An English Queen With a French Accent

La Reine de la Manche, Queen of the Channel, that’s what the French call this enchanting island with its abundance of pleasures.

Anglers plant themselves on the smooth flat stones of St. Catherine’s Breakwater that stretches 2,500 feet toward the coast of France.

The bikini-clad lie basking on the Royal Bay of Grouville Beach where a brooding medieval castle, high on its east-facing promontory, looms as stage backdrop.

For animal and nature lovers, there’s a pilgrimage to the world-famous Wildlife Preservation and Breeding Center to view, in natural habitat, 1,200 of the planet’s rare and endangered species.

Flowers, Fish, Bargains

Bargain hunters stream off the daily ferries and hydrofoils from French St. Malo (two hours) and English Weymouth and Portsmouth (five or six hours) to stock up in the resplendent flower market, fresh fish market, food halls and fashionable shops of St. Helier.

Service from 20 air terminals on the Continent and in Britain is also available year round.

In October we flew in from Heathrow, 35 minutes away, to stay at Longueville Manor, take walks on the high rocky bluffs and seawalls, play golf, ride bikes and soak up the good life on this English island with the French accent.

Simon Dufty, manager of Longueville Manor, said of the island, “There’s an atmosphere of continental sophistication, a predominance of French cooking, yet with the overall texture and stamp of English country living.”

The Jersaise find it hard not to be complacent on these 44 square miles of lush farmland. Besides a mild climate, they are beneficiaries of a booming international finance and banking industry that supports the island’s population so that only nominal taxes are levied.

Tight control on development permits only 15 families a year to immigrate to Jersey. In effect, these must be wealthy buyers because each is required to purchase property valued at a minimum of $375,000. Renters are restricted to three months’ stay either in hotel or house.

Elitist policies stop there. The States Assembly of Jersey governs the island and regularly inspects and grades hotels and bed-and-breakfast inns, so the 25,000 summer visitors and 7,000 winter visitors get a fair deal.

Abundance of Luxury Cars

Of these visitors, 3,000 rent cars at about $12 a day. We asked the Falles car-hire manager about all the luxury cars on the island’s few roads.

“There’s so much money here that $120,000 Bugattis, Maseratis and Rolls-Royces are common, in spite of the strictly enforced 40 m.p.h. speed limit,” he said.

But who needs more than a $3-a-day bicycle to see most of this tranquil 9-by-5-mile island?

May-June and September-October are the best months for the Channel Islands. The Gulf Stream keeps October warm for beaching and swimming.

From the sand dunes we watched surfers catch Atlantic waves pounding onto the five-mile sweep of St. Ouen’s Bay. And from the Royal Jersey Golf Links we got a clear view of the magnificent 15th-Century fortified castle of Mont Orgueil.

The most dramatic landmark is Elizabeth Castle, the massive citadel high on a rock in the harbor of St. Helier. But the sightseer walking across the causeway to this fortification must be tide-wise. Jersey’s 25-foot tide rushes in to maroon the unwary.

In the marshes, parkland and woods surrounding his 16th-Century manor, Les Augres, Gerald Durrell has created what many claim is the world’s perfect zoo. He calls it Wildlife Preservation Trust or, in one of his dozen books, Menagerie Manor.

“This is a sanctuary for most of the desperately endangered species left on earth,” says Grant Thompson, a frequent visitor from Florida.

“Non-carnivores roam up and down the garden paths and around the rose granite manor house, and children play and frolic about with the baby gorillas in the kitchen garden.”

Durrell says that Trumpy, a gray-winged trumpeter, is apt to fly in his bedroom window at daybreak, waking everyone with a shrill report on the night’s activity in the huge monkey house, in the domiciles of parrots, of the swans and ducks down in the water meadow and of the tapirs--Claudius and Claudette--in their paddocks.

In the walled garden we saw fat lions lying inside their walls in the sun. Nearby, cheetahs languidly draped amid the buttercups. The beautiful penguin pond is a favorite of tourists piling off buses from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

In many ways, the animal nurseries are indistinguishable from most maternity hospitals. You see incubators, formulas, diapers, plastic pants and cut-out Walt Disney characters on walls and ceilings to give the babies’ eyes some things to focus on.

