Day 3 Poole to Jersey

 

Quite an eventful day.  After breakfast, with a few hours to kill before checking in for the ferry to Jersey, we caught the bus to Poole and walked around the old town and harbour area again.  We climbed up the Sea Music structure on the Quay which gave even better views of Brownsea Island and the harbour and then walked around Poole Old Town.  


Houses in the Old Town

Poole Registry Office in Old Town

Sea Music monument on the Quay


We then returned to the hotel for our car and headed to the ferry terminal and before too long were boarding the Condor fast ferry.  It left on time and we were promised a smooth crossing.  Face masks were mandatory but did get a bit uncomfortable after a couple of hours so the best option was to go to the outside area at the back of the boat where we were out in the open. After passing the Sandbanks Ferry and sailing east of the Isle of Wight the sun disappeared and it became very misty but it reappeared as we neared the Channel Islands.   The first Island we saw was Alderney.  We then passed Sark, Herm and Guernsey before seeing the coast of Jersey ahead.  

Sandbanks Ferry


View from back of ferry



Island of Alderney


South Coast of Jersey


We docked ahead of schedule in bright sunshine but then had to join the queue for the Covid testing.  Although we seemed to disembark the ferry very quickly, we still waited an hour for our test.  They said the results would be available in 12-24 hours.

It was dark when we eventually left the ferry terminal.  We put the postcode of the hotel into the sat nav which said it was 1.3 miles away but after a short drive we suddenly saw the hotel on our left.  It seems that the hotel postcode serves a very wide area so we were sent to the wrong place.  It took a long time to find our way back as there are a lot of one way streets in this area.  We did eventually find the hotel and checked in.  We were shown how to use the internet but it didn’t work for us as our devices could not find the IP address for the network.  The hotel tried to help but as the staff were all logged on ok they said it must be our devices.  We had data roaming set on but still couldn’t make a phone call or send an SMS message, let alone get onto a network.  The PC had the same problem so we were sure it is the hotels problem.  It seems everything started working at around 2.00 am as when I woke up a lot of emails and notifications had come through.

The hotel seems very nice but we were unable to get a table for dinner as they have entertainment on Friday nights and were fully booked.  So we made our own dinner from salad, cheese, hard boiled eggs and wraps from our mobile fridge and had a glass of wine that we brought with us.  It had been a long and tiring day so we had an early night. 

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