have we got any hitchers in Jersey?

Technically yes, I am here on holiday! ?

Lol what youdoing on here then?!??! where abouts are you staying and whats the weather like?

coming over on tuesday for 2 days - got a job interview and it looks like we may be moving over there!

I know Dooby is in Jersey for sure.

Well it's lovely weather here in Guernsey which is close! Where are you hoping to work?

I'm from Jersey but haven't lived there for about 10 years (left to go to university and never came back). Will happily help if I can though Dooby and Hubble (I think) will be more up to date. My mum's still there and I visit regularly, so may be able to help on some stuff. What do you want to know?

Everything really lol, which areas I should be looking at houses, school etc is my main priority. K starts school in september which is when i'll be starting work so will need to move quickly on sorting out a house and school

will be working in st hellier, just off the square - esplanade. will be renting a house with a j cat. also need to find h a job but not planning to start looking for him until we actually get out there

Didn't realise you were in guernsey gryfon - have you always lived there?

Ah, I probably won't be a tremendous help I'm afraid then. Are you looking at private or state schools? The private ones are much cheaper than in the UK as they're state subsidised (or used to be anyway). If so, I'd go for Jersey College for Girls prep - this used to be both sexes in the infants. There are catholic private schools too but they didn't used to be as good, but handy if you're catholic I suppose!. Can't help on the state ones I'm afraid.

Where to live... it's all pretty nice tbh and outside of the council estates there are no rough areas afaik - even the council estates were mostly pretty good in comparison to many in the UK. Personally I'm not a big fan of St Helier or the surrounding parishes, but there are nice bits of all of them and you don't have to go far to get whatever you're looking for - pretty countryside, rugged coast, pretty coastlines, suburban...

If you don't both drive I'd stick to St Helier or somewhere on one of the few main roads with a decent regular bus service - public transport leaves a lot to be desired. Close to town would be good if you want a town-based social life that doesn't cost a fortune in taxis.

Yeah apart from my few years at uni I've always been here ?

Nothing is very far from anywhere in the islands. Although we live in town which is handy for getting to work here, mainly because Mr G can walk in ?

Oh, I am so so jealous !! ? You lucky thing! We would love to move here. Unfortunately we both work in IT and there dont seem to be any IT jobs ?

The weather is lovely, the place just seems lovely. We are staying in the Merton Hotel, and it is great.

I;m going to be staying in the pomme dor which is the same company as the merton I believe

will be looking at state schools to start with at least. HR at the company have suggested living in the surrounding areas of st hellier - around 5 mins drive away. they said this so that we'd be close to work, but also far enough out to feel like we weren't in the city, and so there'd be neighbours so we could get to know people and Kieran would have friends in the area.

been looking at st clements or st saviour but not really sure what i'm looking at as i've never been there. got a 2nd interview this tuesday and they're flying the 3 of us over for 2 days, all expenses paid. have heard off the record that the jobs mine if I want it - can't see me not wanting to live there tbh lol. so assuming I do actually get it (which I guess there's still a chance they won't like me), then we've got a day and a half to get to grips with the island and I want to start house hunting while we're there so we have a better idea of what I'm looking at online when I get back here lol. it's looking like we'll be moving over at the end of august and with work, i'm not going to be able to get back there until the end of july so I need to do as much as possible from here.

I'm a Guernsey girl so I'm afraid I can't give any advice on where to live and schools etc, but I can say that the Pomme D'Or is a lovely hotel. Whenever we go to Jersey we like to stay there. It also happens to be the hotel where H and I got engaged.

H loves the breakfasts there too, they do a good full english buffet ?

thanks for the info - it looks lovely on the web, but it's always good to hear from someone who's stayed there ?

Pomme Dor looks lovely. It is just at the Harbour, so looks good to have a look around town (Next, M&S, BHS etc ?)

What is it you do? (job wise? ... just me being nosey to what sort of jobs are here)

I have to say we are both smitten by the place, and the schools all look lovely. Also, the things I loved were nursery kids being taken to the beach to play on in the sand. In Glasgow, with the weather, the closest my LO gets to it is a sand box. Also, she loved everything about the place, we have never eaten so much fish etc, and felt so at home somewhere.

