Island 19: Gran Canaria

Some photos from my visit, July 2011

Island 16: Lindisfarne / Holy Island

This visit came as an opportune extension to a trip up to the North East for work. And this is the first of my forty that I’ve previously visited.

I was lucky to watch the rain dissipate as I headed up the A1, the afternoon turning into a golden sunlit summer evening. Lindisfarne is an attractive island whatever the weather, but in the low evening sun it really takes on an extraordinary gleam. This being an evening visit, I was only amongst a small number of visitors who had journeyed across the threshold of the low causeway onto the island. It’s difficult to unravel whether Celtic Christianity and early monasticism shaped the landscape more than the landscape moulded the temperament of the Saints who sought to isolate themselves here in lives dedicated to contemplation.

Island 6: Inishmaan/Inis Meain

Full update to follow. Here’s a taster…

Another bad hair day!

Island 2: Guernsey

This was my first visit to the Channel Islands. After an inauspicious start, in which My Grumpy Companion (as she has asked to be called) parted company with her breakfast during a vomit comet of a journey over, things took a turn for the better with fresh crab sandwiches and our first slice of Guernsey Gache (pronounced ‘gosh’) – a local tasty fruit cake, which we consumed with gusto at one of the omni-present tea kiosks overlooking a pretty beach.

We packed lots into a relatively short visit – just three days from May 28th to May 30th. In fact evertything from small, low, rocky and sandy bays to tall coastal cliffs; a kitsch shell encrusted chapel to a grim underground WWII German military hospital; and megalithic tombs to orchid laden meadows. And Islands 3 & 4. Yet we left thinking about our next visit to return to the Channel Islands, having only skimmed the surface of this small but story-crammed island.

Here’s some photos from the visit.

ABOVE: The very pretty but highly invasive hottentot fig. Alas this often out-competes local flora.

ABOVE: Reminders that Toto, we’re not in blighty anymore. Well yes, but no, but yes.

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BELOW: WWII German military defences and the grim interior of the slave-built German Underground Military Hospital serve as reminders of WWII invasion and occupation of the Channel Islands.

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