By all logic, Jersey should be part of France. Tucked in the bay of St Malo, it lies 14 miles off the French coast. Most of the streets and many of the people have French names. Until a hundred years or so ago, most people spoke a Jersey patois, a kind of Norman French, and much of the law and government has a Norman feudal base.
In fact, Jersey was only under the French flag between 933 and 1204, and for a seven-year spell when they were invaded in the 15th century. The people of Jersey chose to stick with King John and England in 1204 - and to this day they have a direct link with the Crown. Which doesn't stop them whingeing about the expense of visits from minor royals, such as the Wessexes, who called by recently.
The island has always been extremely resourceful - not to say opportunistic - about earning its living. In the early days, before the Reformation, when everyone was Catholic and ate fish on Fridays, it was fishing in local waters that kept them going. Later, they branched out into the cod trade. Piracy and knitting - mainly socks - were popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, so popular in fact that a law was passed forbidding men from spending too long at the knitting and neglecting the island's agriculture.
More recently, Jersey cows, Jersey Royal potatoes and tourism have been the thing - Jersey was known as the honeymoon island in the 1920s and 30s. Lately, these money-spinners have been running out of steam: in early October, it was announced that five dairy herds were to be exported to the mainland - they were simply producing too much milk. And the overriding virtue of Jersey milk - its extreme creaminess - is losing its appeal.
Jersey Royals will grow more or less anywhere, but they don't taste as good as those cropped in Jersey, or so it's claimed. The main buyers, British supermarkets, are only interested in the baby potatoes, and Jersey has a new wheeze for the larger rejects - make them into a top-grade (naturally) vodka.
Even if the vodka trade doesn't take off, few, apart from the farmers, will feel the pinch. In the past few decades, Jersey has found another kind of boomtime - as a haven for offshore banking and equities. All this makes Jersey extremely well-to-do - the more so because there's no VAT, little duty and the average rate of income tax is less than 10%. It's well nigh impossible to emigrate to Jersey, what with the stringent property laws and other regulations (unless you're Nigel Mansell, a refugee from the Isle of Man, or the Barclay brothers, who have a small Channel Island of their own).
What you can do is take a few days' break there - it is pleasant, uncrowded and sufficiently different from the mainland to feel almost abroad. In early October, sea and sky were as intensely blue as the Mediterranean, and the sea, around 10C, was still almost bearable.
For an island that's only nine miles wide and five miles deep, Jersey is mostly green and rural in a Toytown kind of way - the fields are scarcely bigger than tennis courts. In most of the 12 parishes, "green lanes" with a speed limit of 15mph, run up and down interior, intended to tempt cyclists and hikers. On the north coast, there are few roads, and you can walk along the cliff paths, admire the view of France to the east, so close you feel you could almost swim to it, and spot the odd puffin or razorbill.
Everywhere there are small beautiful beaches, and coves, such as Beauport, around the headland from St Brelade, where you walk down a steep path, through woods to a beach of rocks, boulders and pink sand. There are wide open bays, such as St Ouen's to the west, where we watched dozens of surfers riding a golden path, away from the setting sun behind them.
In the spring and autumn, the tidal range is enormous: last October, the difference between high and low tide was 40ft. As the tide turns and the sea retreats, it's as if someone has removed a giant plug. Vast plains of sand open up. Suddenly, you can walk to rocky outcrops - perhaps with a lighthouse or a stone tower on top - that half an hour ago were distant, unapproachable islands. Behind the beach at St Ouen's are sand dunes and woody hills, with just a scattering of white painted and pinky granite-built houses in sight.
Even in its heyday as a holiday island, Jersey can never have been exactly Blackpool. Tastefulness is the rule (and perhaps the planning regulation) here. Each little fish harbour has its old-fashioned beach cafe serving Jersey cream teas and crab sandwiches - £2.80 at the Hungry Man kiosk at Rozel, which also does veggie burgers and bacon butties in a strike at modernity.
