30 Bays in 30 Days

Nothing makes me more nostalgic than a trip to Jersey. Perhaps this is inevitable when you come from a small island where not much has changed over the years. Roads, buildings, views and even, sometimes, the faces of people whose names I can’t recall and perhaps never even knew, all come together in some sort of immersive time-capsule designed to pull me back through years of memories every time I set foot on the island. 

They take me back to five years ago, when a baby Jasper and I got stuck in Jersey between Myanmar and India. That was a cold, dark time – physically, in that it was my first winter in several years of living in Southeast Asia, but also emotionally, having had to leave Myanmar quickly and being apart from Dylan for longer than expected. It was a time when farm school, coastal coffees, and seafood Saturdays with my mother and sister were the scaffolding propping up six months of solo parenting and visa challenges.

They take me back to teenage summer holidays when a conveyor belt of friends from boarding school turned our home into a summer camp. Those were the years when ferry connectivity made off-island day trips part of the island’s induction programme, we triple-printed all our memories and almost every meal contained a component of freshly kicked sand. 

They take me back to my lawless 80s childhood, when swimwear, sunscreen and seatbelts were optional at best, and large cars were for even larger numbers of people. This was a time when hydration was a 20p ice lolly from a beach shack, nutrition was coded in E-numbers and photos were only taken on special occasions like when family visited or I had my face painted as a golden lion tamarin at the zoo. Those were the years I truly didn’t appreciate what I had in the island I called home. And it’s those same years I have spent this summer trying to recreate for Jasper, albeit with healthier snacks and a far more aggressive sun protection regime. 

A few years ago, when a two-year-old Jasper and I first escaped Mumbai’s rain to spend a few weeks in Jersey, I desperately wanted him to fall in love with the place where I grew up. It broke my heart that he was homesick for Mumbai — a place I saw as chaotic, overcrowded and grey, but the place he saw as home. As committed as I was to savouring every birdsong on every breeze, every twig snapping under foot, he only wanted to return to the city with its ambient volume set louder than he could even speak. This heartbreak was further compounded when Jasper received his first Australian passport and declared that he was now Indian and Australian — with no love for Britain, let alone Jersey.

But this year, five-year-old Jasper seems to have turned a corner and, not only does he now say that he is half-Indian, half-Australian and half-British, but he even told me he thinks he’d like to live in Jersey one day. So, what won him over? 

While he might never be able to tread that no-longer-recommended fine line between freedom and danger afforded to children in the 80s and 90s, I was able to help him connect with the island through something more enduring: its coastline. By taking part in an annual fundraiser — a challenge to visit 30 Bays in 30 Days — and having arranged for nothing but sunny weather for an entire month, I stood back and let Jersey reel him into its magic, bay by beautiful bay. 

I’ll admit, our commitment levels ebbed and flowed like Jersey's very big tides. For every day we were up and out like hardened beach bums, there were days when one of us didn’t really feel like getting salty and sandy — again. Some days it was me who lacked the enthusiasm and then Jasper would remind me which of the hidden symbols he had yet to tick off on his scavenger hunt. And if he was dragging his shoeless, temperamental feet, I bribed him with the promise of ice-creams. Yes, plural icecreams. Inevitably, the closer we got to the sea each day, the more it felt like a privilege than a challenge and the more we both appreciated the island. 

The drive to complete the bays gave a structure to our holiday, but it was the experiences we had and the people with whom we shared those, that really cast the spell. We didn’t just tick 30 bays off a list; we made 30 bays’ worth of memories that I hope will stay with Jasper as vividly as they are currently sitting with me. And when I say vividly, I mean that the sting of a certain unfortunate sea-poop is still lingering in my nostrils. I am exceptionally grateful that that particular experience took place at a beach I have somehow never visited before and, having been complicit in the fouling of its shoreline, will probably try never to visit again. If you should happen to find yourself in Fliquet (flea-kay) Bay, however, please do look out for a surprisingly well fertilised rock pool — and give it a wide berth. 

Of the 30, we only did 8 of them by ourselves. At all the others, we were accompanied by a willing family member or friend, and sometimes multiples thereof. My mother, or Jersey Nana, as she’s known to Jasper made it to an impressive 10 of the bays and even swam at one of them, which is quite something. Despite appearances on sunny days, the sea around Jersey is cold and having paid her sea-swimming dues while raising 3 daughters, Jersey Nana isn’t easily enticed into the water. That said, when firmly not swimming, she was more than happy to hold towels, take photos, eat ice creams and try to explain to an over-excited Jasper and his wayward water pistol what ‘no’ really means. 

