Guernsey
- seanick9
- Sep 25, 2025
- 15 min read
We spent a month with Anna’s sister Lizzii at her house in Guernsey, which is an island in the English Channel. Guernsey is not really part of the UK, but it is a British crown dependency. The island of Guernsey is not massive, but large enough that it takes a half hour to drive from one side to the other. There are a few towns, the two main ones which were closest to where we were staying are St Peter Port and St Sampson. Lizzii’s house is closest to St Sampson, but St Peter Port is a short (5 min) drive from there and has a lot more businesses, restaurants etc. as it’s much larger.
Guernsey is a quirky place. There are many things about it, especially their roads, which are different from other places we’ve been.
Driving quirks include the license plates, which have no indication of what country they are from or any letters, so it’s just a number- like 1234. No tabs, no country code, no letters - and the numbers themselves can be resold, and due to the cachet of having just a number (like “007”), some of the license plates sell for a lot of money! There’s even a registry where you can look up how much a license plate number might be worth - and presumably many of the low number license plates are worth more than the cars that use them. We saw an Audi R8 that had the license plate number 30, so I had to look up if the car or the code was worth more. (It was the car, but the license was worth £37k which is still a lot!)
Guernsey mostly has free parking - but with a twist: you have to set your arrival time with a disk in so-called “disk parking zones”, with one disk being the hour and the other being the minute, and you leave that up on the dash to say when you arrived. Then you have 2,3, or 10 hours, etc., to return depending on the zone.
Driving rules in Guernsey - there are roundabouts, stop signs and traffic lights - but the novel thing about Guernsey is the “filter” - basically an all way yield, but nowhere else is it called a “filter”.
Ruette Tranquille aka Tranquil Roads - one lane roads where bicycles, pedestrians and horses have right of way, but which you can drive down if you want to take your life in your hands.
Addresses in Guernsey are just names of buildings, things like “Elder Cottage” which with the street name is then the address.
Other than the driving, there are a few other ways Guernsey is just a little different. Getting to and from the island is very much at the mercy of the weather- between giant tides (up to 33 feet!), and the wind and weather caused by being in the English Channel, flights and ferries are often canceled for days, and anyone who was traveling on their vacation and can’t make it back are just out of luck! People mostly just roll with it.
We stayed on Guernsey for about a month, so we had lots of opportunities to see many sights, but another reason we were there was just to chill and spend time with family, enjoy some downtime, do more cooking, etc., which has been quite relaxing compared to our previous few months of rapid travel. A big part of the activities we did were to keep Emily entertained, so I will list some of the things we did with her first.
Emily in Kings Club Summer Camp
When we arrived in Guernsey it was still summer vacation, so there were a few different camp options. The most organized one seemed to be the one at Kings health club, so we signed her up for as many days there as we could. Camps all wrapped up on September 3 when schools returned to session, so she was only there for 9 days, but seemed to enjoy herself! We unfortunately did not receive any pictures or daily updates from the camp staff, so had to rely on Emily to tell us what she did! We know she went swimming twice a day, and did a variety of other sports activities, but there was also drawing and watching movies among other things. Emily certainly was getting some exercise though as she came home quite tired every day!
Emily at La Carriere Stable and Tack Shop Riding lesson
Emily did a 20 minute beginner horse riding lesson at La Carriere Stables. When she first arrived, she was a bit nervous to walk up to the horse and touch its mane, but after they got her decked out in a helmet and vest, she was happy to get up on the horse and walk around with the host Maia (the first time). They walked around the neighborhood on the horse for 20 or so minutes, and by the end, Emily did not want to leave! We ended up booking three days for her, and she definitely enjoyed it! The next two times I took her riding there we had a different guide, Lauren, who happened to have been in Lizzii’s science class previously! Small island connections. This was certainly one of the highlights for Emily.
Discovery Pass
The Discovery Pass is an annual pass that gets you into 4 of the Guernsey museums for $24 per person, and given that we’d be around for a few weeks we went ahead and purchased the passes. Emily didn’t need one as she gets into each of the museums for free. We only ended up going to three of them - Castle Cornet, Guernsey Museum and Shipwreck museum.
