That’s right, it’s time for the occasional blog or newsletter depending on how this reaches your eyeballs, and as usual it’s a quick round-up of all the latest travel accounts on the website first because I’m feeling in a traditional kind of mood.
To start with, the final write-up from last year’s cruise on Sky Princess has been added, although it’s just a sea day with photos of the cruise ship for the most part and it’s not like you can’t find pictures or video in a thousand other places on the web. Don’t read that article. I don’t know why I even shared a link to it.
Back in April we visited nearby Hayling Island for a second weekend break at the Lakeside Warner Hotel as it worked well with a bank holiday and we just fancied getting away for a bit without too much planning. We ended up being accompanied by my wife’s parents on the 1960s themed weekend, and the first part of that visit is now on the site which includes a stroll along Hayling Island seafront and an encounter with Her Majesty’s Coastguard performing rescue exercises in the shallow water off the beach. There’s a video on that link if you’re more a moving pictures person than a words and pictures person.
And I have been busy because there are three – yes three! – whole new posts starting the travelogues series of our cruise aboard Ventura at the end of last year that took us down to the Canary Islands. You might remember – but you probably don’t – that we’d really found Iona to be such a bad cruise ship we were wondering whether we’d ever bother cruising with P&O again. Spoiler: we had a great cruise on Ventura. And you’ll be able to see why if you follow along with the travelogues as they appear on this site over the next weeks (maybe months).
The first of those Ventura posts covers boarding and two sea days with a smattering of speciality dining venues experienced. We try the famed Eric Lanlard Afternoon Tea for the first time, and end up having such a lovely meal at the Epicurean (in marked contrast to our time on Iona) that we would end up booking it again for later in the voyage.
We’d never been to the Canary Islands before, but we’d also never been to Portugal before and the first stop on this cruise was at the port of Lisbon. There are three posts alone covering our day in the Portuguese capital but only the first two – which describe the organised tour of Lisbon that we did – are on the site right now. The first of those covers the main portion of the excursion: the Lisbon Aqueduct and Reservoirs. Fascinating stuff, some great views over the city, and a walk through 400 metres of tunnels.
Concluding the excursion portion of our day in Lisbon is the second post from that city which covers a short walking tour and the pointing out of some of the highlights. Plenty of historical facts and some gorgeous bits of architecture on display, plus some really good and truly terrible examples of street art.
That’s the new travel content on the site covered. From a technical perspective I’ve made a minor layout change to include the option to sign up and receive these blog/newsletter posts via email. Previously, you’d either have to be a WordPress user or would have had to have ticked a box while leaving a comment in order to get the chance to get irregular updates in this format. This makes it a little easier from the home page and at the bottom of all content pages to do the same now, although I have my doubts that many people will actually use it. I’ve been on the hunt for other, regularly-updating travel sites to follow in a similar way recently (since RSS feeders aren’t very popular any longer, it seems) and it’s been surprising to see how many well-established, still-popular social media accounts either haven’t posted anything in years to their sites now or provide no means at all to subscribe. Having said that, since I use an ad and pop-up blocker it’s possible that I’m just not seeing the blitz of chances to do so.
No new cruises booked to report this time around. We’re still weighing up options for later next year. We know what we want to do and we know who we’d like to that with but the itineraries aren’t exciting us. Ponder. Ponder. Ponder. Do we skip a cruise and try something very different? Probably not. But still. Come on, cruise lines. Get your acts together and dish up something that’s good value and interesting and different. Entice us onto your cruise ship.
We do have one trip of note coming up to mention, however, and that will be another steamship, hot on the heels of booking Shieldhall, as mentioned in the last update. Next month we’ll be boarding the only sea-going paddle steamer in the world, Waverley, as she cruises around the Isle of Wight from Portsmouth. Looking forward to that.
Speaking of Shieldhall, though, thanks to the RMT union rail strikes (which we fully support), our plans to take the train to and from Southampton have been scuppered for that day’s cruising on the Solent. Our options were therefore to drive and park, but not have any drinks on the vessel, or to drive and park and stay overnight in a hotel. We chose the latter, so we’ll have an evening in Southampton tacked onto the end of our Solent steaming in a few weeks.
So, to finish, here’s the upcoming, slightly revised plans for the next month or so: a stay in Southampton with a Solent cruise on a steamship; then a weekend in Oxford; then a cruise around the Isle of Wight on a paddle steamer; then our last cruise of the year on Island Princess. Very much looking forward to that last one, of course, and even better news is that Princess have dropped the requirement for certified pre-boarding testing out of the UK now. That reduces the cost of cruising by a small fraction but every little bit helps.