Honeymoon couple return to toast 50 years of marriage

YOU could get flights to Jersey, Bournemouth and Gatwick, the Chez was flourishing and a hotel bottle of wine cost nine shillings.

That was when Bob Fox and his bride, Caroline, first came to Alderney, for a two-week honeymoon in July 1963.

And Alderney must have worked its magic, for they recently returned to the island to toast 50 happy years together.

'There are more cars here than last time and more vacant properties than I remember, but it's nice to see that Alderney hasn't changed all that much,' said Mr Fox, a retired boat builder from Ipswich.

'The weather isn't perhaps as hot as it was last time, but the people are just as warm and friendly.'

Bob booked a honeymoon in Alderney after a customer remarked that he had just come back from the island. He met Caroline at a party given by her relative in 1962 and they were engaged within six weeks.

Bob had never flown before but, trying to appear worldly wise to his new wife, remarked that a stewardess would bring them sweets on their flight from Bournemouth. When they found themselves stepping across a flowerbed and over the wings to get into the twin-engine de Havilland Dove and the baggage handler also turned out to be the pilot, he realised that was unlikely.

Viewed from the air, Alderney, he recalled, looked like a tiny green postage stamp – too impossibly small to land on. As they got close, a man stepped out of the airport to shoo cows off the field where they would land.

They arrived in time for Alderney Week and were charmed to find that the pharmacist, a Mr Cowell, was also the leading light of the Alderney Dramatic Society's production, The Grass is Greener.

They filled their days hiking around the island, despatched with 'workmanlike' sandwiches from the Marais.

Grandparents to five, both have suffered from bad health in recent years and scrambling up and down to Telegraph Bay hasn't been on the itinerary for their return trip. But they don't regret their decision to come.

'I have had a stroke and breast cancer and Bob has had a heart attack,' said Caroline. 'We decided to come to Alderney whether we could afford it or not. That way, in coming years, we have something lovely to remember.'