Herm; Sunday, 04 August, 2019

Whilst breakfast may have been served until 10:30 you had to check out of your rooms by 10:00, which meant I had to be up earlier today so that I could have breakfast, which was again a disappointing affair, pack my bag and head back to the hotel reception to check out and leave my bag in the luggage room, tagged for the 14:35 ferry back to Guernsey.

After checkout I headed north again this time to explore across the Common. This is the large area of land that occupies the northern third or so of the island, the edge of the common are the dunes that form the backdrop to Bear, Mouisonniere and Shell beaches but once your more than a few meters back from the edge it stops resembling dune and looks more like down-land.

The area is also home to a large number of Dolmen. Nobody is certain how many dolmens there are on the island, as the quarry that operated on the island in the Victorian era used the stones that formed the dolmen as a convenient source of pre-quarried granite when they needed to quickly fulfil an order. It means that today most of the dolmen are either missing pieces or have been badly disturbed, if not completely removed, but you can still get the idea of how the area may have looked.

I spent a long time wandering around the common before finally making my way back to the Shell Beach Café were I stopped for a quick bite to eat.

By now it was heading towards the time of my ferry, so I walked back round the common and past the hotel to the Rosaire steps as it was almost the peak low tide. Whilst I was waiting for the ferry to arrive the only tractor on the island pulled up with the luggage from the hotel and I was glad to see that my bag was on there.

After a quick off-load of incoming passengers, we boarded and made our way back to St Peter Port. In the end there turned out to be a lot of luggage on this ferry and by the time they got it all unloaded they were rushing to make the turn around for the next departure, so there was quite a bit of chaos on the quayside, but I did eventually manage to get my bag.

I walked the half mile or so from the low tide boarding point through the harbour and round to the centre of town and the bus stop, arriving just in time to catch a bus heading to the airport.

A quick ride out to the airport and I was able to go straight through security and into the departures lounge as I’d already checked in online and only had my hand luggage.

This time there were no problems or delays and we boarded early, with the plane pushing back a good five minutes early and thanks to a strong tailwind making it back into Gatwick 15 minutes ahead of schedule, followed by my quickest every journey through Gatwick – I don’t remember having only hand luggage before on a Gatwick flight – making a train a good 30 minutes ahead of where I’d been expecting to be.