Castle Cornet
The highlight of the 4 museums on the Discovery pass is Castle Cornet, which is right near the town of St Peter Port, at the end of the Castle Pier. This castle has been the main defensive stalwart of the island of Guernsey for 800+ years, and has switched hands from English and French control, including a few years when Guernsey Island was at war with Castle Cornet. The Castle is set up as a museum now, with a few different buildings that have information about different eras. The guide shows a walking tour with about 14 different buildings or items of interest, but we only got to see about half of them. The first building shows how the soldiers who lived there during the 1800’s lived, and also had a dress-up area for kids to put on either military or royal outfits for their walk around the castle.
There’s also activities for the kids in some of the other areas, including a fairy door hunt (each of the 6 gardens had a different colored fairy door hidden for the kids to find, which we did) and the prison had some activities like making a dragon puppet and a friendship bracelet, which we also did. At noon every day they fire a cannon called the “noon gun” which includes a military procession of the guards who load and fire the cannon. It was quite loud and Emily decided to take cover behind the building right before it fired.
This is certainly worth a visit if you’re here, and we almost made a second trip except we thought the museum at Candie Gardens was even better.
Candie Gardens, Guernsey museum and Victoria tower
The Candie Gardens Guernsey Museum is a small little art museum, with quite pretty gardens nearby. Not a lot to say about the majority of the museum, it had a bit of art from some local artists, as well as a section on witchcraft and ghosts that was somewhat interesting, and another section that talked about some of the prehistoric and bronze age discoveries that had been found on the island, showing that it was inhabited 7000 years ago in the neolithic period.
When at the Guernsey Museum, you can ask to borrow the key to the Victoria Tower, a tower that was built to honor Queen Victoria when she visited the island in 1846 as she was the first ruling monarch to make such a visit. We borrowed the key and along with two other couples climbed the tower.
The main reason we came back to the Guernsey Museum, though, was the kids room! It has a forest nook with an art wall about “the tree of life”, a painting by local artist Peter Le Vasseur that was commissioned by the museum in 2020, and there are stuffed animals like owls and The Gruffalo among other things, and another room has lots of board games and puzzles and kids books. Emily happily spent hours there a couple of different times.
Shipwreck museum
The third museum on the Discovery pass is the Shipwreck museum, which is located on the far side of Guernsey from the two big towns. It’s close to the Fairy rings but we did it on a separate day, by ourselves. The museum itself is in a building also known as Fort Grey since it was previously a naval fortress, or “Cup and Saucer” as it sort of looks like a cup and saucer. The inside of the museum is fairly small, but contains a ton of information about the hundreds of ships that are known to have sunk off the coast of Guernsey, and many such ships just off the west shore of Guernsey where the museum is located. It makes sense, with how rocky the coastline is and how wide the tidal swings are that it would have been quite tricky to make an accurate map or safe approach to the island if you didn’t know exactly where the giant rocks were.
The other nice thing about this museum is that like the other two we visited, there were dress-up clothes for kids, and an activity to search for the 5 “friends” hidden in the museum. I only helped a little. Emily had a pretty good time and didn’t want to leave, despite it being lunch time and an otherwise pretty basic museum.
German Naval Signals HQ
This is the fourth museum on the pass, but we didn’t think it would be fantastic for Emily and so didn’t end up going, so I can’t speak to what it’s like there.
The Little Chapel
The Little Chapel is also a famous Guernsey oddity, and it was built mostly due to one man who began its construction in 1914. Since then it’s been torn down and rebuilt a couple times when the builder decided it needed to be expanded. It was also restored a few times after damage from land shifting and from vandals. The overall feel is quite consistent with most of the surfaces inside and out being made up of broken pieces of pottery and shells, and you would be surprised just how much more room there is inside than it looks from the outside. Definitely worth visiting if you’re on Guernsey. It’s unfortunately close to the airport and impacted by the major roadworks going on there now, so it took a bit longer to drive to. We saw Guernsey cows in the field opposite too!
