Mourier Valley

Mourier Valley is on the north coast of Jersey.  We parked at Sorel Point and walked west along the cliff path.  It was a gorgeous day and it was lovely to be able to walk sans coats!  We hope you enjoy the view as much as we did!

This rocky reef is knows as The Paternosters.  You can see Guernsey in the background!

This poor tree is a victim of the elements!

We just managed to get the moon into the shot below with some extra contrast.

Seymour Tower

Seymour Tower is a coastal defence tower built on a rocky tidal island called L'Avarison, located 1.25 miles east of the south east corner of Jersey.  It can reach it on foot during low tide, but walkers must take care when walking to or from the tower as the tide comes in very quickly (see below!).  If you are used to roughing it you can rent out this "delightful" tower. Facilities are minimal. There is some electricity but no running water. Guests must bring back all waste (including bagged toilet waste) for disposal on shore. Guests staying overnight must bring their own sleeping bags and must be accompanied by a registered guide! Not really our idea of a holiday!  You can see below a doorway on the left hand side which is approximately four feet from the base and only accessible by a rusty iron ladder.  Before we even knew about the lack of facilities this put Rebekah off straight away!  Once at the tower you can only leave once every six hours due to the tides so no quick trips to the supermarket for those forgotten eggs!

As you can only access this at low tide we check the tides for the first weekend of February and these combined with sunny weather made the perfect combination so off we went with camera in hand!

Love on the beach!

As mentioned before the tides come in VERY quickly, at a rate of 10 kph (6.21 miles per hour).  The contours of the land vary and from the shore to Seymour Tower the land rises around half way then falls again.  Click here for a real time film of how quickly the tide comes in a half tide (three hours after low tide).  We experienced this at a beach just a mile up from here and its quite amazing how fast the tide comes in! We just managed to escape with dry feet!

These are markers to guide you around the smoothest parts.

If one should happen to be out walking and get cut off there is an emergency tower around half a mile from the shore.  The wait is around 3-4 hours before the tide is low enough to walk back to shore or the coastguard comes to rescue you!  The same sign as above is displayed on the slip where the walk begins to warn walkers of the danger of the fast incoming tides.  Its best to walk out with the tide if you have small children so that you have more time to walk out and return in good time without being stranded.  We walked there and back in just over an hour and the tide is slowest at the turn of the tide so we were safe!  It was also a very low tide as a result of an exceptionally high spring tide. 

Mussel beds!

Portelet Common

As you may have gathered by now Jersey is a BEAUTIFUL island! We have so many opportunities for gorgeous walks on beaches, commons, cliff paths and the many bays that make up the coastline.

One Sunday we went to Portelet Common for a walk.  It was a beautiful, sunny day, too beautiful to stay indoors. Mike charged up "the dog" and off we went!  Below are some photographs of the coastline.

The small building here is Janvrin's tomb which was named after Captain Janvrin who was buried there after he died of plague aboard his ship.

The small tower here is Noirmont point.  A few months ago we went and watched a meteor shower there, sheltered inside a WW2 German bunker!

Who could this be..........?

Mike and "the dog".

Petrified Forest

A few weeks ago we read on the news that a section of petrified forest has been uncovered at St Ouen's. 650 years ago, a man called John Willis owned a large house - the Manor of La Brecquette, at L'Etacq.  It was surrounded on two sides by a forest of oak trees. One year, waves moved up St. Ouen's beach and began to flood the land.  The sea rose until it covered the manor, and eventually it covered the oak forest as well.

When the tide is very low at St. Ouen's, you can still see black tree stumps - the petrified forest, all that remains of the oak trees that once surrounded the manor.  The stumps can be seen at the northern end of the bay.  This strip that had been uncovered after a high tide and windy weather was more like a mass of petrified wood.  It was spongy to walk on and we could still see the roots underneath the main petrified mass.

As it was raining quite heavily Rebekah took these photographs with her 12 year old phone so they are poor quality for enlarging!  We did not stay longer than 10 minutes as it really was a grey miserable day!  We are glad to have finally been able to capture this piece of history as there have been other times that we have been down to see if the forest has been uncovered after a high, stormy tide.

