so I suspect a lot of the farmland and smallholdings have been sold off for housing.

When did you visit, Scorp?

Did you see any postboxes when you were over there, Icy?

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We were on Guernsey many years ago (our youngest, now 25, was in a pushchair). Apart from the day trips to Sark and Herm, I mainly remember a butterfly sanctuary. I'm always reminded of this when I post to GB's journals.

Is that still there?

I don't remember seeng a butterfly house, but there are plenty of wild butterflies.

The post boxes were mostly blue. There is an Olympic gold one on Sark.

Did you see the 1853 postbox, the oldest in the British Isles? It is a plum colour. And yes, the postbox on Sark was painted gold to celebrate Carl Hester's success in the team dressage in 2012. See: A87773881 Controversial Postboxes of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games

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It was in the Seventies when we visited Icy! One thing I remember very well was a wonderful, very tiny church of some sort - quite miniature and well worth a visit.

No, I didn't get the chance to see that old postbox (although I did spot it in the guidebook).

Yes, I saw the little chapl - it's decorated inside and out with broken crockery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Chapel

I remember that little chapel. Seats 6 or something.

I've tracked down several references to the butterfly exhibition. It seems that Guernsey had the first ever butterfly house. But it is apparently not there any longer, because there are no current entries on the subject. According to this link (from Costa Rica of all places!)

http://www.butterflyfarm.co.cr/en/educational-resources/the-scientific-realm/why-butterfly-farming.html

the tomato museum and the butterfly museum are related in their origins, but it's not explained why.

They fed the tomatos to the butteryflys? or, of course, fed the butterflys, to the tomatos

Must be a bit odd.... being on a place, thats quite so small... I mean you could walk across and around the entire place in a day or two...

My husband is fascinated by islands and we have visited several in our day. The best way to get him to the UK is to entice him with islands like these, and we chugged from Guernsey to Jersey, Sark and Herm whilst there.

When I suggested we went to the Eden Project whilst over this summer, he immediately asked if it was much further to the Scilly Isles. We have done island-hopping on the Greek islands, Sicily, Cyprus, Elba, Il de Ré off the French Atlantic coast, Malta, the Orkneys, the Balearics and the Canaries.

I wonder what it is about islands that fascinates him? Perhaps I should ask.

Maybe it is because from the dawn of literature, there has been something undeniably exciting about islands. Islands are mysterious and magical, unlike the relatively mundane mainland. In fiction, islands are always full of mystery and treasure. Jules Verne did not write Mysterious Mainland, nor did Robert Louis Stevenson write Treasure Continent. On an island, anything can happen, and frequently does. We remember the names of mythical islands with hushed reverence: Atlantis, Avalon, Utopia, Laputa, Lemuria.

If there is something exceptional about islands, then those who dwell on an island must also therefore be extraordinary. To live on an island, you must surely be more in tune with nature and its wonders than other folk, a notion which perhaps is reflected in legends and myths set on islands.

An island is a piece of land, yet its defining feature is that it is surrounded by the sea. Land can be cultivated, controlled and conquered, but the ocean is untameable and wild. An island is a cross between the civilised and the feral. This is reflected in Greek myths, which often featured islands of wonder inhabited by half-human half-beast creatures, like the Minotaur, mermaids or the Cyclops. Circe was a sorceress who lived on the island of Aeaea and turned men into animals. Her son Comus led a band of creatures with human bodies and the heads of animals. The sirens were semi-human female creatures who lured men to their doom.

If marooned on one of these mythological islands, the only way to escape was to similarly embrace your inner animal while remembering your humanity. Odysseus disguised himself as a sheep to escape the Cyclops while Daedalus became a bird to escape his prison, yet his son, Icarus, became seduced by his animal side, flew too close to the sun and died as a consequence.

The concept of islands being populated by half-human creatures and humans with very different attributes and morals to those of the writer's own culture continues throughout history. Shakespeare's The Tempest features the beast-like Caliban. Gulliver's Travels has ant-sized people on the island of Lilliput, giants on Brobdingnag, and sentient horses called Houyhnhnms who are noble and refined, sharing another island with deformed and savage humans known as Yahoos. The Land that Time Forgot features an island, Caspak, populated not only by dinosaurs, but different species of ape-men. This later led to the classic 1933 film King Kong, whose central ape character has semi-human characteristics; he falls in love with Ann Darrow, and walks on two legs like a man.

To quote Jane Austen, 'think of nothing but the Isle of Wight, and ...call it the Island, as if there were not another island in the world'

Basically, islands rule.

Well, that's what I think, anyway.

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I was born on an island... that isn't an island... within an island..

The island of muttford... or muttford and Loathing... (resorting to the old hundred name for the area).... in Suffolk... on the island of the UK/England.....

The area where I was born, and lived, back there, in Suffolk, is an island, within an island; entirely surrounded by water; the North sea on one side, and then entirely encircled by the river, and the esturys at Gt Yarmouth, and at Lowestoft.... and with the Wavney, form a complete area of water seperating that 'chunk' of the coast, from the mainland.... Mind... it sometimes feels more like a differnt plannet there, than just an island plus; within that island within an island, I've been on and island. yes, and island within an island, within an island up on the river.... there are soem sections, of land, sort of in the middle of the river itself including one... locally called rat island... due to its population cons consisting of no humans, only rats... and a very strange gravestone.... hidden away in the undergrowth

An island is one thing, but to get the real experience you need an archipelago, so you can experience travelling between them by sea.

I enjoy coasts, and small islands have a higher ratio of them. I love the views as I walk at the top of the cliffs, the distinct character of each beach and cove, and of course the wildlife that thrives along these margins.

Small communities also fascinate me.