Alderney

It's a wild place - wild, woolly and never curried below the knee. Yes they say it's been tamed, and it has, to a degree. People live there and thrive and survive. People bring the trappings of civilization and bring a semblance of order to the organic chaos, and yet, they remain subject to her whims.

I grew up there. She was, and still is, a wild place once you take time to know Her as She really is. An island steeped in lore and legend, overflowing with history, a place of wildness and freedom, the kind of untamed beauty that can never be faked or reproduced. She has a history of freedom and independence that She breathes into every person who stays on Her for any length of time, especially those of us who grew up there. A sense of freedom and independence that can never be taught or learned, it grows with you, it's in the air you breathe, in the ground beneath your feet and in the dark blue waters surrounding Her.

It was, and is, a place that will never truly yield to man. It is a collection of huge rocks rising from the depths of a wild blue sea whose own heart man has never managed to conquer. A place where the fae walk with us and ghosts of ancestors past are always there beside us, just out of sight, only a breath away.

A place where time, tide, season and weather still affect every day life and nature makes Her presence felt every day. A place where the old times and old ways are more than just forgotten words in a faded book, or a distant memory. A place where the road known as Allees es Fees is more than just the link between a collection of houses, it is part of the smugglers road and part of the hidden pathways of the fair folk.

A place of dolmens and cromlechs, German gun posts and old forts linked only by tidal causeways. It's a different world, one where the old, wild places only tolerate the intrusion of humanity and modern life. Where you can find a neolithic grave alongside Occupation concrete, black rabbits and blonde hedgehogs alongside cats and cars.

A place where people still watch storm tossed seas as the maroons boom a call to summon the lifeboat crew and the watchers silently pray for a safe return. This is an island where we grow up knowing that 'When the sea wants you, She will take you' isn't imagination or fancy, it's a reality of life. We learn as children not to whistle up the wind or paint a boat green, that priests do not belong on board ship, except for burial at sea, and to always keep an eye on the rising tide or the gathering storm. We knew why the undertaker wore red socks, and as children we learned the secret pathways and hidden places that adults pretended they didn't know about.

A place steeped in history for it holds the bones of our mothers, their mothers and our ancestors back through the years, and the air we breathe carries the breath of countless generations who have lived and worked the land before us. It's an island of smugglers, soldiers, farmers and fishermen, of quarrymen, golfers, sailors and visitors. A place of torchlit processions, arguably a modern remnant of a much older tradition, still played out by successive new generations of bright eyed children. Here the museum used to be a school, the breakwater used to be longer, the train runs in summer and doing the Dougie is a rite of passage. Soft sandy beaches and storm battered cliffs, windswept commons and whitewashed houses with lovingly tended flower gardens, narrow twisting cobbled streets and battered old barns live side by side and support each other.

It's a place where you picked daffodils in spring and blackberries in autumn, where we once picked sloes to take to Captain Jim for sloe gin and rescued overgrown goldfish from a bunker on Essex during the drought of '76. Where we remember the one legged heron that massacred many ponds and people know what the Sugar Loaf is and why it's there, and where we read the message on the sundial as we land and before we leave. Where we know that when the fog rolls in, we might as well be on another planet, and that if there's no planes flying, there will be no mail and no papers, and where it pays to keep shelves and freezer stocked lest a storm come in and the boat doesn't. A place where the Wombles live wild, if you know how to find them, and children ran free growing up on sun, wind, rain and open space.

It is a place out of time and space, a place in a world of it's own. A place that grabs the heart and soul of all who have lived there and never lets go, no matter how far we may travel or where we roam. It is a place that many times it feels as thoughTime itself has forgotten Her but those who were raised there never do.

She is the wild, untamed spark that beats deep within our hearts. Wherever we go, whatever we do, we can always hear Her calling us Home.