Macaron Shopping in Paris

Mike whisked Rebekah off to Paris for their first anniversary!  Well, thats not quite true.  We spotted a deal on Blue Island for a weekend break so we jumped at the chance.  Often times it can be expensive to get off our volcanic rock so you have to take advantage of deals when they come along! So, we hopped on a little ATR42 off to Gay Paris to enjoy our anniversary.  After an uneventful flight and train ride into the city we located our hotel, which was situated near the Tour Eiffel, unloaded our bags and made our way back into the city.  We could just about see the top of the Tour Eiffel from our hotel room.  Mike had asked for a top floor room!  The following photographs have been taken on a Nokia phone as neither of us brought our SLRs!

Anyone who knows Rebekah will know that she has a distinct partiality towards macarons, or in Mikes words a seasoned connoisseur! This itinerary of this trip was built around the location and opening times of three macaron establishments.

The first macaron purveyor we visited was Carette.  Rebekah is looking a little apprehensive here as she knows she is about to go up the Tour Eiffel!  These macarons were delicious but they ranked third in the ratings. More on that to come.

For anyone who knows Rebekah they will know that she is TERRIFIED of heights! That really is an understatement! She was somewhat apprehensive before going up the Tour Eiffel, especially having seen that the lifts had windows in.  After we had eaten a lovely meal at a small restaurant on Avenue Kleber, we walked back down towards the Tour Eiffel.  Here she is before the ascent!  There was no getting out of it as we had pre-booked our tickets online. BEST decision as we only had to wait 15 minutes to get through security and into a lift whereas those who went on the day to buy tickets had to wait nearly two hours!

Here is Rebekah at the TOP just about to go outside! She did a lap (albeit clinging in a limpet like fashion to the inside). Mike was VERY proud of her!  The trick is is to go straight to the top, just get in one lift after the other and DO NOT look out!

Here are the happy couple at the top, inside!

After our successful ascent of the Tour Eiffel we went for a ten mile walk up Avenue Kleber to the Arc de Triomphe, down the Champs Elysees ALL the way to The Louvre, at a celebratory macaron, then headed back to our hotel.  Suffice it to say that the next day we took the metro everywhere!

The next morning we had a late breakfast and headed up to the Sacre Coeur.  The metro goes most of the way to the top but not all the way.  We laughed at people waiting to get into the lift as we took the stairs but it was they who would have been laughing if they had seen us walking up 150 steps! We then had a further three sets of steep stairs to ascend before we got to the base of the Sacre Coeur and there was one more set of steps to climb! From thereon it was ALL downhill!



Next stop-Laduree!!! These came in second and were ethereal delictatious delights!

We stopped off to have a quick look at the opera house and Mike just about managed to get the opera house in the frame without too many vans! It was tricky as you can see!

This Tiffany's horse and carriage was riding the streets of Paris, probably to drum up Christmas business!

The final macaron stop was at Pierre Herme's.  These ranked number one in the macaron tasting stakes.  They were AMAZING!!!!! Some of them had foie gras in and, though Rebekah thought this was an unusual ingredient for sweet macarons, it enhanced the flavour of the macaron. We will definitely be going back there on future visits.

On the Saturday evening we went out to the Christmas market on the Champs Elysees for dinner as we wanted to sample a variety of the edible goods for sale!  Mike was thrilled to find a gyro stand and Rebekah had a nutella crepe with chantilly cream.  Thus just about finished her off as it was VERY sweet and she has been dieting!  We bought a cone of churros to finish off our dinner and headed back to the hotel.

On the Sunday, our actual anniversary, we left the hotel around 11am and caught the metro to Notre Dam.  There was a MASSIVE queue to enter and we could not take our bags so we just looked at it and headed off for a walk around the island.

We walked around the west side of the island and it was very picturesque!

These locks are where people lock their love for eternity.  If only we had known about this, we would have brought a lock with us!  Good job this is already taken care of for us.

 We then headed back to the airport after having a lovely anniversary weekend together!