Wrecked

It wasn't clear that the mist would clear. There were occasional breaks but it soon closed in. We took a chance and headed for the bus terminus. The Gorse Fox had seen an entry for Fort Grey in the guidebook. It was on the west coast, the opposite side of the Island. It may well be clearer there (or at least, that was the theory).

The bus carried us across the Island with our own private chauffer - by that the Gorse Fox means that out of the 5 bus journeys we have done to date, he has driven 4 of them... so we assumed he had been assigned to us! It didn't take too long to get there, but it was clear that it wasn't clear. The mist was just as thick as we crossed the Island.

We headed into the the rooms for a hot beverage and to get the tickets for the Fort. The ticket also gave us access to a building that housed the remains of a Romano-Celtic trading barge that had been found at the entry to St Peter Port. The remains had been sent across to the Mary Rose Trust for preservation and then returned and put on display here in 2015. It was really quite interesting and enlightening as to how far they traded into the Mediterranean and up the west coast of Europe.

While we were there the Gorse Fox was interrupted by a text message from the bank. It was querying a transaction and checking it was genuine. It wasn't. Wedding Anniversary or not, the Gorse Fox has not tried to spend 200GBP on a pair of ladies shoes! The Gorse Fox then spent the next 30 minutes on the phone to the fraud department checking what else might have been spent and ensuring the card is cancelled. It is always good that the bank picks these transactions up, but frustrating trying to determine how the fraudster got the details to start with. In this case it almost a brand new card (only a month old) so one wonders if it was intercepted, cloned, then sat on for a while to ensure the Gorse Fox had activated it. All the other accounts have been checked and are clean.

We returned to the holiday and wandered across the causeway to Fort Grey, known locally as the Cup and Saucer. This is a Martello Tower built to defend against the risk of Napoleonic attack. Now it holds a really interesting museum charting the stories of various shipwrecks from around the Guernsey coastline. It listed well over 100 vessels stretching back hundreds of years right up to a bulk carrier that ran aground in 2003. Clearly even modern navigation equipment is enough to keep you safe in the storms off the Island.

We grabbed another hot drink. The mist had lifted a bit but it hadn't really brightened up. We hopped on the bus back to St Peter Port. There we found breaks in the cloud and the sun streaming through from the blue bits. Not perfect, but certainly better than the west coast.