Splice the mainbrace

Thanks. The weather forecast is so far looking good for the duration even the Orkneys and Stornaway! They’ve even recently added Dublin (Dunleary) to the itinerary replacing a sea day.

Yes

Disappointingly cloudy here so far but I have gardening to do before we go away tomorrow for our round Britain cruise. We will be packing this afternoon (well the wife will she doesn’t let me anywhere near the cases!😊). I’ve put out too much stuff for the 12 night cruise so will put some back in the wardrobe, our recent trips have been longer and I’ve taken virtually all presentable clothes that I own. We drive down tomorrow to Southampton stopping off at our favourite pub which is the May Fly south of Andover by the river test and then staying overnight at the Harbour Hotel at Ocean Village.

That’s not good having to wait for 3 hours before boarding. We rocked up last October on Arcadia and went straight on ahead of time. We stay in the Southampton area the night before cruises and I don’t fancy hanging around between vacating the hotel room and killing some hours. We depart on a Cunard cruise this week on Queen Victoria it will be interesting if they are as strict with a smaller ship.

For those coming from the north west, West Midlands and wales a route that we use when travelling down the day before a cruise is M5, off junction 11a, A roads via Swindon, Andover, Stockbridge and Romsey to Southampton,with the benefit of stopping at our favourite pub by the side of the River Test between Andover and Stockbridge the May Fly. Also if there are severe problems on the M3 and coming down the A34 come off just after Whitchurch onto the A303 towards Andover and the go down to Southampton via Stockbridge and Romsey.

We’ve been cruising for 30 years and have never taken any notice of arrival times and neither have the cruise line. We travel down to Southampton the day before to stay locally so don’t want to hang around post hotel vacation time to board. I can however see with the 5000+ pax ships why some extra organisation is necessary.

We did a cruise like that 4 years ago on Queen Elizabeth and many (all?) of the ports in Japan, Alaska and Canada were maiden ports so we had some great arrival welcomes. In one Japanese port there were hundreds of school children with their band singing, dancing and doing choreographed actions, it was quite moving.

Personally I love sea days, we’ve done 2 return transatlantic crossings, across the pacific and will be doing South Africa to Australia next year. I don’t find it boring it’s in my heritage, I like looking out to sea watching the changing wave formations and hoping to see dolphins, whales and different birds. Have you given up on cruising or just anti P&O due to 2 bad experiences?

It must be the larger capacity ships which are causing the queues and the enforcement of boarding times. We cruised on Arcadia last October had a boarding time of 3 pm but arrived at 12pm and there wasn’t a problem.

When did this take place? I didn’t think that people tested for covid now.

We try not to eat things without cutlery. We wash our hands as we enter the buffet and also use our hand gel when we have served ourselves because others will have used tongs etc and may not have disinfected their hands on entering to eat. We also use our knuckle rather then finger tips to push the lift button😉 I’m tempting fate but on our many cruises we have not had any tummy problems, so far!!

Clear blue sunny sky here and 17c, really lovely. I think that May is my favourite month, the transition into summer, light evenings and the foliage is new and fresh.

Looking at the bbc forecast this is the start of nice dry warm weather. We go away next week on a round Britain cruise and it’s looking good even in the Orkneys and Stornaway, so far!

When I was growing up in Southampton we never went to Portsmouth apart from the historical dockyards, it just wasn’t done!! If we were travelling to a nearby city/town it would be Salisbury, Bournemouth or Winchester. Southampton doesn’t promote itself very well as a historical city, you only need a day but there are plenty of things to visit and see. I haven’t lived in the city for 38 years but my parents continued to live there so we visited the area regularly and now my Cheshire born son lives there as he feels at home there. In fact I have family connections there traced back to the 1400s when one of my ancestors was mayor of Southampton, so I am biased.

Same here. No buses for a number of years go through our village so people can’t go by public transport even to our 2 local towns even though they are both only 2 to 3 miles away. Our village also has lots of older people who don’t drive anymore making it difficult to get around without resorting to taxis. To make matters worse for everyone in the wider area Arriva pulled out of the area altogether at the end of April, some routes have been taken on by other bus companies but the frequency has in some cases halved and many have not been taken on and have ceased to run.

I have 2 future cruises booked with P&O because of their itineraries fitting in with our ‘ bucket list’ destinations. We were on Arcadia last October and had a really enjoyable cruise.

Booked another long cruise last night, the discount was a lot more than we were expecting (15% discount). In the next 16 months we will be cruising for 106 days, think we’ll throttle back after that only Nile Cruise, the west coast pacific highway and USA to Australia via pacific islands are left on our bucket list.

My travel insurance isn’t affected by taking statins, I am ‘allowed’ one medication for no additional charge. My wife was recently put on statins so she now takes 2 medications so it cost us an additional £40.

I’ve been on statins for 15 years after having a blood test at work and have never had a problem with any side affects. My total cholesterol is over 5 but within that I also have high ‘good’ cholesterol so the ratio is ok. There must be a reason why not but even though heart attacks and strokes are one of the biggest killers there are no routine scans to identify arterial problems at a certain age (60?) on the nhs like there are for bowel cancer.

https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/23518829.southampton-holidaymakers-seen-walking-gridlocked-traffic/

The cruise season is really getting going now with 4 ships today, 4 tomorrow and 4 on Sunday departing from Southampton. Apparently there has been bad traffic congestion in the city today.

My insurance says that you SHOULD report any ailments because if you don’t you won’t be covered for THAT condition. Not that I won’t be covered at all for declared conditions. So if I don’t declare a BCC for example I would still be covered for a heart condition as I have declared that I take statins. I guess that’s how the insurance companies make their money charging for conditions that are not likely to need treatment while travelling.

I’m surprised that they increase the premium for things like that, you’re hardly likely to have to need emergency treatment for those progressive things whilst away on holiday. To me travel medical insurance is to cover costs for accidents and unexpected medical emergencies such as heart attacks, strokes etc.

Our pre-cruise diet goes to pot this weekend with a coronation family tea today. Pork pie, sausage rolls, quiche, scotch eggs, coronation chicken sandwiches and salmon cucumber sandwiches and clotted cream and jam scones. Bottles of champagne as well😊

Really looking forward to this weekend and the coronation. We’re having a coronation tea with the family on Saturday and a street party Sunday. It may be the only coronation that I experience so I’m going to make the most of it. Yeh the money for the coronation could be spent on ‘better?’ causes but what a boring world it would if we can’t celebrate events.