Sark

Posted on 2011/07/24 11:34:12 (July 2011).

[Thursday 21st July 2011]
Fortunately the weather was much better today for our daytrip from Guernsey to Sark.

We had breakfast at our hotel then headed down to the harbour to catch the 10am ferry. It was a lovely trip over to Sark, calm sea and blue skies with great views of the islands inbetween - how I'd imagined/hoped our previous two ferry journeys would have been.

We arrived on Sark just before 11 and walked up from the harbour to the village centre where we enjoyed the novelty sights of what must be one of the most picturesque NatWest bank branches anywhere (they also have an HSBC, not bad for a population of just 600) and the assortment of other little shops and businesses. There we picked up a couple of bikes from Avenue Cycle Hire and headed out on a cycling tour of the island.

First we headed South to La Coupée, the narrow isthmus linking Sark and Little Sark. It's a rather iconic spot and so we really savoured crossing over here (pushing our bikes, I might add!). From there we had a bit of an explore of Little Sark, including a quick look at the silver mines and a while sitting by the sea at a spot labelled Rouge Terrier on the map.

From there, back to the "mainland" (i.e. the bigger part of Sark) to continue our cycling tour, starting along the West coast, then more or less up to the Northern tip, and then back down the East coast to the village. We rewarded ourselves with a quick drink at the Mermaid Tavern towards the end of the afternoon - this seemed to be more of a locals pub so we didn't linger too long. We spent the remainder of our time in the village, and visited some of the shops there, and returned our bikes.

We headed back to the harbour by way of the Bel Air inn, the other main pub on the island (although I imagine the hotels all function as pubs too). All in all it was a very nice day out on Sark indeed. Definitely a highlight of the holiday.

We were back in Guernsey around 7, and headed to our hotel where we went to our new room - appropriately enough the Sark suite - where we'd be for our remaining two nights. This was much, much nicer than the room we had the previous night. It had a separate living room area, two balconies, two bathrooms, and the decor was a lot nicer. Once settled in we thought we'd go for a quick swim in the hotel's outdoor pool before dinner, and also availed ourselves of the jacuzzi in the hotel's spa.

For dinner we headed to a restaurant called Christie's, which I'd found on the web because it had an entire vegetarian menu. The food was ok although not outstanding, but the place had quite a nice atmosphere, and we had a little semi-circular booth which was quite nice.

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