Getting stuck in a rut is often spoken of in terms of a job, a relationship, a fashion style even, but rarely a holiday. For a decade, we have loaded up the car for a week in Cornwall, chosen at first all those years ago for its beaches and coves, its bucket-and-spade appeal for little ones, and in time, bodyboarding and surfing. Finally its appeal shifted (not for us) to the teenage hell that is Polzeath at night, so unruly and trashed with rubbish that the beach is now floodlit for the patrolling police. There came the inevitable moment when my husband and I looked at one another in an expensive rental, unpacking yet more shopping for yet more meals for teenagers, and said: “How is this a holiday?” It was this frustration that prompted us to book a hotel in Jersey, instead, for our next family holiday. We climbed out of our rut.
We had ostensibly been invited to a family event by Jersey friends, but it prompted a to-hell-with-Cornwall-this-year attitude and we extended our stay. Only 14 miles from mainland France and, at 85 miles from mainland Britain, the most southerly of the British Isles, Jersey looked as if it had some gorgeous beaches of its own. St Ouen’s Bay is renowned for its surfing and its dune system, Les Blanches Banques, which has been designated a site of special interest. I was also done with renting a house with all the attendant cooking and skivvying. When was the last time we’d stayed in a hotel? Certainly before Covid. Jersey was near enough to warrant only a three-night stay but far enough away, in geography and, as it turns out, culture, with its French influence, to feel as if we were holidaying abroad.
Travelling to Cornwall often involves heavy traffic — especially on the A303, a beast of a road in summer. Jersey is less than an hour away on a plane and also accessible by ferry from Portsmouth and Poole for anybody against flying or who wants the flexibility of taking a car. We flew from Gatwick, picking up a taxi at Jersey airport to the family-owned Atlantic Hotel in the parish of St Brelade on the headland of the west coast, with breathtaking views over the Atlantic, a golf course and the vast beach of St Ouen’s Bay — a wide, free landscape achieved after the storm of October 1987 battered the trees.
The hotel had been a tip-off: somewhere that looked as if it might be in the Med, with sea-view balconies and palm trees, all lit glamorously at night, but without the hassle of cross-border travel. We arrived on an early flight to find bright sunshine, a glistening pool and waiters in crisp uniforms bringing ice-cold drinks to snoozing guests on loungers. There was a restaurant with a Michelin star, its tables being laid for lunch with white table linen, a hands-down win over the trundle of an Ocado van. The rooms are as spoiling as any you might find in Nice.
Jersey’s proximity to Brittany and Normandy gives the island a distinctly French feel, historical in its origin. When the Normans conquered England in the 11th century, Jersey remained part of the Duchy of Normandy, but when that split from the English crown in the 13th century, England retained the island. There are ancient ruins and Ice Age mammoths in the volcanic bedrock, and three ancient castles. The capital is St Helier, with its boutiques and many restaurants, but it is the beaches that are the main draw: the long sweeps of the west and south coasts versus the smaller bays of the east and north.
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A stay at the Atlantic does not require a car if you keep to the region of St Ouen’s, a surfers’ paradise with the best waves on the island. You can walk down from the hotel, which we did while the teens booked into Jersey Surf School, the island’s longest running (90-minute personal lessons from £100; jerseysurfschool.co.uk). After their lessons, we reconvened at the family-run Le Braye for fish and chips, moules frites and Jersey crab sandwiches. It’s one of a few eateries along the four-mile bay road (mains from £15; lebraye.com); others include El Tico Beach Cantina, Jersey’s original beach café — a restaurant, surf shop and surf school rolled into one, bang in the middle of the bay with a terrace looking on to the sea and great for breakfast (mains from £16; elticojersey.com) — and Staks, at La Pulente at the southern end, which has a balcony from which to watch the sunset with an Aperol or a milkshake in hand (both £4; staks.je).
Bicycles can be hired too, or cabs booked, for destinations beyond a walk. L’Étacq, on the northern tip of St Ouen’s, is a dreamy hidden cove with the bluest of water accessed by steep steps (not for the faint-hearted), and nearby Plémont is lovely for a deserted swim too. We tried our best to choose locations that avoided the need for a car, although the Jersey War Tunnels, more than 1km of tunnels dug by slave labour, in the St Lawrence district are worth a visit for insight into the dark days of German occupation during the Second World War (entry £19 adults, £11 children; jerseywartunnels.com).
By contrast, the Portelet Bay Café cannot be accessed by a car; unless you’re lucky enough to have a boat, it’s down steep steps from the 12A bus stop between Portelet Common and Noirmont, but it’s worth the hike for authentic pizza and fresh shellfish as well as breakfast (pizzas from £10; porteletbaycafe.com).
The point of breaking a holiday rut is to rethink old habits: the forgotten pleasure of hotel living with meals provided; full breakfasts as thrilling as evening fine dining; the swapping of road for sea, of car for bike or boat. In this spirit, the pinnacle of our stay had to be the skippered Rib trip with Le Mourier Marine to Les Écréhous, a group of islands and rocks six miles to the northeast and a designated wetland area of international importance (from £38pp; marine.lemourier.co.uk).
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We picked up the boat from Albert Pier in Saint Helier Marina, buckled in and raced through the waves. Les Écréhous is home to one of the largest tidal ranges in the world, and all but the three largest islands were submerged when we arrive. Our Rib cruised around the reef as we looked for Atlantic grey seals and bottlenose dolphins before landing on Maîtr’Île, bumping up on a shingle bank. The island is inhabited sporadically by just a few eccentric holidaymakers who own homes there (owning the most basic of fisherman’s huts is still a status symbol). We arrived at high tide, which gave the island a weird, desolate feel, as if it was being discovered for the first time. At low tide, it changes to become moon-like, with drifts of exposed golden sandbanks.
In 2021 four areas of Les Écréhous were brought under Jersey’s wildlife law, to protect the breeding activities and nesting of wild birds, including European shags, great cormorants and oystercatchers. We scrambled up on rocks buffeted by salt winds, our path often halted by “forbidden entry” signs, with the birds nesting beyond the chain barriers. Calls filled the air, lest we should forget that it was they who are the kings and queens of this isle.
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Les Écréhous was like nothing any of us had ever experienced before: a rocky, shingly anomaly that seemed to have been dropped into the sea, far removed from pollution and the modern day; a haven where nature was respected and prized, rather than threatened. It was in these savoured moments of peace and quiet, on such an odd and unexpected archipelago, that the simplicity of the natural world triumphed. It completed our reset. Who knows what we will do this summer.
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Louise Carpenter was a guest of Visit Jersey (jersey.com). B&B doubles from £240 (theatlantichotel.com). Fly or take the ferry to Jersey
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