This is the first part of a short travelogue series covering our August 13th, 2021 weekender cruise from Portsmouth aboard the first of Virgin Voyages‘ cruise ships, Scarlet Lady. This will take us through the initial boarding process, a look around our cabin, a few early drinks (as if there’s such a thing as an early drink!), and the sail away from Portsmouth Port, through the harbour, and past the naval and historical vessels there. In the next post in this series I’ll cover how the rest of the few days aboard Scarlet Lady panned out, with a focus on the food and general entertainment we experienced.
It is no secret that when Scarlet Lady was first revealed to the world – well, to the invited hordes of the media and bloggers and influencers and beautiful people – we were far from enamoured with what we saw. That’s an understatement. The ship looked too different, had some bizarre design choices, looked like it was marketed towards a very small demographic, was too expensive, and so on. We were not looking to book a cruise on her then or, probably, ever. But then the world fell apart for a while – it’s still not back together, of course – and plans were put on hold and changed, and schedules were shifted, and all of a sudden Virgin announced they would start Scarlet Lady’s delayed maiden season with a few port-free sailings from the UK – further along the vaccinating people roadmap than the viral cesspit that is Miami – and not just anywhere in the UK, but Portsmouth. Or, as we like to call it, home. In fact, we can walk to the port from our front door in about ten minutes.
And that’s the story behind us booking three nights on a Scarlet Lady cruise. Convenience, of course, but general nosiness too to see what she’d be like with a necessarily older demographic than originally intended (based on vaccination roll-out schedules), and then there was the significant incentive of “sailor loot” that would come with different grades of rooms. We were always going to book a balcony because anything less simply isn’t us, but once we looked at some of the perks with what Virgin call their “Rock Star” (or “Rockstar“; I’ve seen it written both ways) cabins, along with the generous on board credit, we realised we could pay a little more and get a lot more. We ultimately selected the lowest grade of these cabins, what’s known as a Seriously Suite cabin, and the port side in order to enjoy the harbour views as we left Portsmouth. This would end up being an excellent decision.
Pre-Cruise Covid Testing
We were on the third of the regular maiden season cruises and there had been issues with the first of those where pre-cruise Covid-testing was concerned, but I’m happy to say that we experienced no problems at all. Arriving by car at the Park & Ride about an hour before embarkation time as instructed, we were directed immediately to the test centre on the other side of the M275 motorway, joined a short queue, got tested, got the results, were handed our wearable tech, and were sent on our way with very little delay. Back home to drop the car off, pick up the cases, then walk through to the port, check in, hop on a bus, and get onto the ship. Start-to-finish was about an hour and a quarter which meant we were in our room about fifteen minutes after our scheduled boarding time.
And what a room!
Scarlet Lady Seriously Suite 12219A
Other than requiring a balcony, we generally consider a room to be a room and aren’t typically fussed too much about what’s in there and what it looks like so long as it’s functional and not too cramped. For us, it’s usually more about placement of the room on the ship than anything else. However, forget all that, because we instantly fell in love with this Seriously Suite grade of room on Scarlet Lady. We had a wow! moment when we first experienced a balcony room on a cruise back in 2013, and we had another wow! moment when we stepped inside room 12219A.
Stylish! Well, you can tell that from the pictures immediately. Spacious! No scuttling sideways down the side or ends of the bed here! Plenty of storage space, and in proper wardrobes too, unlike lower grade rooms. And the eye-catching extras like the bar and the turntable, both of which we’d make use of.
But, utterly bizarrely, the bathroom was the star of the room. Huge, spacious, bright, and marble-covered, but that walk-in shower was jaw-droppingly fantastic. You could lay down and shower. We didn’t, but we could have. I might on the next cruise, though, now that I’ve mentioned it, because partly on the strength of this room on Scarlet Lady we’ve already booked a similar, follow-up cruise on her sister ship, Valiant Lady, for 2022, and in the same suite because we’ve checked the plans for higher grade rooms and they don’t look as good to us. There’s a room type for everyone on a cruise ship and it turns out that the Seriously Suite is our type of room.
I’ll cover things like the entertainment in the room and our playing around with the drinks and record player in the follow-up post in this travelogue series, but for now here’s a short video from inside our Seriously Suite cabin showing off the space in the bedroom and bathroom, as well as the outside space of the balcony along with its hammock that we initially considered to be a gimmick, but really rather enjoyed as well.
There was a video here, but now there isn’t.
The Seriously Suite cabin on Scarlet Lady was very nearly perfect. If I could make a couple of minor changes then they would simply be maybe a way to block off the peep window between the bathroom and bedroom and/or some form of low-level lighting in the bathroom at night. The window, while fantastic-looking and unique, means an uninterrupted night’s sleep isn’t guaranteed if your partner needs to use the toilet during it and pitch blackness isn’t possible.
Top Deck And Richard’s Rooftop
You’ve got to go exploring as soon as possible – after we’d watched the muster drill video in our room and confirmed attendance for that on the tablet – and so we headed straight up to the top to enjoy a little bit of Portsmouth in the sunshine and see for ourselves what that infamous swimming pool looked like.
