An English Summer 77

 

Serious Sunday boat-project work is afoot, between tides, on the slipway. Aboard a stout, double ended, displacement motor-cruiser, named for the beguiling  port, on the south coast of Ireland.

I am in Saint Sampson, a couple of miles to the north of St Peter Port.

I have walked up, along the coast road. Out from beneath the tall genteel facades.

Following the sweep of Belgrave Bay. Past pockets of offices and industry, into Guernsey's suburbia. The receding tide seething and surging, on the shingle shore, beside me. Baring dragon's teeth of rock, as it leaves.

I climb the battlements of Vale Castle.

Below me, a Westerly Fulmar, double reefed, beats her way up the Little Russel, past the Brehon Tower. Bucking and rearing, as she rides the swell.

In Bordeaux Harbour (north of Saint Sampson), the tide is out.

Fishing boats lounge between its natural rock walls. . . . 

. . . .reclining in the shade of the wooded shore.

In the deep water pool, known as La Vieille, small craft lie afloat, on an ultramarine blue sea, at their summer moorings. Protected by long breakwaters of granite. Fully at low tide. Less so, one suspects, with ten metres of rise, at high water.