Day 2 of the Channel Islands Chug, the moving day, and I bravely asked Mrs RM if she fancied walking the five (5) miles back to St Helier from Brelade Bay.
To her eternal credit, and possible regret, she agreed.
It’s a gorgeous walk through minor routes to St Aubin, the Sandbanks of the, er, south, with plenty of unidentifiable flowers.
OK, it’s not sandy beaches, but when did you last see an Englishman in the sea in May ?
No further GBG ticks needed, of course, but a quick look on What Pub revealed the stately looking Old Court House is “the Liberation Brewery Tap Bar, a new showpiece for Liberation Brewery“.
Well, why not. If worst come to worst it’s a pre-emptive cert, and at best it provided a Mrs RM approved lunch of seafood linguine and squid.
Our fellow diners, who I’d like to think of as ancient but were actually the same age (middle) as us, had never heard of “Last of the Summer Wine“, despite the chap looking the spitting image of Compo.
“How WOULD she remember it, though ?” said one, “she’s been living her life“. The mind boggles.
Excitingly, the actual pub (the Westward) is downstairs and if you attempt to go in the posh restaurant upstairs without a suit you’ll be shot. Probably. The pub itself was a little fussy in the Brunning & Price style, mind.
But the Liberation IPA was, once again, a cool and tasty NBSS 3.5. They acquired Butcombe in 2014, and Butcombe was pretty much the default guest beer in their pubs in Jersey. A success story, I reckon.
As was the long walk to St Helier along the coast, though we regretted not packing the suntan lotion.
The coastal noddy train (there’s probably a latin name for them) was giving tourists a commentary on Jersey highlights equally divided between the actual liberation of the island from the Nazis and the role of fertiliser in potato production.
All some way from the chic and upmarket capital, where we arrived back three hours before our ferry to Guernsey.
What on earth do you do for three hours waiting for a ferry ?
retiredmartin 
One of my favorite English images is the English huddling behind wind screens on the beach in August. They were determined to have a beach day no matter how cold and windy the weather.
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The other typical image is the retired folk (not me) sitting in the front of their cars drinking tea and staring out over the English Channel.
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The Welsh do that as well. This image, plus that conjured by RM below, is basically my summer holidays in the 60s.
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Duckweed?
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I did wonder after your disappointment at the Trafalgar, if you’d pop round the corner to the Old Court House, though to be fair it’s changed alot since I last visited it, not least becoming a brewery tap for Liberation, as it used to be one of the few pubs that sold other brewery beers, mostly Cornish brewers apparently due to the cost of shipping from the mainland, a perennial topic of conversation in most Jersey pubs, but since nearly all pubs on the island sell Liberation and some most of the range, I do wonder what benefit they gain from it, other than it gives a good view of the sea which very few pubs in St Helier have curiously.
However the Old Court House is more well known to us of a certain age as being the favourite haunt of Jerseys most famous TV detective, its Bergeracs bar, or more accurately Diamante Lils Royal Barge Hotel bar that Bergerac drank in on the show.
I’ve always contemplated the walk back to St Helier as it looks a nice walk,but we walked from the Smugglers to St Aubin, which was challenging enough, and have always wimped out and got the bus as we’ve never had the extra time to spare to do it.
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Nice walks, aren’t they ?
Did I strike lucky with the Liberation IPAs do you think ? I guess there’s some benefits of not importing beers and their own ones are good enough, and being local they probably sell well enough even if no competition for lager. Certainly they were all served at pretty much ideal temperature.
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it would have been a nicer walk for us if we’d known actually where we were going, there is a downside to just following the coastline as a route 🙂
Liberation IPA was just being released when we went a decade ago, but I never had a bad pint of Liberation anything in any pub there, GBG listed pub or not, they all seemed to know how to look after cask, had enough turnover to keep it fresh and never put more on than they couldnt sell quickly.
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