Les Écréhous

Les Écréhous is a reef about ten kilometres northeast of Jersey towards the French coast, where a scatter of rocks and three larger islets carry a group of small stone huts, some built by fishermen and one by a nineteenth-century resident who declared himself king of the place. The tidal range is enormous: at low water the reef becomes a landscape of sand and rock, at high water almost all of it is gone.

History

The name is Norse, from sker, reef, and holm, island. In the last ice age, when the sea was lower, the islets were high ground on a plain joining the continent to southern England. In 1203 John, Duke of Normandy, granted them to the Abbey of Val-Richer to build a church; a small chapel and priory stood on Maître Île, and in 1309 a prior lived there with one monk and a servant and lit a navigation light every night, until the alien priories were suppressed in 1413 and the buildings fell into ruin. Smugglers used the reef in the 17th century, and Philippe Pinel lived on Blanche Île from 1848 to 1898, called himself King of the Écréhous and exchanged gifts with Queen Victoria. In 1953 the International Court of Justice, in a case brought by France against the United Kingdom, awarded the islands to Jersey, and they have been a Ramsar wetland since 2005 (Wikipedia, Écréhous).

What's there

• The huts - the stone buildings on the islets, some still used in summer.
• The tidal transformation - a reef that becomes a sandscape at low water.
• The clear water - the shallows over sand between the rocks.
• The French coast - Normandy visible across the water on clear days.

When to go

May to September is the boat season. Trips run to the tide rather than a timetable. Weather cancels crossings regularly.

Things to know

Trips run to the tide and can be cancelled at short notice. Time ashore is limited by the water coming back. There are no facilities of any kind on the reef.

Nearby

Rozel Bay is the usual departure point, and Jersey is southwest.

Key facts