Day 1: Home to St Helier to La Pulente

Back in August 2023 we spent a bank holiday weekend in the Channel Islands. We were predominantly based on Guernsey, but managed to fit in a day trip to Sark and even stayed overnight on Alderney too. Because Alderney is so small, we managed to walk most of the way around the island in an afternoon. The main Channel Island which we hadn't visited was Jersey, the biggest of them all. It wasn't necessarily on my bucket list, but when we were trying and failing to find cheap flights for the late May bank holiday weekend in 2025, some reasonably cheap flights from Heathrow to Jersey caught my eye. I googled "what is there to do on Jersey" and ended up on a tourism website which suggested that walking around the island, with it's approximately 48-mile coastline, was a good way to spend a long weekend. I decided to book the flights!

Armed with a book called "Walking on Jersey", I then began to plan the route. I decided that it would theoretically be just about doable to get around the entire island in 4 days, but it was going to take quite a lot of walking. I booked us a hotel in St Helier, the island's capital, on the basis that almost all bus routes seem to start and end there, and plotted out an itinerary which involved walking to a bus stop from where we could catch a bus back to St Helier each day, then returning to the same bus stop the next morning to continue the walk. I decided that was the best way to do it - rather than booking hotels along the route - as it gave us the option to chicken out if we decided it was just too far. Also it meant we didn't need to carry our luggage every day!

The entire thing hinged on the fact that we had an early morning flight from Heathrow to Jersey booked for the Friday morning, which meant that Friday was effectively a full day of hiking. Imagine my frustration then when British Airways later cancelled that flight and offered me an alternative... that wouldn't land on Jersey until around 4pm. That clearly wasn't going to be workable, so I ended up switching us to an early morning flight from Gatwick instead. That saved the itinerary, but it did mean that we had the added hassle of getting to Gatwick!

We ended up travelling down on Thursday evening after work and staying overnight at an airport hotel. That meant that this morning we didn't have to get up until 06.30, at which point we were able to have breakfast in the hotel and make the short drive to the Long Stay parking. Gatwick Airport itself seemed relatively calm for a bank holiday weekend and we got through security without any problems. Soon we were boarding the plane for what was going to be a very short flight across to Jersey.

We landed on Jersey some time around 11am and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was sunny, because the weather forecast for this weekend has been quite mixed. We caught a bus from outside the airport to the main bus station in St Helier, which was the starting point for our round-the-island adventure. As we left the bus station and walked towards the sea, the first thing we came to was this station, commemorating the liberation of the island from the Nazis.

We were heading towards a seaside promenade, which was going to form the first 3 miles or so of our route.

In the distance we got our first view of Elizabeth Castle, so-called because Elizabeth I was queen of England when the castle was built.

The tide was quite far out, but it was a beautiful sandy beach.

We realised we could see the hotel where we're staying for the next three nights in the background.

We set off and began walking around the bay, towards the town of St Aubin.

When we reached it, after around an hour of walking alongside the sea, we found it was a pretty little place.

It seemed to have its own little castle, out in the sea.

The bay itself was gorgeous in the sunshine.

We saw lots of Jersey flags (white with a red diagonal cross) as we strolled through the town.

We'd only walked about 3.5 miles by this point, so it felt too early in proceedings to stop for lunch. We decided to press on with the second leg of our route instead. Soon we left the town behind and were walking on a pretty forest path.

We emerged out onto a headland, from where we could see back round the bay towards where we'd started in St Helier.

There were some beautiful views down towards the water...

...and we found a convenient bench where we stopped for some water and chocolate.

As we continued on our route, the views of the coast did not disappoint.

The sea was a wonderful shade of blue today and there were plenty of interesting coastal formations.

The beaches we glimpsed all looked really sandy.

And I really loved the bright pink and purple heather growing on the cliffs.

Up until this point the walk had been quite easy, but it was about to become a bit more challenging. We were going to have to get down these cliffs to beach level.

A lot of the path wasn't actually too bad, as we followed steps cut into the side of the slope.

The bit I was really not a fan of was here, when we emerged down from the cliff in the photo onto this very rocky part of the beach. The rocks really were not easy to climb down!

But we managed it, and the next part of the walk was mostly flat as made our way around St Brelade's Bay.

It was close to 4pm by this point and we were getting hungry, so this seemed like a good place to stop for food. From the end of the bay we only had another 4 miles to go before we reached our designated bus stop. We ended up eating in what I think might be the world's most scenic Pizza Express!

Feeling refreshed, we continued on along the pretty promenade in St Brelade...

...and followed a path which led through the graveyard of St Brelade's church.

Soon we were climbing uphill onto another headland, from where we could look back towards the cliff we'd climbed down earlier.

The views from up here were magnificent.

I imagined Jersey as being a lot more built up than Guernsey. St Helier definitely feels big, but we didn't meet many people around here.

Although we were starting to feel tired by this point, the walk was still fun.

It did, however, become a bit challenging again towards the end as we had to climb downhill, then uphill, then downhill again.

Climbing these steps was definitely hard work!

We made it to the top though, and were rewarded with views out towards the lighthouse at La Corbière, which is the most southwestern point of Jersey.

The final part of the walk was a bit of a rush, as we had to make our way across this headland and climb down to the main road to catch the last bus of the day from a place called La Pulente.

We made it with a few minutes to spare, although we were lucky we didn't miss the bus because there wasn't a visible bus stop at the place where the map indicated there ought to be one. Luckily Tim spotted that "BUS" was painted on the road a bit further up, so we were able to stand in the right place.

Once we were back in St Helier we had a final short walk to the Radisson, where we're staying for the next few nights. We got a pleasant surprise when we found our room had been upgraded...

...and it is a really nice big room...

...with a lovely view out across the harbour  

We were both pretty tired by this point, so all that remained was to have a shower and do the blog. The official mileage of my planned route today was 13.25 miles, but FitBit suggests more like 16 miles in total  I don't know whether the weather this weekend is going to make it possible for us to get the entire way around the island, but we've definitely had fun and seen some beautiful scenery today