We’d seen pictures of the swimming pool when Scarlet Lady had been thrown open to the PR masses, we’d heard people’s complaints about it, and we’d taken a look at the deck plans too, so we roughly knew what to expect. In truth, the pool looked okay, size-wise, for people to gather about socially thanks to the shallow lozenge of water around its main part, and it was actually a little bigger than we’d assumed. But, for us, it was not a pool we could use in any practical sense. And it was surprising, in a way, that a cruise line like Virgin Voyages would make such a big deal about health and fitness, but then provide no place where people who like to actually swim could do so. I’d love to see a lap pool – preferably one with pretty much no loungers around so that it was just for swimmers – make an appearance on later ship designs if possible, because being able to get in a pool and swim while at sea is one of those things we absolutely love.
One of those perks of being a Rock Star Sailor on a Virgin Voyages cruise ship is having access to an area called Richard’s Rooftop. A card in our room allowed us to swipe to enter a closed-off section at the front of the top deck. This brought us into a space filled with various forms of seating, hot tubs, and even trampolines. One thing to mention about Scarlet Lady is that when it comes to seating, there is no end of choice. Even though we sailed well under capacity, I’m sure you’d always be able to find a spot to sit in around the open decks even with a fully-laden ship.
We had good intentions. We had planned to scoot around the top of the ship, getting a feel for things, taking a few photos; then scoot around the main decks, get an idea where things were, take a few photos. Sadly for us, the barman at the bar in Richard’s Rooftop asked us if we wanted a drink and we ended up saying yes because it was a drink and we were us and we were on holiday. So that’s why this first day aboard Scarlet Lady and the explore before sail-away more-or-less came to a screeching halt.
Lunch And Drinks Aboard Scarlet Lady
After our cocktails on the top deck had been supplemented with a complimentary glass of fizz we reached the time when we needed to check-in in person at our muster station. With that necessary task out of the way we thought we might take more of a look around the inside of Scarlet Lady but that plan lasted just as long as it took us to reach the Dock House where another friendly barman guilted us into asking him for a drink.
You pay for drinks on Scarlet Lady, but all the food is free (with one exception, covered in the next post), and thus it was that we did something terribly sensible and had some small bites for lunch as well.
As an aside here, the food and drinks on Scarlet Lady were of extremely high quality, with a fabulous range too. The only area where things could really be improved is in perhaps catering to more of the conventional drinking tastes; some classic cocktails, staples of many cruises, simply couldn’t be made thanks to a lack of the right mixers or ingredients. This wasn’t a problem for us as we love to make our way through all the fancy and new things on a menu, but we knew some people aboard missed certain drinks they preferred and would typically expect to find on a ship. A Virgin Voyages ship is anything but typical, of course, but it would be nice to provide that option, especially with cruises of longer durations.
We had time to check out the Draught Haus Tap Room before the ship left the port, and by “check out” I mean “grab a couple of drinks”, but you knew that already. Beer on tap on ships is a wonderful thing and long may it continue.
Scarlet Lady Departing Portsmouth Harbour
The remainder of this first post from our Scarlet Lady cruise travelogue series covers the sail out from our home city as seen from our Seriously Suite cabin balcony.
We’ve cruised into and out of many ports during our years of cruising, but many of them, while great because of what they signify – you’re on a motherflipping cruise! -, are much of a muchness. There are exceptions, especially for those who like commanding landscapes (Ushuaia and Kotor are incredible), but if you’re a fan of history or the navy or naval history then overlook my natural bias while I say that you’ll find it hard to beat Portsmouth.
The offshore patrol vessel in the photo below (P233) and her sister ship a few photos after that (P234), both in their distinctive dazzle camouflage, are the HMS Tamar and HMS Spey, respectively. They are the first vessels to be decorated in that style since World War II. It was nice to have that connection with dazzle camouflage on Scarlet Lady, too, as she sports a restaurant called Razzle Dazzle, named for the naval style.
The ship between the two patrol vessels (D35) with the equally distinctive motif of a red dragon on her bow is the appropriately named HMS Dragon. She is a Type 45 destroyer and is the only ship in the Royal Navy with that design on her.
HMS Prince of Wales (R09) is one of two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers in operational service of the Royal Navy. It’s always fun to hear people exclaim how large an aircraft carrier is, but then you sail past on a cruise ship and completely dwarf it.
In the photo below you’ve got two of Portsmouth’s most famous historical ships. Sadly lacking her full masts is HMS Victory on the right while to the left, hidden inside the shell of a downed flying saucer (maybe), lies the remains of The Mary Rose. Both are fabulous to see, and if you’re ever visiting Portsmouth then try to book tickets for the dockyard to have a look around the pair of them.
Scarlet Lady next cruised past two very prominent sights that you can’t fail to miss if you’re in the Gunwharf area of Portsmouth. The Spinnaker Tower, naturally, can be seen from miles around. Not quite as sky-reaching but equally gorgeous along the waterfront is the museum ship, HMS Warrior, the first armour-plated, iron-hulled, steam-powered frigate.
