Coming to Sark from Guernsey

If you live in Guernsey, this is your closest island, and there is a reasonable chance you have not been for years.

That is not a criticism, it is simply what happens with a place seven miles away by boat. It becomes the thing you keep meaning to do, and then the next boat leaves without you on it, and then another season passes.

This is a case for putting one date in the diary and going.

The crossing

Isle of Sark Shipping runs from St Peter Port throughout the year. About forty five minutes across, foot passengers only, luggage loaded onto the deck. It is not glamorous and it is not meant to be.

Book in advance in summer, particularly for a weekend.

Planning the trip? Our free How to Get to Sark guide covers the ferry, the connections, the luggage system and what to pack.

The four ways to do it

Day trip. Over on an early boat, back on a late one, most of a day ashore. Enough to walk to La Coupée, eat lunch, swim if the tide is right, and be back on the boat in time for supper at home. This is how most Guernsey people do it.

Evening trip. Rarer, weather-dependent, and quietly the best. A late afternoon boat over, dinner at one of the pubs, sunset from a cliff, back on the first available return. You will see the island without the day boats, which is a different Sark to the one most Guernsey visitors know.

One night. The one most Guernsey guests wish they had done. Stay somewhere small on Saturday, walk on Sunday morning before the day boats arrive, come home in the afternoon. Twenty four hours changes the trip completely, because you get the evening on Saturday and the early morning on Sunday, which is when the island is most itself.

A week. A different holiday from the one you are picturing. Retreats, cottages, a small hotel. A week is the deliberate decision to spend real time somewhere seven miles from home that behaves nothing like home.

Why more Guernsey people should come

Two reasons and they are related.

The first is that Sark does not offer anything you cannot get on Guernsey. You can walk cliffs on Guernsey. You can swim in beautiful water on Guernsey. You can eat well and sleep well on Guernsey. You already live somewhere lovely.

What Sark offers is the same catalogue of good things without the traffic, the street lighting, the pace, and the small background hum of a place where things need to keep happening. Whatever Guernsey has quieted down for you already, Sark quiets down another level.

The second reason is the boat home. Coming back into St Peter Port on a Sunday afternoon, your own harbour looks bigger and busier and much more lit than it did on Friday. Guernsey people mention that. It is worth going for that alone.

Booking the boat

The Isle of Sark Shipping website has the current sailings. Buy the ticket. Get on the boat.

Arrive at least thirty minutes before your sailing. The boat leaves on time, and it will leave without you.

If you are coming for longer than a day, the How to Get to Sark guide covers luggage, the toast rack up from the harbour, and what happens next. And if you are hosting visitors from the mainland, how to get to Sark from London is the page to send them.