The guide said, “Because gorilla mothers only learn from their clans in the wild, most babies born in the zoo must be removed (after a trial period of 30 to 40 hours with their mothers) to the nursery inside the manor.”

We’d neglected to obtain visas for France, so we took a day’s excursion to the tiny island of Sark instead of to Brittany.

Sark, Herm and Alderney are sparsely populated, traffic-free bits of land easily reached by air or hydrofoil. We boarded a Condor hydrofoil in St. Helier at 8:30 a.m., and were bouncing along the peaceful lanes of Sark in a horse-drawn carriage by 9:30.

From Sark’s high granite plateau, the island seems to be a ship sailing on the ocean. This excursion costs $30, including lunch at Aval du Creux for Austrian/French cuisine, or at the historic farmhouse La Sablonerie.

Upon returning, there was plenty of time for a swim in Longueville’s pool before dinner.

Longueville is a star-spangled manor: four red Automobile Assn. stars, four black Royal Automobile Club stars and inclusion in the Relais et Chateaux registry. Only 55 hotels in all of Great Britain have any Egon Ronay stars; Longueville was awarded four.

“That’s very heavy pressure on the chef and staff,” co-managerMalcolm Lewis admits. “Official and unofficial inspectors, usually incognito, pop in when least expected.”

Fragrant From Pastries

Unlike many country manor hotels, this sprawling ivy-covered house with its 13th-Century round lookout tower is on the edge of town, just a 1 1/2-mile walk to the center of the handsome city of St. Helier, only a mile in the other direction to the beach.

The house is fragrant with fresh-baked pastries and with pretty china tureens and bowls of potpourri everywhere.

A tour of the vegetable garden whetted our appetites for dinner. For starters we ordered the artichoke with flaked crab vinaigrette, then spinach fondue with chef John Dickens’ famous medallion of venison spiced with fresh raspberry marinade. A peek into the kitchen convinced us we shouldn’t resist the ice cream bombe with caramel meringue.

Having just come from Gravetye Manor in West Sussex, where host Peter Herbert told us he had to limit Americans in the summer months (“They don’t want to meet only their countrymen”), we asked co-manager Lewis about his visitors.

“We have to put a quota on Germans. With that, our ratio is 55% Britons, 40% Europeans, 5% from the United States. The house and grounds staff (a total of 60 for 64 guests) is mostly from Madeira and Portugal, though Emil, the French gardener, has been here 25 years.”

Ground-Floor Suite Requested

At the bar a regular visitor from Zurich said, “We always request the ground-floor garden suite with its breakfast solarium.”

Room for two with full English breakfast and service, $105-$155, depending on size of room and season. Dinner for $21 a day per person, service included.

Longueville Manor, St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, U.K. Telephone 011-44-5-3425501.

The AA four-star L’Horizon, with 104 rooms, is right on the beach at St. Brelade’s Bay. B&B; for two from $105.

The three-star Chateau Valeuse, also overlooking St. Brelade’s Bay, has 26 rooms, moderate rates, and succulent Guernsey scallops and Jersey lobsters on the menu. A small, inexpensive guest house, St. Martin’s Private Hotel is on the beach near Victor Hugo’s house at St. Helier.

Don’t leave here without a Jersey cream tea at one of the island’s many tearooms, such as the Secret Garden in Gorey Common or the Shire Horse Farm in St. Ouen.

And because you’re sure to be asked about the “Jersey Lily” when you get home, it is wise to stop in the St. Helier Museum and add snapshots of the Lillie Langtry Room. These will add to your pictures of grazing Jersey cows, hydrangeas, sailboats and the wonderful zoo.

For brochures, transportation schedules and other information, write to Jersey States Tourism Committee, Weighbridge, St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, U.K. or contact theBritish Tourist Authority, 350 S. Figueroa St., Suite 450, Los Angeles 90071; telephone (213) 628-3525.