Chris Vale was born in Manchester, the youngest of four children of a clergyman. The family moved to the village of Rivington when he was offered the living at the village church. She spent her childhood there. She studied English literature at Leicester University, where she met her future husband, a Guernseyman. They settled in Guernsey in 1961, raising two daughters and a son. When her children were old enough to take music lessons, she learned to play the cornet and became, for a while, the only female player in her local brass band. Having freelanced as a music correspondent for the local paper and worked for the Arts Council, compiling, editing and distributing their magazine, she is now retired, but still plays the tenor horn with Guernsey Concert Brass.