Jersey Travel Guide – Land of Milk and Money

Just to make it clear, this is not New Jersey (in the USA)…it is the old one, which is part of Britain’s Channel Islands.

I have been to the ‘new’ one, but I can’t say the two Jerseys have any similarities. The old one has lovely beaches, brown cows and, despite being part of the British Isles, it is pretty much surrounded by chic and classy France on three sides. The new one has ice hockey and a high murder-rate.

New Jersey was named after the old Jersey back in the late 1600s when the British started carving up the eastern USA. A big buddy of King Charles II, George Carteret, was given the land where New Jersey sits. Carteret, an English aristocrat, had been the Governor of Jersey (the old one) and he’d supported the royalists during the English Civil War. As a thank-you for his loyalty, Charles II made him a gift of New Jersey. So now Carteret had two of them.

Jersey’s most famous four-legged residents are its brown Jersey Cows. These are a specific breed that have been much protected by the islanders over the centuries, indeed almost going back to Carteret’s time. They were a big part of the island’s economy as the export of cows, or their semen, kept the Jersey farmers in clover for many years. Manually extracting the semen from an aggressive Jersey bull was a small price to pay for a lucrative revenue stream (perhaps not the most tasteful way to describe it).

Many thousands of Jersey cows actually made their way to America over the years, probably quite a few finding a home from home in New Jersey. It is now the second most popular breed in the USA.

The English Civil War, incidentally, was probably the closest we Brits ever got to a revolution. Even though we beheaded Charles II’s father, Charles I, the uprising didn’t last long. The Jersey folks, however, are not far off their own revolution at the moment. I’ll explain.

Once upon a time, up until the 1970s, Jersey was a very popular holiday destination with the British. Even I remember the advertisements extolling its virtues. Long sandy beaches, plenty of sunshine and more cows than you can shake a big stick at. Although, as I say, a recently wanked bull can be a bit tetchy so don’t get too close with the stick.

Jersey also had a more recent history to attract patriotic UK tourists, in that the Channel Islands were the only part of Great Britain to be occupied by the Germans in WWII. Life under the Nazis is memorialised in several museums, as well as the German-built bunkers and sea-defences that remain on the island.

However, in the 1970s the bucket and spade brigade discovered Benidorm, Corfu and Magaluf. As a result, the cheap package holiday abroad began to dent the tourist income Jersey had become reliant on. The 20th century development of hotels, holiday cottages and cafes had also reduced the island’s farming activity, so the revenue from bull-semen had dried up long ago (again, probably not a great way to describe it).

Thus, the island embarked on a rebranding. Having some historical autonomy from the rest of the UK, it made changes to its taxation system so that it became a tax-haven for both companies and individuals. The money moved in and the tourists moved out. This was all well and good and the island prospered, the hotels were replaced by expensive apartment blocks and the pubs and cafes became wine bars and swanky restaurants. There were once 800 hotels on Jersey, there are now just 80.

A new wave of wealthy residents came in that worked in international banking or tax avoidance. Property values shot up, and so did prices. There’s no Asda, Lidl or Aldi on Jersey, it is very much Waitrose territory. Retail prices, on average, are twenty percent higher than the mainland UK.

There are also odious residency laws, even if you could afford a property that will be at a Central London price. So, the net result of this is a lot of young people move out and lower-paid workers don’t move in. There is now a chronic shortage of nurses, social workers, bin men, builders, plumbers…even doctors can’t afford to live there.

There is a backlash to this, and a wave of discontent is washing across the island…even the wealthy can’t get their piles sorted without a trip to the mainland, hopefully without a bumpy landing. I doubt the residents will be taking to the streets, but they are moaning a lot and in the UK that’s classed as a revolution.

On the plus side, prices aside, it is brilliant place for a short break. I’ve never been anywhere in the UK where the beaches are deserted in August. Although bear in mind if you want to build a sand castle you’ll need to have lived there for ten years and have a million in the bank.