Quiet beaches, warm seas and woodland walks: Why Jersey makes for the most invigorating autumn break

Half a mile of golden sand stretches towards a calm sea. The desert-like expanse is broken here and there with a dash of colour – over by the pink granite sea wall, two mature women blow up their neon swim floats, further down a dog walker throws an orange ball, and at the shoreline a man in a wetsuit drags a red kayak into the water. The sun is warm on my face as I ponder an autumn dip.

Jersey is a joy for wild swimming. With 44 miles of coastline there’s a beach for every mood and hour of the day. This particular one is my favourite, not least because you can step out onto it from a choice of three hotels that line the bay. I’m wearing a white bathrobe that bears the embroidered monogram of St Brelade’s Bay Hotel, the oldest and most characterful of the trio, which is tucked into a lush hillside at the western corner. Yesterday, in the early morning sunshine, I had a refreshing swim in the heated outdoor pool and felt like I was squeezing out the last drips of summer, while all around me the garden was beginning to turn golden. Today I looked up the sea temperature: 18C, the same as the air and so I happily crossed the road for a salt-water swim.

Even in summer, the beaches of this southerly Channel Island are rarely crowded. But now, as the seasons shift, they are serenely still.

From the water, I watch a jogger come to a halt and begin a round of yoga poses known as sun salutations. She is unself-conscious because she thinks that nobody is watching; and, apart from me, nobody is.

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I experience this exhilarating solitude myself later as I crunch through the fallen leaves on the floor of the island’s “forgotten forest”. I grew up in Jersey, but only recently discovered the arboretum that surrounds St Peter’s Val de la Mare reservoir. Within the space of a few hundred metres you can encounter giant American redwoods, Japanese cypresses and Australian bottlebrushes and eucalyptus trees. The trees were donated to the island by the Moores family in the 1970s and planted in memory of their son Nigel who had died in a car accident. After several years they were completely forgotten and allowed to grow to full size without any human interference. At this time of year, the trees are at their most splendid, with…