After Nana, it was Jasper’s Clive Daadaa (a family adaptation of the Hindi word for Granddad) who came a close second with a solid tally of eight bays. But what he lacked in total number, he more than made up for with drama. He was there for the poop. He was there for the moment Jasper discovered his apparent phobia of crabs and scrambled up my leg, tears pooling in his goggles, yelling ‘They are going to get me! They always come for me! They always bite me!’. For the record, Jasper has never had a run-in with a crab and I’m not sure he even got a good look at the gently unassuming crustacean my father made the grave error of pointing out as it was being bounced towards the shore by the crystal clear incoming tide at Le Hocq. Clive Daadaa was there on the rather wintry, overcast morning when we braved an icy chill at La Coupe. He was there when we battled a wild south-easterly wind in our quest to find a bay none of us had ever heard of before, but which we now know is not somewhere to visit on a blustery day unless you enjoy having sand blown into, well, everywhere. He was the mastermind behind a low-tide raid on the rocks at Anne Port to collect scallop shells for Jasper to paint. And he was witness to the unbridled joy Jasper unleashed with his first ever skinny-dip. 

Of the Jersey-based family, only my sister, Jasper’s Auntie LaLa, has the misfortune of having a job which somewhat handicapped her efforts. But even so, she still managed to join us at 7 bays. She graciously celebrated her birthday with a beach BBQ at one, giving Jasper the opportunity to feel the sudden plunge in temperature at the precise moment a bay loses its sunshine. One moment he was leaping and laughing, acrobatic and playful as a dolphin, the next he was bundled up like a Siberian nomad in six layers of jumpers with a dog on his feet for warmth. He soon perked up once the marshmallows came out for toasting, and continues to talk about how we were still on the beach when it went dark. For those not familiar with long, summer evenings, this was at 10pm, many hours after a responsible adult should have shooed him off home to bed. Auntie LaLa went hunting for Pokemons in the caves at Plemont, showed him where a primary school teacher nearly drowned her entire class on a field trip to Portelet and joined us for not one, but two, seaside dinners, one of which also included Jasper’s other Auntie who popped over from the mainland for pizza on the beach. (And maybe some other things too.)

Every bay was its own uniquely wonderful holiday within the holiday. So much so that we can’t seem to come up with a favourite. The more I’ve thought about which I liked the best, the more I realise how inextricable the bays are from the days, and the people we spent them with. Some of the more obscure bays ended up being where we had the best weather, enjoyed the most fun swim, found the nicest shell, ate the most delicious ice cream or built the greatest sandcastle. And some of my usual chart-toppers were where we lost a spade, arrived too late for the icecream van, had a disagreement about whose legs were going to climb the stairs, or saw a crab. 

One thing I am sure about, however is that beach parenting in Jersey is my favourite kind of parenting. And that’s simply because it requires so little effort. A well-chosen beach — with toilets, icecreams and top quality castle sand — at the right time of day (the tides are big and the UV is deadly in Jersey, which you soon come to learn), with the right people is probably the easiest place to parent in the world. He can play in the sand, he can climb rocks, he can jump waves, he can eat icecreams, he can explore caves…while I sit and stare out to sea. I can play in the sand, I can climb rocks, I can jump waves, eat icecreams, explore caves and take 10,000 photos…safe in the knowledge my belongings will be wherever I left them (unless someone sees that I’ve misjudged the pace of the incoming tide and moves them to safety further up the beach). Jersey’s beaches, even when they are busy, are not busy by any other country’s standard - least of all India’s. And this is something that feels unchanged since my childhood. Not that there are a huge number of photos for me to reference in my research, because we didn’t always have visitors or painted faces, but from memory, I think I always felt safe.

The Australian family always mocks my adoration of Jersey as a destination for beach-loving tourists. Their beaches are bigger, sure, their sand is sandier and their sunshine is more predictable in its availability, but they also have giant child-guzzling sharks and angry little jellyfish lurking in their shallows, not to mention the fact that their country is so huge it would take you years to complete a challenge to visit even a small percentage of the bays on their coastline. What’s more, Australia holds none of the nostalgia with which Jersey greets me on every visit. I’d choose Jersey any day, and from any bay. Even the one that was closed the day after we left because of a sighting of a ‘large, dark grey, sea creature’ which was ‘probably a shark’. But we won’t tell the Aussies about that.