A new port of call for us when we woke up this morning – St. Helier in the Channel Island of Jersey, or the Bailiwick of Jersey to give it its correct title. Jersey is the largest of the four main Channel Islands, the others being Guernsey, Alderney and Sark. Jersey is most famous for its Jersey…
Month: May 2013
Fastnet and Plymouth
Waking up this morning to our last full sea day, we were pleased to see that the fair weather we’d experienced yesterday in Cork was still with us. It was a little breezy up on deck but still pleasant enough, if you found a sheltered spot, to sit out in. After breakfast we spent most…
Whiskey in the Jar
After a fairly restless night (the thoughts of losing my job kept creeping unbidden into my consciousness) we woke up this morning to find ourselves just about to dock in Ringaskiddy, Ireland. We were originally supposed to be going into Cobh, but had been displaced by a much bigger ship, the MSC Magnifica, so we had…
We’ll Keep A Welcome in the Hillside
So say the opening lines of that well-known Welsh anthem, as we woke up this morning, after a nice quiet night, in Holyhead, Wales. Holyhead is the largest town in Anglesey and is known mainly as a busy ferry port. It therefore has a rich maritime history and some lovely beaches and coastal walks, and…
Missing Man
Well, what a complete waste of a day today turned out to be! During the night I woke up several times and I could hear the wind howling and the waves crashing against the hull of the Adonia below our balcony. After 32 cruises, we are used to feeling the motion of the ship when…
Greenock, Scotland
Once again we woke up to a cloudy sky, but at least it was dry. 🙂 We hadn’t booked an excursion today, preferring instead to explore Greenock on our own. People who arrive in Greenock tend to see it as the gateway to Glasgow and go straight there, but as we’ve already been to Glasgow…
Hebrides and Malin
When we woke up this morning, we looked out to a grey sky and grey sea, and a cold wind was blowing. God, the British weather is really rubbish. Here it is, May Bank Holiday weekend, and we still have the vestiges of the winter hanging on. I don’t know why we bothered to get…
Scrabster and John o’ Groats
Though the sea was a lot calmer this morning, the rough weather yesterday meant our arrival in Scrabster was delayed by about 90 minutes. So it wasn’t until 10 o’clock that we docked in this fishing port in the Scottish county of Caithness. We’d never been here before but we learned that Scrabster is Britain’s…
There Are Warnings Of Gales…
During the night we woke several times as the wind had got up and large waves were crashing off the side of the Adonia, and we could feel our beds shaking. When we got up it was quite difficult moving around our cabin due to the ship’s motion. Not to worry though; sea-sickness has never…
In Dublin’s Fair City
When we awoke this morning, the Adonia was already moored up in the capital city of the emerald isle. There is a very old joke that asks “Which country is the richest in the world?” and the answer is “Ireland, because its capital is always Dublin.” 🙂 We had been here once before, on the…