FOR once, a travel writer has captured the essence of the Channel Islands without lacing his words with the usual hyperbole so common to the average holiday guide.
FOR once, a travel writer has captured the essence of the Channel Islands without lacing his words with the usual hyperbole so common to the average holiday guide.

How refreshing that the latest Lonely Planet Guide to Great Britain tells the story without resorting to the usual clichés overdosed with tired adjectives.

We all know that: Jersey cows have a rare, delicate beauty; Durrell leads the world in conservation; Mont Orgueil is iconic; Corbière lighthouse sits on a rugged outcrop of pink granite; and we, the people, are really friendly – unless a hire car or a vehicle sporting a foreign registration plate cuts us up on the Avenue.

At last there is a travel guide that tells it how it is. St Helier is brash and over-populated by blokes in suits, so unless visitors like spotting pinstripes dashing from one deal to another, they are advised to avoid our steel-and-glass metropolis and head west.

Even the most rabid of crapauds has to concede that our asinine cousins have in St Peter Port one of the most delightful towns in the British Islands. Not only is it blessed with the advantage of a deep-water harbour, but the tiers of the buildings that vie above each other for the best views are a stark contrast against bland, modern St Helier, where Islanders now find themselves strangers in their own environs.

Stroll down the Esplanade or Gloucester Street today and you might as well be in any city, anywhere in global clonesville. Contrast such a depressing experience with a delightful meander through the narrow cobbled street of St Peter Port, intersected with those old stepped passages that invite the wanderer to detour at leisure.

Notwithstanding St Peter Port’s charm and respect of the vernacular, outside the two bailiwicks’ urban jungles it is a very different story. Ribbon development in our sister isle separates people from countryside, whereas in Jersey, in spite of what over-population scaremongers may say, it is still possible to enjoy wide country views, interrupted by just a house or two to give the illusion of being in a far more open space.

Whereas St Helier failed to impress Lonely Planet, St Aubin ticked its boxes – enough so to warrant a recommendation as one of the six highlights of a stay in the Channel Islands. The others were: Enid Blytonesque Sark, hilly St Peter Port, Herm’s common land, distinctive Alderney and St Ouen’s Bay.

Showing first-time visitor friends around the rock last weekend, and with a gathering of the far-flung Thelwell clan about to take place, I have of late been considering my own guide to Jersey. The oft-repeated Bergerac series has a great deal to answer for when conducting Island tours. Emerging from the tunnel to be confronted by gaudy advertising banners and a nest of traffic lights instantly induces a bout of cognitive dissonance in those expecting the light at the western end to shine on either the gently swaying sailboats of affluent St Aubin or the open sands of St Brelade’s Bay.

In the immortal words of 1980s pop legends a-ha, ‘The sun always shines on TV’ – and therein is a reality problem for tourist destinations such as ours. The sun does not always shine and a television set, no matter how natural, is not necessarily what it seems.

Nonetheless, being the focus of a television series is no bad thing. The current series of Kingdom, watchable if only for the undoubted talents of ‘national treasure’ Stephen Fry, is reviving in my soul a long-held yearning to explore the vast flatlands of East Anglia.

No doubt Tourism are planning to man the phones and bump up the power to avoid its website crashing to deal with all the inquiries that will flood in as soon as the credits roll on the forthcoming Antiques Roadshow filmed in Jersey. The BBC could not have chosen a more appropriate local location than Samarès Manor, which must now be the envy of all other Island attractions.

I have long had a soft spot for this delightful little corner of St Clement and in rediscovering my Island home of late. I have revisited the manor and its gardens after far too long an absence. In an Island that seems determined to change its face to the outside world with a waterfront over which public opinion is still polarised, it is reassuring to discover an oasis such as Samarès Manor.

Or another personal favourite: the network of criss-cross lanes between St Lawrence and St Matthew’s Churches which are home to some fine examples of traditional Jersey architecture – thatched roofs and all.

Rediscovering Jersey does not take much imagination and does not need to cost a penny. As the saying goes, the best things in life are free, and that is certainly true of this little rock. We live in a society whose members increasingly rely on in-your-face signs, guidebooks and interpretation to go about the business of using leisure time when all any of us has to do is open our eyes and think for ourselves.

The Lonely Planet guide detected something in our islands that is fashionable to sneer at: an olde-worlde charm reminiscent of the sleepy atmosphere of a 1950s English village. Sounds idyllic to me, because that is what I seek out in my increasing forays to Cornwall, along with swaying sailboats and a laid-back attitude to life.

It is also a Sunday night television series producer’s perfect location. We all yearn for some idyll away from the shimmering steel-and-glass edifices now dominating the built environment and the plethora of men in suits. A friend’s five-year-old son summed it up last week when he asked his father whether, if he smashed the television screen, he would get to Narnia – the modern-day alternative of stepping through the back a wardrobe.

There is a danger that in looking for that patch of greener grass, we can overlook what we have within our grasp. I see so much of Jersey in Cornwall and vice-versa, but it is the Jersey I knew and not the one I know. We need to press the rewind button before it’s too late.