A few weeks ago I published a post about my life on the island of Guernsey, which, to my delight, got a very warm response from the Francophile community. So I decided to keep going with more or less the same format: a few short stories that give you a bit more of a feel for life here.
The food in Guernsey
If you love fish or seafood, Guernsey is without a doubt the island for you. It doesn’t really matter which restaurant you go to, casual or gourmet, the fish and seafood are always completely fresh, and so far I haven’t run into a disappointment.
But meat and dairy lovers won’t go hungry on the island either, thanks to the cows raised here, which produce milk with a slightly higher fat content. That’s what makes Guernsey butter considered among the best in the world (or at least a strong contender for the top three).
And what about chocolate? Let’s just say a renowned chocolatier wouldn’t find much work here. But while I still haven’t found a chocolate shop worth its name, the island’s ice cream more than makes up for it: made with the rich milk of the local cows, it’s absolutely delicious. The one culinary gap I’ve found so far in Guernsey is bread. I have yet to find a bakery worth its name (which won’t bother fans of the Paleo diet, of course).
And speaking of what a restaurant meal can do to your wallet: the good news is that I’ve found the food in Guernsey to be cheaper than back home. At many restaurants you can get a three-course lunch or early dinner (5:00-7:00 p.m.) for somewhere between £12 at a budget-friendly spot and around £20 at a pricier one. Of course you can also find gourmet restaurants that charge more, but I can still promise you’ll have a hard time finding anywhere here more expensive than back home. And that’s not all. Every October there’s the Tennerfest, when the best restaurants on the island offer two or even three courses for £10. For a glutton like me, that’s excellent news.
So how do you burn off the calories?
The combination of excellent, inexpensive food can be deadly when it comes to your waistline. But I thought ahead and picked a house on top of one of Guernsey’s hills, about a 20-minute walk from work. So every day I find myself climbing to the top of that hill on my way home. I have to admit that at first it was pure torture. I climbed, I gasped for breath, I felt every muscle and tendon in my legs, and I cursed myself for not choosing a house closer to the harbor area, where my office is. But within a week things slowly started to change. Suddenly I stopped feeling my legs burn, and I could climb the hill and even talk on the phone without the person on the other end wanting to call an ambulance for me. And that’s that: these days I climb the hills of Guernsey with ease, and even though I’m a regular at its restaurants, I don’t think I’ve put on weight (I actually have a feeling I’ve lost a bit).
Guernsey-style shaming, or why you really shouldn’t drink and drive
From food, let’s move on to wine, but before that, let me tell you something about Guernsey’s roads. Anyone visiting for the first time thinks they’re nothing short of death traps. Narrow roads (the main road from the airport to the capital is about as wide as a residential street back home), dark and winding. Add to that the fact that you’ll find pedestrians walking right on the road itself, since not all of them have sidewalks, and you have to wonder: why aren’t Guernsey’s roads a killing field? So after my landlady took me for a walk and couldn’t understand why I kept jumping to the side like some kind of ninja every time a car came toward me, I asked her exactly that question. The answer has two parts: British politeness and an iron-fisted police force. On the politeness side, nothing surprising there. Despite being descendants of pirates, the people of Guernsey are wonderfully polite and kind. As for the police, there’s no doubt our police back home could learn a thing or two. They won’t stand on a four-lane highway trying to pull over someone doing 75 mph (maybe because there simply are no roads like that in Guernsey), but you’ll see them everywhere, making sure safe driving laws are enforced.
And who does the Guernsey police love most? People who drink and drive. Guernsey, like the rest of Britain, has a thriving drinking culture, with plenty of pubs and bars where beer and wine flow freely. And that, of course, can tempt people into having one glass too many on a night out. And yet the accident rate in Guernsey is extremely low (last year, considered a particularly deadly one, two people were killed in traffic accidents). So how do they manage it? Like most things in life, the answer comes in three parts. The first part is awareness. In plenty of shops and restaurant restrooms you’ll find posters like the one below, which explain very clearly why drinking and driving is a terrible idea.
The second part is effective police enforcement, which I mentioned in the previous paragraph, but the most interesting part is the third. Long before shaming became a thing on Facebook, it was already alive and well in Guernsey. So what does Guernsey-style shaming look like? If you’re caught drinking and driving, you might not only lose your license, face a serious fine, or even land in jail. You’ll also “earn” a spot in the local newspaper. And when I say a spot, I don’t mean an anonymous note about police catching a certain number of drunk drivers over the weekend. I mean the paper publishes the name and address of the person caught drinking and driving, and on a small island where everyone knows everyone, becoming that kind of celebrity is really not recommended.
And that’s it for this time. I hope you enjoyed the post, and don’t worry, I’ll be back soon writing about France. And who knows, maybe I’ll even sneak in a quick trip to Paris.
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