FIFTY is a very special number for one romantic couple who are visiting the Island this week.

John (73) and Patricia Bartlett (72), from Reading in Berkshire, are celebrating their 50th holiday to Jersey along with their golden wedding anniversary today. The couple love the Island so much that they flew here five times in one year. Their romantic love story of how they first met even won first prize in a competition in a lifestyle magazine in Sussex. Mr Bartlett remembers the day that he met his wife as if it were yesterday. ‘My parents ran a corner shop during the war and could not close it because of the rationing, so my aunt and uncle used to bring me on holiday to Eastbourne in the late 1940s and 50s. ‘They took me to a Methodist church where I met my beautiful wife who sang in the choir but I found out that she went out with the organist. We got on very well and became pen friends for years but the romance didn’t start until 1956, when she sent me a Christmas card.