Table des Pions (Fairy ring) walk
The fairy ring walk is on the far side of Guernsey from where we were staying, but that’s still only a 30 minute drive. We went over there for the walk and had coffee and treats beforehand. You can make it more of a hike by going up over the hills, but there’s a trail that goes right near the beach which was pretty kid friendly, and the fairy ring itself was pretty cool though it didn’t really say anything about the folk history associated with it on a sign or anything. Emily thought it was fun and we enjoyed the walk.
Vale Castle
Vale castle is near where we were staying so we walked over there once. Unfortunately it was closed for an event the first time, but we made it back, and stopped near there to see the Secret Fairy Glen as well afterwards!
Vale Castle is over 1000 years old and was created by some monks from Mont Saint-Michel! It’s been remodeled, built up and destroyed many times over the years. The castle now is basically just a castle wall, but you can walk around it and see for a ways in every direction from the walk around the castle wall. Last time we were there the boys brought RC cars and raced them around the inner courtyard, which is basically just a grassy field.
Beaches
The beaches on Guernsey are amazing, especially when the weather was nice earlier in the visit. Emily loved wading into the water and playing in the waves. Guernsey, like Mont Saint-Michel and all the other Channel Islands, have massively large tidal swings (10 meters/ 33 feet between low and high tide! And quite flat beaches which means the tide travels quite a large distance over the span of about 5 hours.) Guernsey is quite rocky, but does have some good sandy beaches which we visited a few of. Emily went to the beach quite a few times during the first couple weeks, mostly with auntie Lizzii, as well as visiting the playgrounds such as Amarreur's playground near the beach.
On the evening of the lunar eclipse, the boys, Jason, myself, and their friend Aaron tried to visit the La Vallette pools during one of the high tides, but unfortunately the tide was way too high as well as windy, leading to some pretty serious sloshing in the pools themselves. We didn’t want to be dashed against the rocks so we ended up jumping off the walls near St Julian's pier and swimming in there.
Hauteville House / Victor Hugo museum
The famous author and politician Victor Hugo spent 15 years in exile on Guernsey. While there, he decorated his house with tile, tapestry and more, and it’s now turned into a museum, which is now possible to visit on appointment only. Anna made an appointment and visited it one day, and took a bunch of photos! She’s posted about it on Instagram.
Renoir Tea House
In the 19th century, Pierre-Auguste Renoir also spent some time on Guernsey, painting some of his more well known paintings there, and the bay where some of the paintings were painted is home to a cute little tea house named after him. It’s also connected via trails to some of the other bays around that part of the island, so we parked along one of these trails and had ourselves a morning walk and tea. Definitely a pretty area, walking along the cliff tops, and worth a visit if you happen to be in the area!
Islands
We also visited a couple of the other islands that are part of the bailiwick of Guernsey. Guernsey actually has 8 islands, and is also a short ferry ride from Jersey, but the two we visited were Herm and Sark. Each of these were short ferries from St Peter Port.
Herm
Herm island is a fun day trip from Guernsey, starting with a 20 minute ferry ride from St Peter Port, followed by about an hour’s walk on a trail that goes around the whole island to Shell Beach on the north side. It’s a shorter walk back if you go around counter clockwise. We started with the long route on the day we went over there, and spent the morning and early afternoon at the beach. I enjoyed lunch at the kiosk they had at Shell beach, and Emily enjoyed picking up many shells there! She felt a bit of an obligation considering the name. There’s also a gelato shop near the docks, though where you get back on the boat changes depending on the tides!
Sark
To celebrate our anniversary (a bit early), Lizzii and Jason offered to watch Emily for a couple days while Anna and I went over to Sark for a weekend away.
The island of Sark is designated as a dark sky place, and does not have street lights or cars! People get around this by using tractors for everything, so while wandering around you see tractors going every which way! They use a tractor to transport you from the ferry dock up to the main town, as well as taking your luggage to your hotel for you which is a nice service.
Stocks hotel.
We stayed at Stocks hotel for a couple nights, which was a bit off the beaten path but is apparently a 4 star hotel (meaning they had a wide array of amenities). Getting to it was an adventure, you walk through the town, then down a country road, and finally down a path through two different fields before you arrive. Fortunately there were lots of signs, but as we didn’t see a single person on this walk, it felt a bit eerie!
