Making the best of a bank holiday
A BIT of bank holiday joy for St Peter Port sandwiching a day which largely summed up the summer. Sunday was not bad in parts, but ended quite dismally, particularly for those attempting to enjoy the Vale Earth Fair.
However the day was sandwiched by two more-than-reasonable weather days which also brought considerable cruise liner traffic into our town.
The Island Princess brought quite a few American accents into St Peter Port on Saturday, while on Monday lunchtime the Quay and the High Street were positively buzzing with life to an extent not seen since, oh, at least the Island Games week.
The amount of British families around, studying maps, gave the game away as the best part of 3,000 passengers on the liner Ventura were trying to come up with something to do on a bank holiday lunchtime.
It brought home the double-edged sword of the cruise liner sector. It didn’t look much like these passengers would be spending too much, and of course, being a Guernsey bank holiday, it’s not that easy to, however they did want a good time, and a standard Guernsey bank holiday rarely cuts the mustard.
As an island we are certainly better off with cruise liners and their passengers than without them, though the challenge of serving and impressing thousands of people enough that they might want to come back for longer, will always be an awkward one.