Oh my lovely, friendly Island of long, long ago

From Mr and Mrs Michael Squires.

WE first travelled to Jersey in July 1960 on our honeymoon, and liked it so much that we then made it our annual holiday up to 1976.

Thirty-four years later we came back this year in July to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. The weather was very good and we did not expect to find Jersey as we knew it in 1976. However, the changes made to the Island since then were not what we expected to see.

Gone are all the hotels we stayed in. Now they are flats or apartments. Several places we used visit in the evenings –West Park Pavilion, the Tartan Bar at Corbière, Janvrin’s Farm at Portelet – are now flats and houses.

The Milano at L’Etecq, which we visited when the children came along because they loved the singalong there with Jimmy Adams, who hosted the show, has been demolished.

The Esplanade has changed altogether, with new buildings of either flats or offices, some empty, and opposite the Grand Hotel it was always full of deck chairs, but none were to be seen while we were there.

We got the impression that Jersey no longer wants the bucket and spade brigade, and in doing so may have turned families away.

Another thing we noticed while driving around several of your roads without pavements that the pedestrians walked with their backs to the oncoming traffic, some with headphones, so not only did they not know what was coming, they also could not hear anything. We were always taught as children for safety reasons to walk facing oncoming traffic.

In September this year we went to Crete and while we were on the beach we noticed a beach umbrella which at one time must have come from Jersey.