I finally got to see a stretch of coastline that had eluded me for years. There's a bit of a gap in the cliff paths by the prison. From the west you have to head inland past the 'golfball' radar
(with a tantalising bunker on the headland which can't be easily reached, let alone whether by trespassing on private land or not), go past the prison with the sea views some distance away, and finally rejoin the cliffpaths at 'Ficquet' on the way to Beauport.
From the corner of the prison there is a private road leading to houses and a bunker used by the local ham radio club. From there, a gap to the side of a fenced-off farm track once took me down here...
.. around to the right... but the last time I was here I was too tired to try seeing if there was a way through the trees. But a friend of mine recently had a go at this piece of coast, and advised me to have a go.
Thanks also to evidence of a path on 'satellite' maps, I found it was indeed easy enough to get through the trees. You can rely upon anglers to create paths to all parts of our coast in their quest to find secluded spots for great fishing!
Even by the last of the fields, the views are looking promising.
We emerge out of the woodland (packed with squirrels!)...
.. and a well-worn track cuts through the 'hottentot figs'
(that's one of those words that can make you feel guilty just typing it. Oh, and don't look up 'hottentot apron' if you blush easily).
(looking back) The path can get a little close to the cliff edge, but nothing too unusual to a seasoned walker.
The end of the path - it's just rocks and deep ravines. No easy way to the west. An official cliff path would have to head up over the top of the headland, if the landowners could be persuaded to share their sea views with us peasants :)
And now you can enjoy the tranquil setting with great views.
Zooming in... La Cotte, the famous cave of prehistoric remains.
Ouaisne peeks through the rocks.
Two towers at Noirmont, and the rocks of the Violet Bank far beyond.
I recommend the walk, if you want to take your chances with private land (?). I did hear there wasn't actually any Law of Trespass in Jersey though ;)
By the way, is anyone else having trouble uploading pics to blogs? It's getting very silly now how complicated it is becoming. I hope you appreciate the effort involved :
a) take memory card out of the camera, insert into USB adaptor, load onto main off-line PC
b) select anything worth publishing, rotate (to level up) as needed
(usually every damn time!), adjust contrast/brightness/gamma, colour balance, crop, resize down to web-size, save.
c) copy a folder-full to be published onto 'clean' USB stick to take to an online device for uploading to internet
d) load onto a non-Windows device. This one has a problem selecting more than one pic at a time in the blog posting upload dialog, so I need to pass onto another machine...
e) copy onto a 'dirty' USB stick
(could be infected for all I know).
f) take the USB key to an old laptop, online.
(by using two USB sticks via a Unix-based intermediate machine, hopefully any Windows infections won't get passed on?)
g) try to upload to a new blog posting. Fails. Pics don't appear in the posting, but do go into the web album elsewhere...
h) go back to the non-Windows device, load up the draft posting again, select the new pics from the web album
(from the far end of hundreds that take an age to display) and finally get to see them in the posting.
i) Working on whichever machine is more comfortable, charged and connected ... labour away at clicking each pic, selecting small size and left alignment, add a single character of text while I still have a chance, because often if you try to add something later the cursor won't go where you want it to - needs messing about in the HTML editor :(
j) at last I get to write a bit for each pic
(replacing the single character added earlier), trying to make things flow and give the reader a sense of place and direction. And try not to give away any clues who or where I am, in case I've ever upset any local psychos - and because I like to wander around totally incognito.
k) These days I seem to need to re-order the sequence because the pics don't display in the order I carefully named the shots! Not easy! I have to do it via HTML editing because the 'compose' view often breaks things :(
l) add div and /div sections in the HTML because long bits of text bleed into the next one, and there's no easy way to force a blank line!
m) then I can finish off by setting labels, location, and... publish!
n) sit back exhausted and wait for one or two comments, wonder why all those hits don't generate more comment :)
I guess it's still a joy to publish things, even after all this time!
