Island of Guernsey beckons with fascinating history, beautiful countryside, fine seaside climate

St. Peter Port, called “Town” by islanders, is Guernsey’s major population center. Centuries-old building on cobbled streets stagger up the hillside. photo by Janet Podolak

Warmed by the Gulf Stream, 24-square-mile Guernsey in the English Channel is a delightfully sunny sanctuary little known to Americans. Miles of walking and cycling paths thread through flower-strewn meadows along breezy cliffs and down to beaches, passing fortifications from the past that include Neolithic graves.

I’d noticed several Rolex-bedecked wrists on the hour-long Flybe flight to Guernsey from London Heathrow, but the Lamborghini and Maserati cars driven to meet passengers more clearly revealed its prosperity.

Guernsey’s lenient financial laws make it attractive to the wealthy, and its low taxes lure shoppers. But I was here to discover its legacy of the occupation years during World War II, when the Nazis held the Channel Islands for six years.

Many miles of footpaths and cycling trails thread throughout Guernsey, beckoning backcountry rambles.
photo by Janet Podolak

During the war, Guernsey became the only place in Britain to be occupied by the Nazis, but islanders were able to evacuate their children and half the population to England to protect them. Most everyone thought the war would last only months, but when the children returned six years later, they’d forgotten their native patois, and the French-flavored language was lost. In the meantime, islanders and occupiers alike faced near starvation.

Just days before the Nazis arrived, Guernsey experienced its greatest loss of life when trucks loaded with tomatoes awaiting shipment from the harbor were mistaken by the Germans for loads of armaments and were bombed.

Coastal bunkers and forts remain as reminders of those times, and the underground ammunition storage tunnels carved out by Nazi slave labor today house museums with Nazi and other artifacts.

The rugged coastline of Guernsey offers great walks and explorations of World War II bunkers, watchtowers and forts recalling the years when the English Channel island was occupied by the Nazis.
photo by Janet Podolak

Many visitors who come to explore its history soon fall under the island’s enchantment, much like author and poet Victor Hugo and artist Pierre Auguste Renoir, both of whom lived and worked on Guernsey during the 1800s.

Just a dozen or so miles from the Normandy coastline of France, Guernsey has its own currency, pegged to the English pound, and its own postage stamps. Its French patois was easy to understand by Hugo, Renoir and other visitors from France. French place names still exist, but its spoken language has been replaced by English.

With shores washed by 30-foot tides revealing 27 beaches, a 35-mph speed limit and just 60,000 residents, Guernsey captivates with its slower pace of life and fascinating history.

Victor Hugo, a staunch opponent of the Second Empire of Napoleon III, was exiled there from his native France for 15 years, and several decades later Renoir came there to paint. Hugo wrote “Les Miserables” while living on Guernsey and called the island “the rock of hospitality and freedom” in the dedication of his seafaring novel “Toilers of the Sea.” And Renoir’s works depicting Guernsey’s Moulin Huet Bay on the east end of the island’s rocky south vividly recall his affection for his time there.

The occupation years, chronicled in the recent “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society” novel and film, brought more recent attention to the island, and tours have been developed showcasing locales in the fictional work.

St. Peter Port, called “Town” by locals, is the only settlement resembling a city. Its cobbled streets, lined with fashionable shops, wind steeply uphill from the harbor. Narrow alleys, negotiated by stairs, connect many streets.

Because the island is without Britain’s value added tax, it’s a popular place for purchasing electronic equipment, jewelry and perfumes at reasonable prices. Its port of call for cruise ships was named “Best UK Port of Call “ in the Cruise Editors Picks awards three times in the past four years.

Get great glimpses into Hugo’s imagination with a visit to his Hauteville House, which he decorated over six years with his junk-shop finds repurposed into decorative elements. Hugo’s descendants left the house to the city of Paris, which operates it as a museum and tribute to the artist. The house was reopened this past spring after a careful rehab and can be visited on a guided tour.

A visit to the home occupied by Victor Hugo during his 15-year exile on Guernsey is an immersion into his imagination.
Courtesy of Visit Guernsey

Hugo brought his wife and children to Guernsey during his 15 years there, installing his mistress, Juliette Drouet, in an apartment nearby. He called his wife “Madame, la mere de mes enfants” (mother of my children) and Juliette “Madame, mon amie” (my friend).

German bunkers, guns in concrete emplacements and artillery lookouts along the coast are tangible evidence of the World War II past, but a visit to the German Occupation Museum conveys more of life during those times. Begun by Richard Hearn, who was a child during the occupation, the collection includes informant letters, Nazi insignias, a horse’s gas masks and instructions by the Germans for the distribution of food. The reconstruction of a wartime kitchen includes recipes for marrow pudding and potato peel pie.

More than 12,000 German troops were stationed in Guernsey from 1940 to 1945. Due to the risk of escapes from the island — which did occur — fishing was strictly controlled, and those with gardens had to give their produce to the German forces. Radios were confiscated, but crystal sets were made by residents and used secretly. They followed wartime broadcasts from London in hopes the liberation of the Channel Islands would be mentioned. But that mention never came — nor did an attempt at their liberation.

Hitler also believed the Allies would attempt to retake the Islands, so an underground military hospital was built to cater to casualties in the event of that attack. Its wards and operating rooms were hewn out of solid rock deep in the island by captive slaves from Russia, Poland and what is now the Czech Republic. The work took three years, but the tunnels were used for only nine months, principally to store the munitions stockpiled by the Germans.

A walk in the dank tunnels is a chilling experience, and there are only a handful of displays.

An underground hospital, built during World War II by the Germans, has 75,000 square feet of tunnels awaiting exploration by today’s visitors.
photo by Janet Podolak

Close by and more cheerful in its demeanor is the Little Chapel, modeled after the grotto at Lourdes and built over many years beginning in the 1920s by a monk. It is just 16 feet long and able to accommodate only three people at a time, and every surface is covered in fragments of china, shells and pebbles.

A tiny chapel, modeled after Lourdes and built by a monk in the 1920s, can fit only three people at a time and is covered in shards of china, shells and pebbles.
photo by Janet Podolak

China shards covered the chapel.
photo by Janet Podolak

Prehistoric graves and other artifacts date the population of Guernsey to about 4500 B.C. Several Neolithic passage graves, menhirs and dolmans can be found around the island. Pottery, arrowheads and loom weights discovered in excavations indicate that the Channel Islands had Bronze and Iron Age trade links with Britain, Ireland and France.

Le Creux es Faies is one of several prehistoric passage graves recalling Neolithic times on Guernsey.
photo by Janet Podolak

Those who choose to head out on foot or explore by bicycle will be delighted to discover Guernsey’s Ruette Tranquilles lanes, a network of rural routes crisscrossing the island.

Gypsy Lane is one of more than 90 green lanes beckoning walkers and cyclists.
photo by Janet Podolak

Encounters with landmarks, Neolithic menhirs, waterwheels and ancient Abreuveurs (watering points for livestock) are common. Take your time to explore and be sure to stop at one of the roadside Hedge Vegs stands, where vegetables, flowers and other things are sold on the honor system from a box tucked into one of the 400-year old hedges defining a property.<br><br>