Channel surfing

I admit it: I feel edgy on islands. I partly blame the Wicker Man, that 70s Brit flick about a sinister outdoor sex cult set on an invented Scottish island. The movie might have been improbable (I mean, think of the cold) but it did point powerfully to the insular tendency of islands, a cultural counterpart of their geography.

Jersey seemed a little peculiar, too, although I saw little evidence of a widespread sex cult. OK, the floor-to-ceiling ads for offshore capital management in the airport arrivals lounge did lean more towards the dubious side of island phenomena. They didn't exactly whisper tax avoidance but then, with maximum 20% income tax, the island presumably has to make its money somehow.

That tax threshold isn't the only thing that distinguishes Jersey from Britain, which it resembles but isn't. If the Germans ever invade the island again (the Channel Islands were the only British Isles to be occupied by the enemyduring the second world war), the UK will defend it even though, as a crown dependency, it doesn't belong to the union.

Jersey has its own phone and postal systems, too - the post boxes, you notice, are a mellow yellow and cream - along with separate legal tender, the Jersey pound, not accepted westwards over the water. The inhabitants may speak English but French was the official language until the 1960s, and if you tootle out to the more remote villages you may find an elderly resident still speaking the dialect of Jèrriais. To buy property on Jersey you have to have lived there for 15 years; in the UK you just have to be Russian.

The place felt, as I say, unusual, but so did I, and so I fitted in. Surfing was the reason I felt strange. I had grown up in Australia, you see, one of the world's surfing capitals, but, having failed to learn to surf there (we won't go into it: a boneheaded surfie culture was part of the explanation, as was a lingering Jaws issue), was now being taught to, somewhat absurdly, in the middle of the English Channel - and it was, predictably, raining.

I'll get back to the surfing but I hadn't come to the island for that. I had come for the Grassroots festival, Jersey's answer to Glastonbury. The stars - a strikingly young international lineup of often acoustic players - weren't of quite the same caliber as at that muddy mainland jamboree, but the weather was. I'm not sure God likes folk music. A terrible, very maritime-feeling gale descended before the strumming had even begun. Things were lashed; the rain was apparently inexhaustible. Everyone took shelter.

Not that the crowd seemed to mind. They kept arriving, in their funky or functional gumboots. Eventually the heavens' anger eased and a group of fans gathered before the stage, swaying to the music and churning up some promising quagmires.

At leaving time, quite a few more people were swaying, but all amiably enough.

I don't want to give the wrong impression about Jersey. It isn't always raining on the island but weather, including a glorious, orangey sunshine, seems to pass over it like moods over a mercurial mind. It was drizzling on my most triumphal day of surfing. At first I thought: Oh, no - typical - it's raining, but that was followed just as swiftly by: It doesn't matter, I'm about to get as wet as it's possible to be.

They discovered surfing early in Jersey. The island's surf club is the oldest in Britain. The swell is punchy enough, and regular, and the beach on St Ouens bay, where I practised, is a fine, broad, housepainter's brushstroke of a thing.

The hazy rain, if anything, only improved the view. The colour of the sand washed into the cobalt of the water and that in turn into the mottled grey of the sky to create a dramatic, ominous, unreal scene.

From the beach I watched a surfer take a surgical approach to a wave. With his board he made an unwavering incision all along its length, and at the end I expected a triumphant little swirl, or at the very least a stylish, standing glide back to the beach.

Instead, his dissection of the wave complete, he fell, a whirligig of limbs chopping up the water. I liked him more then; he seemed more human.

There's no dilly-dallying on a surfboard: that's the signal lesson I picked up from Jim, the Jersey-born, Australian-accented surfing instructor. No sooner have you felt the force of the wave behind you than you plunge your arms into the sea for a few hard stokes and then must spring upright on to the board.

It's physically demanding but I had a hole in my youth where surfing should have been, and I kept trying. On this second day, an hour in (although I was in a different element and hardly noticed the time) something came together. There I suddenly was, standing, ridiculously, on water.

This is easy, I thought, you barely rock. Then another thought came before, inevitably, I went under: and it's so exhilarating I'm surprised they haven't made it illegal.

TRAVEL FACTS

Simon travelled to Jersey with Jersey Tourism.

Flybe flies to Jersey from Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Exeter, London Gatwick, Manchester, Norwich and Southampton. Fares start at £30.99 one-way including taxes and charges.

The Radisson Blu Waterfront Hotel, Jersey, located on the marina with views over St Aubin's Bay and Elizabeth Castle, has rooms from £100 B&B for a double room, including WiFi and use of the gym, pool, sauna and steam room. Book on Reservations.jersey@radissonblu.com or 01534 671100.

The Grassroots music festival is organized by Allez-Oop.

Surf & Sun Watersports (07797 736411) on Jersey has sunset kayak tours for £30 for two hour sessions. Jersey Surf School (01534 484005) has surfing lessons for £25 for one-and-a-half hours.

For car hire on Jersey, see Hertz (01534 636666).