A visit to St Anne, as I continue my account of my recent office.
As I continue my account of my holiday (18th-27th March), this is the first post solely dedicated to Alderney.
EXPLORING ST ANNE
On our first full day on Alderney, the Tuesday, we set out to visit St Anne, the only town on the island. Our departure was delayed by the necessity of waiting for a high tide to go down. As was the case through this holiday we were blessed with excellent weather.
There was much to see on the way to the town:
The town itself was quite an interesting place, and the information office was very useful.
We walked back the same way we had come.
It was even pleasant enough to eat outside.Guernsey (and hence Alderney) still uses £1 notes.
All photographs in this post can be seen at full size by clicking on them, but we end with a view of the fort:
Journeying through cricket history and from King’s Lynn to Alderney in honour of John Arlott.
Having reached Alderney in my account of my recent holiday it is now time for a special post in honour of John Arlott, the legendary cricket commentator, who lived his last years on the island. We will travel through considerable space and time in the course this journey.
STOP ONE: CAMBRIDGE
Cambridge, which my route from King’s Lynn to Portsmouth passed through, was the birthplace of Jack Hobbs, ‘The Master’. It also provides a specialist spinner for the XI since after his falling out with Yorkshire, which ended his first class career, Johnny Wardle played minor counties cricket for Cambrigeshire.
STOP TWO: VAUXHALL
The train from Waterloo to Portsmouth passes through but does not stop at Vauxhall, which overlooks The Oval, home of Surrey County Cricket Club. It is not my purpose to pick an time Surrey XI here (I did that a while back) so I am not actually using this location to pick any players – I am merely noting it.
STOPS 3,4 AND 5: SURBITON, WOKING, GUILDFORD
As with Vauxhall the train passes through Surbiton. Surbiton is not in itself of major relevance, but a line branches off here to Thames Ditton and Hampton Court, and at one time of his life the legendary fast bowler Tom Richardson had a home in Thames Ditton.
Woking, the first stop on the London-Portsmouth route, was home for many years to the Bedser twins, Alec (right arm fast medium, useful lower order batter) and Eric (right handed batter, off spinner).
Guildford, also a scheduled stop on the route, is home to the earliest verifiable reference to the great game of cricket. Testimony regarding the usage of a piece of land, made in 1598 and referring to the childhood of the man testifying, tells us that some form of cricket was being played in Guildford by the 1550s. Surrey still play the odd match at Guildford and one of the more recent of those games featured Kevin Pietersen scoring a double century in the course of which he hit a number of balls into the river Wey which flows past the ground.
STOPS 6-7: GODALMING AND PETERSFIELD
Godalming is home to Charterhouse School, where George Geary (Leics and England) was cricket coach for a time and one of his charges was Peter May. More recently Martin Bicknell (Surrey and England) has been director of cricket there.
Petersfield has a connection that dates to much earlier in cricket’s history: John Small, one of Hambledon’s finest batters in that clubs glory days of the late 18th century, lived there. According to John Nyren in “Cricketers of My Time” Small was a keen skater and enjoyed skating on the surface of Petersfield Pond when that body of water froze over in the winter.
STOP 8: PORTSMOUTH
Portsmouth was one of Hampshire’s out grounds when such were regularly used. In 1899 Major Robert Poore smashed Somerset for twin tons there, and then confirmed his liking for west country bowling by scoring a career best 304 in the return match at Taunton (when another army officer, Captain Teddy Wynyard, scored 225, in a sixth wicket stand of 411).
STOP 9: GUERNSEY
Guernsey has not to my knowledge produced any significant cricketers, though it has produced a couple of well known sportspeople: tennis player Heather Watson, at one time British number one, and footballer Matt Le Tissier who played for Southampton for many years. However it did indirectly give me a squad member, because it was there that I consumed bottle of ginger beer whose place of origin was significant:
Bundaberg, where this variety of ginger beer comes from, was the birthplace of Don Tallon, Australian keeper batter named by Bradman as keeper in his all time XI and considered by many of his contemporaries to have been the best ever in that role.
THE TERMINUS: BRAYE ROAD, ALDERNEY
Braye Road is one terminus of the Alderney Railway, once a genuine commercial railway transporting stone from a quarry, now a heritage railway using carriages of 1938 tube stock (I was not able to travel it being there too early in the year for it to be open). It also gave me, by way of a piece of lateral thinking, a final player for my cricket journey:
The cricket significance of this picture lies in the name of the road rather than that of the station: it provides a tenuous link to opening batter Tammy Beaumont.
