St Peter Port; Sunday, 10 August, 2003

First stop of the morning was Castle Cornet. The site is quite large and has 4 museums housed in various parts that look at different aspects of the military. At 11am one of the guides runs a tour round the whole of the site that ends up back at the noon day gun shortly before it is fired.

After Castle Cornet I wandered down the coast road to the La Vallette underground museum. This is housed in yet more tunnels dug for the Germans by prisoners, this time for housing fuel storage tanks for refueling U-boats, this is an eclectic collection of posters, signs, memorabilia, paraphernalia, vehicles, uniforms and medals from both sides. There is little in the way of signange to tell you what the things are, but most speak for themselves.

After that it was a short walk further on and up the side of the cliff to Fort George. Originally it was built to supersede Castle Cornet but has in time come to be the less important of the two. Most of the buildings are still there but are currently sealed awaiting the site to be properly developed into a tourist attraction, but for good views out over the bay and St Peter Port it is a good site.

Then it was back into town and up to the Museum and Art gallery to look around. The museum gives an in-depth guide to the history of the islands, from their geological creation 8000 years ago (prior to that they had just been large hills on the landscape of France prior to the bay of San Marlo forming), through their development at the hands of humans, their changes of ownership between France and England, their occupation and liberation during WWII up to the modern day. The gallery also contains some of the art works that the state owns.

Then it was back down the hill to the town and pick up the bus to the second town of the island, St Sampson. Located just outside the town in Vale castle. From the road Vale castle, looks as though it is spectacular, unfortunately once you go inside you realize that the outside walls is virtually all that exists of the site. You can still make out where dividing walls once went, but apart from the odd small slab of stonework it is only the outside walls that have remained.