An island built for walking

Jersey is small enough to hold in your head — around fourteen kilometres from west to east, nine from north to south — yet the coastal path that rings it crams in more variety than some countries manage in a fortnight. A single afternoon can take you from wind-bent cliff tops down into a fern-filled valley, across a beach where the sea has pulled back half a kilometre, and up again past a concrete observation bunker to the ruins of a fourteenth-century castle.

The full circuit is usually quoted at around eighty kilometres, and most of it is waymarked. You do not need to be a mountaineer, but you do need to be honest about your fitness: the north coast in particular is a sequence of steep staircases, ladder stiles and rooty descents that will leave your calves complaining. The reward is a coastline that changes character every few miles — granite cliffs and a sea the colour of slate in the north, wooded valleys and sheltered coves in the south-west, long sandy bays and castle views in the east.

Practicalities before you set off

Jersey's tides are the thing to plan around. The range can exceed twelve metres, among the largest in the world, and a handful of the best sections — the causeway out to Janvrin's Tomb at Portelet, the sands around Corbière, the walk below the cliffs at Plemont — simply disappear at high water. Check a tide table before you leave your accommodation, and treat any sign warning of a cut-off section as genuine advice rather than a suggestion.

• Footwear: grippy soles with ankle support. Wet granite and wooden steps are treacherous, and there is a great deal of up-and-down.
• Water and layers: the weather shifts quickly; a warm morning can turn into a damp, windy afternoon on an exposed headland.
• Buses: the island network reaches almost every bay and is the simplest way to walk a linear stage rather than an out-and-back. Summer timetables add extra coastal services.
• Money: Jersey issues its own pound notes and coins. They work interchangeably with UK sterling on the island, and shops happily take UK notes, but Jersey notes can be awkward to spend once you are home.
• Access: much of the path crosses private land and land held by conservation charities. Close gates behind you, keep dogs on leads near livestock and nesting seabirds, and stick to the waymarks.

The north coast: granite, bunkers and hidden coves

Start at Grève de Lecq, where a sandy bay and a couple of cafés sit beneath wooded slopes, and head west. The path climbs through pine and sycamore before breaking out onto the cliffs above Plemont, a headland of dark caves and seabird colonies saved from development by a long public campaign. Beyond it, the ruins of Grosnez Castle stand on the island's north-west corner, with views across to Guernsey and, on a clear day, the Brittany coast.

Turn east instead and the walking is gentler but no less strange: Rozel harbour with its tea rooms, the long granite breakwater at St Catherine's, and Boulay Bay's steep, wooded fold in the cliffs, where the path drops almost to sea level before hauling itself back up. Keep an eye out for the concrete remnants of the Occupation — gun emplacements, bunkers and tunnels cut into the rock during the Second World War. They are part of the landscape here, weathered and often half-buried, and several have been opened to the public as small museums.

The east and south: castles, harbours and long bays

At Gorey, Mont Orgueil Castle watches over the harbour from its crag — the finest medieval fortress in the Channel Islands, and worth an hour of anyone's walking day. From there the path runs south along the wide sweep of Grouville Bay, where the tide retreats for what feels like miles, past the oyster beds and the low marshes behind La Rocque. This is the flattest stretch of the whole circuit and a good choice for a short day or a family walk.

Beyond St Helier, the capital, the path follows the old railway line along St Aubin's Bay — a broad promenade of sand, sea wall and, at low tide, a whole extra landscape of rock pools and channels. Buses run along the bay road, so you can walk as much or as little as you fancy and hop on when the mood takes you.

The west: lighthouses, tombs and sunsets

West of St Aubin the coast turns rugged again. The path climbs over Noirmont Point, past a German command bunker that now serves as a memorial, and on to Corbière, where the lighthouse — the first in the British Isles to be built of concrete — stands on a rock reached by a causeway at low tide. Sunsets here are the island's best, and the walk out from St Brelade's Bay is short enough to do in the evening.

South of the lighthouse, Portelet Bay hides a small islet with a tower on it: Janvrin's Tomb, named after a sea captain buried there during a nineteenth-century quarantine. Beach and islet are cut off at high tide, so time your visit. Nearer St Brelade's, the parish church sits almost on the sand, with a fisherman's chapel decorated with murals and ship models, and the wooded valley at Beauport offers one last quiet, sheltered bay before the path turns back towards St Aubin.

Where to pause: food, drink and island ways

One of the pleasures of walking here is that you are never far from something good to eat. Beach cafés at St Brelade's, Plemont and St Ouen's Bay do excellent crab sandwiches and chips; harbour pubs at Gorey and Rozel serve local seafood; and in May and June you will find Jersey Royal potatoes on almost every menu, grown in fields fertilised with vraic — seaweed gathered from the beaches, a tradition so old that the island still has rules about when it may be collected.

Look out, too, for black butter (nièr beurre), a slow-cooked apple preserve with liquorice and spice, made in autumn in village halls and sold at farm shops and markets. Cider is enjoying a quiet revival, and the island's Norman heritage survives in place names, in the French-flavoured Jèrriais language still spoken by a few hundred people, and in small festivals through the year — the Gorey Regatta, the Battle of Flowers, the cider-making celebrations in autumn.

Come in spring for wildflowers and nesting birds, in early summer for long light and warm rock, or in September when the crowds thin and the sea is at its warmest. Take your time, pack a tide table, and let the island set the pace.