In the photographs below you can also see a building with a monochrome Union Flag on it. That is the Ineos Team UK building, from which Britain’s attempt to win the Americas Cup under Ben Ainslie has been based.
That brought us out of Portsmouth Harbour entrance and with it some fantastic views of the low, warm, evening sunshine lighting up parts of the old defences along the seafront. If you’d like to read a little more about the fortifications here – the Round Tower, the Square Tower, the Hot Walls – then a little bit of history is covered here: Old Portsmouth Shoreline Photowalk.
Another wonderful sight as Scarlet Lady completed her departure from Portsmouth was seeing the hovercraft to the Isle of Wight take off from Southsea as soon as we’d passed. There aren’t many great reasons to visit the Isle of Wight but if you’ve no need to take your car across on the ferry then a hovercraft ride can’t be beat for loud, fast fun.
That completes this first post of our Scarlet Lady travelogue series, covering our Seriously Suite cabin, a few drinks and photos here and there, and a gorgeous sail out from Portsmouth Port.
In the next post I’ll go through the dining during our weekender cruise as well as the bits of entertainment we caught. We could barely do one tenth of the things we wanted to do with this cruise being so short and everything about the Virgin Voyages experience being excitingly fresh and there being an abundance of choices to make. Hopefully, we’ll be able to address some of that on our next trip with the cruise line in March.
The ship looks gorgeous, but I’m starting to have my doubts about the viability of cruising in the post-covid era. We just canceled our 6th cruise. It was a 4-day Nat Geo cruise to the California Channel Islands. We’d booked it originally with the credits we had from the cancellation of the Iceland/Greenland cruise this year, and it was to be part of a longer trip to California’s US national parks….and then we read Nat Geo’s covid policy. Not only did they require that all passengers be fully-vaccinated (which we are) and do a pre-boarding covid test, they wanted us to do a *second* covid test 3 days before boarding AND refrain from traveling anywhere up to 5 days prior to boarding. On the ship, we would have to wear masks in all public spaces and the fitness center would only be open for select hours, which means it would’ve been virtually unusable. We’d have had to completely rearrange our trip in order to meet these requirements, and the cruise was only 4 days long and only went to one NP.
Not worth it.
Six cruises canceled over a 1.5 year period, all because of covid, directly or indirectly. Covid is not going away, but vaccines protect against severe or fatal illness and mitigate transmission to some degree. I agree wholeheartedly with requiring all passengers and crew to be fully-vaxxed. But, all the rest of it? Why? If fully-vaxxed covid is no worse than the flu or noro, than why not require people to test negative for flu or noro before boarding too? I agree that lines should perform due diligence to ensure no one gets sick, but there comes a point when all the preventative measures make what should be fun into an ordeal. It also injects too much uncertainty into the trip, as passengers who have to fly to the boarding point may catch covid on the flight, even if they are masked during it. ACE2-receptors are present on the human cornea, and most people don’t wear full face shields in addition to masks. So, unless you can afford to fully-isolate until almost immediately prior to boarding AND can drive to the boarding point, you stand a good chance of having your entire trip yanked out from under you.
I suppose you’re falling foul of selecting some quite specific cruises on very small ships here so the restrictions have to be as tight as possible, especially when you’re dealing with a population with its fair share of “that’s against my freedoms!” mentality.
We have the same issue here, of course, but we’re tending to go for larger ships with lower capacity so the restrictions don’t have to be so draconian. The first few cruises were all to nowhere and while the Princess and P&O ones we did required mask-wearing when moving around once you’d got on board (and that was no hardship at all) , on Scarlet Lady they basically said “You know what!? We’re not stopping anywhere, we’re all vaccinated, you’re all vaccinated, you’ve all tested negative before boarding. Take the masks off if you want.” That actually felt weird at first, but helped, and made sense really. I mean, we know that ships are cleaned more than any other hospitality venue and have plenty of air circulating already.
Interestingly, we’ve just had the situation over here – and on the next ship we’ll be sailing on – where it was delayed leaving port because a bus drove down from up north, dropped the people off, they all got tested at the terminal, and those who passed got on the ship. One person failed, though, so had secondary testing, and failed that too, so they couldn’t get on, but worse, the health rules meant that all the people who’d been on the bus had to then be found on the ship and taken off. By all accounts, not all of them went peacefully. Nightmare scenario.
To be fair, cruising has only really started up here in the UK since about August (there were a few before that, but that’s when more lines started sailing), and getting off on your own at ports in the UK has only started up in the last month (our last cruise allowed us off at two English and one Northern Irish port), with the first cruises to Europe taking place in the last couple of weeks. Baby steps. It’s why we’ve restricted ourselves to only cruising from the UK next year as well. It’s improving, but slowly, but I do think that because of the types of ships and itineraries you favour you might have to be a little more patient as they don’t have any leeway in them to shut down operations if there’s a breakout.