Herm

Relating to the picture of a possible megalithic female (?mother goddess) figure that I’ve just posted. Herm has many prehistoric sites, unfortunately not all extant*. If this is indeed a figure, and if it stood where it now lies (by the path down to Belvoir just after the Carrefour, by Le Manoir), it would be more or less in the centre of the island, by the crossroads, and on a high point.

*Links to Durham University excavations
community.dur.ac.uk/herm.project/

Herm is a rather special, unspoilt place. No cars or motorbikes, and you can walk around its coastline in a couple of hours. There are several broken and battered small passage tombs, and we only stopped by one (Robert’s Cross). There used to be an enormous menhir on Herm Common but it fell prey to unscrupulous quarrymen. After circling the island we stopped for a beer in the Mermaid and read our newly purchased book “Hidden Treasures of Herm Island” by Catherine Kalamis. I’m not sure that you could buy this anywhere but on the island, but I recommend it for the in-depth history of the island and its owners over the years. Many of them, it seems, found the Common a weird and almost threatening place. I can imagine it gets pretty windswept and bleak, but to us the whole island seemed lovely and well worth a visit (boat from St Peter Port, Guernsey, several times a day). It was my first visit but my wife had been there many times as a child.