But, as I said, our dream is over as IT manager jobs dont seem to be in demand, and I am a programmer so I doubt many of them required here either.

Enjoy your couple of days here. St Brelades Bay (you can get to it easily by bus) looks fabulous. There seems to be lovely housing round about there. En route to Gorey as well from St Helier there seems to be lovely houses as well. (honestly, we havent been looking)

Good luck on Tuesday. xxx

i'm a systems accountant so half IT/half finance. i've been suprised by how many jobs there are on the island tbh, there are half a dozen that i've found that I could apply for

living in Brum, the nearest beach is around 2 hours away so the thought of being 5 mins from the beach is just mind blowing lol

they're hiring a car for us too so we're planning on going over to st brelade etc as I've had a few people tell me how lovely it is.

If you dont mind me asking, what website did you see the jobs?

St Brelade I would say would sway you without a doubt. We went the other day, it was so lovely and warm, such a clean beach, white sand, and the sea was gorgeous (apart from the fact our LO was scared of the waves ?)

At home we are only about 25 mins from the coast, but this place is something else.

It is only a dream for us (family/constraints at home) but, if you have the option, our time here has made us love the place and if things were different we would move here like a shot.

Hi Chel,

As the others have said I am from and live in Jersey (though this past week i've been away on my holidays in the south of france so sorry for the delay in getting back to you). Jersey is a really lovely place to live (even if I do moan about things from time to time...but who doesn't about whereever they live eh!). As mentioned before because the island is pretty small no where is really far from anywhere else (or far from the beach either!). Basically the island is designated into 3 areas by us locals being Town (St Helier - which is known universally by Islanders as "Town" and as "St Helier" by visitors!), then you've got "the East" - anywhere east of town (i.e. St Clement, Grouville, St Martin) and "The West" - anywhere west of town (St Peter, St Brelade and St Ouen). They all have their good points and I suppose it's really a matter of personal preference. I'm an eastener myself and I'm therefore biased towards Grouville, St Martin, St Clement way. From my home in Grouville it takes around 20 mins to get into town through the rush hour traffic but i'm definitely out of town and live in the countryside so it's really lovely.

Schools wise i'd say all the parish schools are good (i went to one and turned out fine!). They are all well equipped and have a nice community sort of atmosphere, the two most modern facilities wise are St Clement's and St Peter's. There are also private primary schools ( Jersey College for Girls Prep (which teaches boys and girls, despite the slightly misleading name and the 3 catholic run private schools of FCJ, Beaulieu & De la Salle). I guess it's really up to the individual and parents as to what suits your children best but i think all the schools over here are pretty darn good. This would be a good place to start for info:- http://www.gov.je/ESC/Education+in+Jersey/About+Our+Schools/default.htm

Home hunting wise i'd take a look at the estate agent links pages on :- http://www.homelink.je/ as it has website addresses for all the local agents in one place. Houses are expensive over here that i will warn you, it's best to rent a place to begin with and you'll get a better feel of which part of the island suits you. If in time you decide to buy a home here because you will be a "J Cat" you'll need to form a Jersey company to hold the property for you. You will then be the sole shareholders/directors in that company. Any good lawyer will organise this for you as part of the conveyance, it's no problem.

I hope that's enough info for you to be getting on with for now, best of luck with the interviews etc and I hope you have a great trip over this week. The weather forecast is looking pretty good (sunny and in the low 20's all week). So with a bit of luck you'll see my beautiful Island in it's best light! ?

Thanks for the detailed reply Dooby ? hope you had a good holiday too!

i've looked at the schools on the gov website and my favourite one was st clements, not that you can tell much from one page on the web lol. def seem to be preferring the east at the moment. i phoned the guy who deals with schools last week to try and find out which ones still had places for september. very helpfully, i was told that they wouldn't do anything until we had a permanent resident and were living in it which means that we'll likely find out which school we've got into the day before he starts - i hate rushing things lol. I was hoping to get a list of which schools had places and then to find a house based on that, but apparantly it doesn't work like that lol

we won't be looking to buy straight away but I didn't know that about forming a company to buy a house - very interesting! and will look on the homelink wekbsite so thanks for that.

thanks again!