SELECTING OUR XI
In terms of the players I have linked to specific locations we have:
Jack Hobbs, Johnny Wardle (Cambridge), Tom Richardson (Surbiton/ Thames Ditton), Alec and Eric Bedser (Woking), Kevin Pietersen (Guildford), Peter May, George Geary, Martin Bicknell (Godalming), John Small (Petersfield), Major Robert Poore (Portsmouth), Don Tallon (Guernsey, by subterfuge), Tammy Beaumont (Alderney, by cunning use of a street sign). These are 13 players, from whom 11 must be selected. My XI in batting order is:
This XI is well balanced, with good batting depth. The bowling has a genuine speedster in Richardson, two high quality fast medium/ medium fast bowlers in Geary and A Bedser, a great left arm spinner in Wardle and off spin back up from E Bedser, with Hobbs’ medium pace as sixth bowling option. I end this post with a view of Fort Clonque:
Continuing coverage of my holiday with the trip from Guernsey to Alderney
We reach a transition point in my account of my recent holiday – the journey from Guernsey to Alderney.
THE MORNING
Although we had to check out of our hotel by 10AM and the boat to Alderney was not due to sail until 4PM we were able to leave our bags at the hotel to be picked up immediately before boarding, which enabled us to spend an enjoyable morning in St Peter Port. We enjoyed a picnic lunch, and picked our bags up from the hotel, before heading for the boat.
THE VOYAGE TO ALDERNEY
The boat on which we travelled over to Alderney (a voyage that takes about an hour) on a small boat run by a company called Salty Blonde. The voyage itself was fairly uneventful (the sea was very smooth fortunately). The main drama came on our arrival at the harbour on Alderney, when we had a substantial climb up a vertical metal ladder from the boat, and the platform at the top of said ladder was covered in seaweed. The boat crew managed our bags for us to that point, but the climb was not an experience I would care to repeat even so.
FROM THE HARBOUR TO FORT CLONQUE
A taxi conveyed the baggage and my mother to the fort while the rest of us walked. The walk was a pleasant one, and then it remained only to decide on rooms at the fort.
Resuming my coverage of my holiday to Guermsey and Alderney, setting the scene for what is to come in this series of posts.
I wasn’t entirely sure when I put the first post of this series about my holiday up as to when I would be able to post. There was no internet connection in Alderney, although I was able to edit plenty of photos ready for use. Yesterday we travelled back from Alderney to Guernsey, and then visited two places which both proved of huge interest, and left me with over 300 photos to edit to catch back up with that side of things. Between last night and this morning (I was underway before 7AM) I completed that job, meaning that at least until the end of today I am up to date in terms of photos. I am going to use the rest of this post to outline the rest of the series for you.
PLANNED POSTS
I will devote one post to the day we spent on Guernsey before we were able to travel across to Alderney.
The journey to Alderney will account for the next post.
The Harbour at Braye, Alderney – the boat bottom right of shot is the one we travelled on from Guernsey to Alderney.
I will produce several posts about Alderney:
A cricket themed post in honour of John Arlott who spent his last years on Alderney – this will take the form of a two-fold journey, through a large amount of space and centuries in time as I cover cricketing links relating to my journey (two of them highly contrived, I admit), creating a spectacular XI in the process.
Students of the game will instantly realise how the road sign in this picture enabled me to sneakily fill one of the opener’s slots -the other was already filled fair and square.
A post about our first visit to St Anne, the sole town on the island.
Probably two posts about the walk we did on our second full day on the island.
A special post featuring maps of Alderney and the Channel Islands, several great examples of which I saw:
A special post dedicated to the birds of Alderney, of which I saw some fine specimens.
A post about the return journey to Guernsey.
Every post relating to Alderney will feature a view of Fort Clonque, where we stayed.
A view of the fort taken from the far end of the causeway that links it to the rest of the island.
Events since arriving back on Guernsey warrant at least three posts already:
A post about the Little Chapel.
Two posts minimum about the Occupation Museum (Guernsey was occupied by the Germans from 1940-5).
I have no doubt that today’s events will be worth at least one further post, and then there is the return journey.
aspiblog 