Day 17 North East Guernsey

 We drove the short distance up the coast to Vale and parked near the church where there was a small lake showing as a nature reserve on the map.  We went to what we thought was the entrance but it was a bird hide.  Looking over the lake we could see that there was no way of walking around.  We saw lots of little egrets, a heron, coots, moorhens and a single shelduck asleep on one leg.

Little egrets

Shelduck

Vale Church


We then walked around the nearby village and went to a garden centre which was very hidden away but had an enormous gift shop area with mostly Halloween and Christmas things.

After that we went to the second largest town on Guernsey called St Sampson.  It has a very large marina and a lot of shops.  We spent about an hour walking around and then decided to find somewhere scenic to park a little further north of St Sampson for lunch and coffee.  

St Sampson Harbour

St Sampson Clocktower 
and RNLI Offices


We found a nice quiet spot and went to get the lunch bag out but found we (Paul) had forgotten to pick it up.  So it was back to the hotel and we then stopped at a sea front car park at nearby Port Soif where we could see a lot of oystercatchers, egrets and a heron feeding as the tide went out. 

Oystercatcher at low tide

Port Soif

The weather has really changed now and it is much cooler, overcast and still very windy.  A lot of businesses have shut for the winter and there are not many non Guernsey cars about.  There were only 8 of us in the hotel over the past few days, including 4 electricians working at an exhibition, but they have a lot of bookings for next week as it is half term.

We have done most of our packing so just need to load the car up tomorrow.

We had a final meal in the hotel and got chatting to 2 local women (both widowed) who gave us a lot of insight into island life.


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