There is no Jersey cuisine to speak of - fusion seems to be the current enthusiasm in the dozens of restaurants in the towns to the south. Seafood, lobsters, crabs, scallops, oysters and various kinds of fish are a mainstay - and why not? It's said that on the beaches in the south-east corner of the island, you can pick up lobsters surprised by the rapid retreat of the tide. But in among the poaches and grills, you're likely to find a Thai fish stew or a crab creole. And Jersey diners are oddly keen on game - venison turns up on nearly every menu, and, here and there, kangaroo.
The restaurant of the Atlantic Hotel - an elegant, art deco-ish place, next to a golf course with indoor and outdoor pool, Jacuzzi and so on - has a terrace overlooking the dunes and sea, and serves serious food with some grandeur and delicacy of flavour. The Old Court Inn, alongside St Aubin's harbour, cosy and more raffish, vies with the Salty Dog Bar and Bistro a few doors away. The latter, familiar from the Bergerac TV series, is out and out Pacific Rim.
From its decor to the Veneziana, with a contribution to the Venice In Peril fund, everything is familiar at the Pizza Express at St Brelad's Bay, except the spray splashing against the windows at high tide. The Beach Bistro at Goery Harbour serves typically, for Jersey, international fare, including prawn sandwiches - standard enough, but these are huge and spiced with garlic. The restaurant stands in the shadow of the oldest castle on an island that - thanks to its geographical position as a sitting duck for invaders - is ringed with every kind of fortification, from Martello towers of the Napoleonic period, to German pill-boxes.
Nothing is far away - though it can take quite a while to get there along narrow, twisty lanes. In your sensible little hire Ka, you will meet many high performance machines in this prosperous land of the 40mph limit, where parking is a major preoccupation. So what with the diversions for roadworks and the eccentric signposting, we might as well have walked to Augrés Manor, where Gerald Durrell lived. Having recently been in Corfu and read My Family And Other Animals, I was aware of Durrell's passion as a boy for collecting animals - a snake in the bath, a lizard in the bedroom - and his cavalier way with bugs, butterflies and birds' eggs.
He evidently grew out of his zest for killing things. Jersey Zoo, which he established, is devoted to conservation. All the birds and animals, kept in spacious surroundings as close to their natural habitat as possible, belong to species that are dwindling or are on the verge of extinction - fearsome gorillas, showboating orangutans, cute meercats, pugnacious otters. On my visit, the highlight for children were two otters fighting, apparently to the death, in a stream and on a grassy knoll which they shared with the dozy bears.
If it's raining - which in the nature of things it might sometimes, and I've never been to Normandy or Brittany when it didn't - you should visit the Underground Hospital Museum in St Lawrence. Jersey was occupied by the Germans from 1940 to 1945, and this complex of tunnels was originally intended as an artillery barracks. After the invasion of Normandy, the Germans were expecting the Allies to move next to the Channel Islands and the barracks were made into a hospital to receive the expected casualties - which never materialised.
The museum tells the story of the occupation, without flinching from the most sinister aspects, including the slave labour camps on Jersey for Russian prisoners, Poles, Spanish republicans, North Africans and others. Jersey's Jews were sent to concentration camps and British-born islanders to PoW camps in Germany.
Black-and-white film shows German soldiers goose-stepping past a hairdresser's in St Helier. A life-size figure in uniform smiles at you above a sign which reads "Would you say hello to a German soldier in the street?" Resistance by Jersey people, or helping escaped PoWs was punishable by the death penalty. The museum gives a taste of what might have been in the rest of the UK.
Elections were pending in October. It's hard to judge the political complexion of the island since there are no political parties - though it's probably safe to assume this is not a leftist stronghold. Instead, candidates put themselves forward on their personal merits, and there are signs posted everywhere saying "Please vote for X". Very gentlemanly. Well, not all gentlemen. One candidate made her pitch in the local paper: "I am a woman. I speak my mind and am a straightforward kind of person, so I thought I would go for it." Fair enough.
Way to go
Getting there: One Step Holidays (0870120 3091, onestepholidays.co.uk) has two nights' B&B at the five-sun Atlantic Hotel from £245pp including return fast-ferry crossing from Weymouth and transfers. The same package including flights from Gatwick costs from £279pp. Car hire costs from £8 per day.
Further information: Jersey Tourism (tel: 01534 500 700, jersey.com).
