Day 3: La Falaise to St Martin's

I was expecting the weather might be wet on Jersey this morning, but when we woke up it seemed to be a bright sunny day.  This was a bonus because we had another long day of hiking ahead of us today. After a quick breakfast in the hotel we set off towards the bus station, from where we caught a bus back to La Falaise where we'd ended our walk last night.

We arrived and started walking around 10.30. The path was grassy initially, leading us towards the coast and a viewpoint from which we got another glimpse of Guernsey.

We could see lots of the coastline we'd walked around yesterday too.

We followed the small path through the bracken.

The sky wasn't bright blue on this side of the island, but at least it wasn't raining.

In places the path was narrow and we had to be careful to avoid the gorse.

These sheep didn't seem concerned about the steep slopes!

It has only come out very faintly in the photo, but as we were walking we realised we could see a strip of land in the distance. Looking at the map confirmed that this must be the coast of France!

The path came to an end and we walked on a small road for a while, with some beautiful views of the coast.

I was admiring the headlands and not really thinking about the fact we'd have to walk around them later  

The sky began to brighten up and the sea turned a gorgeous shade of blue.

The path was narrower now, only just wide enough for our feet.

The northern coastline of Jersey turned out to be surprisingly hilly and rocky.

But the views we got down to little bays and beaches were amazing.

And the weather was absolutely perfect

We passed a beach...

...and walked past a small tower.

After the tower, the path unfortunately became significantly more difficult for the next three miles or so.

We were navigating our way around the headland in this photo...

...and it was a very narrow path, quite overgrown with bracken.

The most annoying part about it was that there were hardly any flat parts. So we'd find ourselves climbing down a set of steps, only to have to climb back up to the same height five minutes later.

It was nice to look backwards and see that we were making progress from where we'd started...

...but we could also see the path stretching out ahead of us.

And there seemed to be an endless amount of coast left to walk around  

Eventually we got to the end of this difficult section, arriving at a small settlement in a place called Bouley Bay.

There wasn't a restaurant here but there was a little cafe. Tim bought us some drinks and we sat on a bench, looking out over the bay.

Once we set off again we could look back to the headland we'd just walked over.

The good news was that we had now made it the majority of the way across the northern coastline of Jersey.

The bad news was that there was still quite a lot of up and down to negotiate.

Still great views though  

As we made progress around today's final bit of coast, we had to be conscious of the time.

It was after 4pm by this point and the buses aren't very frequent on Sunday, so the final buses we could catch were some time around 6pm.

Luckily, despite the fact that it felt quite remote, I still had signal on my phone, so I was able to consult the Jersey bus timetables to figure out the best place from which we could catch a bus back to St Helier.

We were walking towards a place called Rozel, from which there were quite a few bus options.

Eventually we managed to get a bit further than that and finish in a village called St Martin's.

It was another one of those bus stops where there's no indication except the word "bus" painted on the tarmac, but the bus turned up at the exact time we expected

It's been another long day - with my Fitbit counting over 15 miles - so I was relieved to get back to the hotel for a bit of a rest