Paradise Island 2

I was just meditating on my post about Jersey yesterday, and I feel the need to add, Jersey is not all bad, of course. In fact I was fond of Jersey.
I loved the North Coast, and I used to scare the life out of people by free-climbing the cliffs there alone, ok, it was stupid of me, but I loved rock climbing, I also spent many happy hours up at Corbiere on the rocks there and behind the Highlands hotel. I loved St.Ouen's bay, the most beautiful place on earth. And although I was never a good surfer because of the weakness in my right leg, I loved boogie boarding and running on the hard sand and sitting in my car on a spring tide, watching the waves crash over the sea wall.
And Jersey was very photogenic, I spent many hours doing photography in Jersey and also on Sark and Guernsey, but sadly most of my work has been lost.

My other favourite place in Jersey was Grev d'Azette and Green Island, many happy hours there, picnics with my little group, climbing up the island, bacon rolls, and walking Algie the rug, a bearded collie who liked to go in the sea and end up like a wet mop and stink my car out :) ah, yes, those were good days. Oh, and I must not forget low water fishing and cooking what we caught, those were happy times.

My other joy, my main joy, in Jersey, was sailing, dinghy sailing and racing on the bay, and sailing the bigger boats over to France and the other islands, I was so happy out on the water. It is still catastrophic to me that I lost my on little boat.

I have been offered several chances of returning to Jersey to lodge but I decided it was not going to help me in the long term, it is not a safe place for me and would be too traumatic, Jersey is nice to visit but we decided I need to stay here.

I was talking about the bad side of Jersey in my previous post, and I remembered today how I used to sit with a former police officer (not Bob Hill) and talk about the problems Jersey had, and although at the time I still didn't know how bad the problems in Jersey were, I knew Jersey had problems.

One of the things that this former police officer, (who was a lovely man who had been dealt a bad hand in life), talked about, and we agreed. That Jersey is being built on far too much, and even while I was there, I saw so much building, and so much roadworks causing chaos, and the former policeman told me that it was all about money, and that building was being done where building should not be done.

I guess the cliffs of the North coast and the dunes of St. Ouens bay cannot be built on, but there is less and less green open space in Jersey, and it used to make me sad.

In many ways I am glad I am not in Jersey. But that does not mean I should have been forced to leave as I was.