The bar at Stocks hotel has an extremely impressive whisky selection, a few hundred different options. At first I was confused a bit by the omission of some of the more popular ones I might have expected with such a broad selection, but then I realized something. Every single whisky on their list was available for the same prices, about 6 pounds for a single or 10 for a double- which put the whole experience in a completely different light. And it made sense why they had Lagavulin 8 instead of 11, 12 or 16. This was a pretty fun place to go before or after dinner!
Carriage ride
We had booked a horse and carriage tour, intending to hear more about the island and enjoy seeing some of the sights. Unfortunately the carriage ride did not happen, as the horse belonging to the hotel that we intended to book got into an accident. What kind of an accident, as there are no cars on the island? I have no idea, but at any rate, they had to cancel our booking and by that time it seemed all the other horses were already booked.
Bike Hire
The island is pretty big, so we had reserved a couple electric bikes to get around and see things. However, where the bike hire place we had picked was on the other side of town from our hotel, which was already a 15 minute walk before we’d even get the bikes, so we ended up walking around the whole island ourselves.
Sarkhenge
I mean, it’s a cute tribute but these rocks almost look like they could have been carried in my backpack so an engineering marvel it is not. Sarkhenge was created in 2015 to celebrate 450 years of fiefdom and apparently the 9 stones do line up with the solstices and equinoxes among other things.
Buddhist carving
The Buddhist carving on the north side of Sark was way more interesting than Sarkhenge, to me anyway! I don’t know the story behind it though.
The Window in the rock
After the rain died down Saturday afternoon, we decided to go out on another adventure and see the Window in the rock, which we thought would be a nice easy walk before our dinner reservation. It turned out to be a bit difficult to find! Google Maps sent us on a bit of a goose chase, down some back roads that seemed to be more direct towards that beach, but it took us through some fields that didn’t go anywhere. After searching around a bit and not finding an obvious path, we went ahead and asked the receptionist at La Moinerie how to get there. She was quite helpful and sent us down a trail on the other side of the village which led down a creek bed to the trail we were supposed to be on. (on the way back, we stayed on the trail and found out that there’s actually a sign for it, which we would have seen if we’d stayed on the main path instead of going on the back roads like Google Maps told us to. Oops!) The trail itself was fine once we found it, and led to a bunch of warning signs saying not to take kids down this trail, followed by a handful of “Sheer drop” warning signs that had been modified to say “Sheep drop” which gave us a bit of a chuckle! This really does look quite dangerous but was a pretty view so we were glad we stuck it out.
Little Sark, La Coupee
Sark island looks a bit like a lopsided peanut, with a waist in the middle that is called “La Coupee”. Our hotel was just on the main side of La Coupee, so one day we decided to walk to Little Sark, to see some of the sights on that side of the island. The sights on little sark were the Venus pool, Silver mines, Dolmen stone, and the little snack shack. Unfortunately when we were there the tide was quite high, covering the Venus pools, and it was pretty windy so we didn’t particularly feel safe exploring too close to the shore, but we did see the silver mine towers and the Dolmen stones. The Snack shack was also closed as it was too early in the morning. La Coupee was quite interesting though, and we saw a tractor hauling a wagon across it as well as some bicyclists out for exploring on our way back. We also enjoyed some coffee and chocolate at Caragh Chocolates which we passed by on the return trip.
Cooking
I also did a lot of cooking while we were on Guernsey- it was nice having access to a fully equipped kitchen for the first time in a while, so I tried to make the most of it! I’ll list the major cooking projects we did, but not go into details on any of it now though I may post a couple of the recipes as their own blog entries later.
Sunday Sauce
Jambalaya
Sweet potato chili
Turmeric Chicken and chickpeas bake
Fondue
Smoked salmon
Italian wedding soup
Butter chicken
Yogurt marinated grilled chicken thighs
There are many sites that have more reasons Guernsey is interesting and worth seeing, one of which is Visit Guernsey. Have a look!
We were a bit ready to get on the road after this much needed downtime, but we also are already thinking about planning another trip back. Many thanks to Lizzii and Jason for hosting us, and their kids for being patient with us and letting us use their bedrooms!
Thanks for reading, now we’re off to Italy! Ciao!
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