To think living in the Channel Islands must be miserable in winter?

[writemyricebun]

By that I mean having to fly or get the ferry just to visit the mainland if you live in one of the Channel Islands, how often do you visit the mainland? Is it expensive?

Fair enough on the actual definition

You're right about phases of people coming, but in addition to those you mentioned I've also met people from all corners of the earth, and had some amazing opportunities in terms of being able to visit them in their home countries, and made some (hopefully!) lifelong friends, brought together by being away from home, and often becoming each other's second family.

I'm not sure I'd have found that same diversity in small town Yorkshire.

My dd lives in jersey. She’s only been back a few times. She loves it. The safety aspect someone mentioned up thread is a massive bonus. She went out drinking one evening and FaceTimed me the next day as she had woken up without her bag, phone, passport, keys and money. But randomly with someone else’s phone. We were able to track her phone to her boyfriends house but her bag and contents weren’t there. Someone called the phone she had and she was able to hand that back. After retracing her steps she tried to register her bag and contents as missing with the police who refused to file the report as ‘these things have a habit of turning up’. Indeed a few days later she got a call from a nightclub to come and collect her bag. Every penny (and it was a few hundred pounds in her purse) was there. Someone had just taken home by mistake.

Im hoping to move there once I finish my degree. Jersey winters are beautiful. It’s such a colourful island but the colours change with each season. I have never had better food then the food in Guernsey. I love the Channel Islands.

Honestly I go out and rarely lock the back door. I've had a car thst wouldn't lock and no one pinched it off the drive. It's safe enough for my 15 year old to go out with friends and to the beach and walk home without me worrying all the time

I grew up on the mainland and never had that

Yes you can walk through town and know at least 3 people. But it's good

We left Jersey recently after several years. The weather in the winter is no worse than the UK, definitely milder.

We left because:

It became too expensive. We couldn’t buy and the rents were shooting up. We earned decent salaries compared to the UK but were just on a treadmill to keep afloat.

The costs of leaving the island to visit grandparents and go on holiday has rocketed after Covid. Routes are fewer, and EasyJet charging for bags adds hundreds to the costs of a family trip away. Day trips to France are very difficult as Condor has really cut down its schedules and the costs are up.

There was very little for our kids to do as they got older. It’s really lovely to bring up small kids there, low crime rate, lovely beaches etc, but things have closed before and during Covid and my kids were just so bored. Every single winter weekend was a challenge.

The relentless rhetoric about non-islanders; we were immigrants and a certain vocal section of society would not forget it. DH’s employers discriminated against him because of it, and it just got too much.

The cost of living is rising; tax is now charged on most goods ordered online, and the main on-island producer of fruit and vegetables has closed, so food security is less. The lack of choice and the fact that fewer suppliers will deliver to the Channel
Islands post-Brexit was making life more complicated.

On the plus side, we had amazing friends, and being on a small island through Covid was intensely bonding as we were cut off for months on end, and right now, I’d absolutely love to be able to jump into the lovely clear sea. We miss our friends and doubt we’ll find the same sense of community anywhere else. I go over frequently for work and love walking down King Street and being greeted by every third person, whereas I know virtually no one where we’ve moved to. You can’t have everything.

But there’s no way I would move back. And I know quite a few people, including friends who were born and grew up on the island, who are leaving for some of the same
reasons as us, primarily housing.

DH and I went to Jersey a couple of weeks ago. Fabulous place, we had no idea what to expect either. I couldn't imagine being miserable living there at all quite the opposite.