As we batten down the hatches against another winter storm here in the UK, it seems good time to look back on our recent escape to the winter sun. With no exciting book news to impart, blogs have been a bit thin on the ground this year. But all it takes is a few days at sea with a boatload of strangers, and I’m inspired to put fingers to the keyboard.
Two weeks ago, we flew out of Gatwick on the cusp of Storm Bert, and touched down four hours later in the sunshine of Tenerife for a week’s cruise on board the P&O ship Azura. We’d sailed on Azura before, but I soon found myself disorientated. Having spent twelve nights on the similar sized Celebrity Eclipse earlier in the year as part of our South American adventure, the layout of both boats merged into one. Was the Martini Bar on this boat or that? Where were those familiar faces of our South American friends?
I needn’t have worried about friendly faces. Freedom Dining means a different set of new friends every night. On our first night we found ourselves on a table with a couple from Pembrokeshire. Conversation inevitably turned to the time Mr T worked in Pembrokeshire, which soon led to the discovery of a mutual friend in the oil business. As we found out on of tour of South America, it’s a small world.
Conversations in the dining room on cruise ships do tend to be “small”. P&O offered two different starting days for our cruise, with two consecutive itineraries around the Canary Islands. Without fail, the opening gambit every night was ascertaining if fellow guests were Friday or Saturday people, one week or two. By the fourth night, fed up of the repetition, we decided to join the queue and wait for a table for two. As the tables for two are so close together it’s impossible to ignore those on the table next to you without being rude, and within minutes we’d established our neighbours were from Salisbury. Mr T grew up in Salisbury, and still has many relatives there. As did this couple. In fear of discovering yet another mutual friend, or even worse, a mutual relative, I steered the conversation back to that old chestnut of where were our neighbours off to next. Amsterdam in the spring. I passed on my tips for tulip spotting.
We’d opted for the itinerary that took us to Madeira, La Palma and Fuerteventura, islands we hadn’t visited before. There were two cruise ships in Funchal, Madeira, on the day we arrived, ours and one three times the size belonging to the German Cruise line Aida. We knew the “thing” we had to do in Funchal was take the cable car up to the suburb of Monte. I hate dangling in mid-air at the best of times, and the thought of dangling mid-air in a small gondola with the pair of German tourists ahead of us in the queue, also three times our size, increased the palpitations. I was seriously worried about the weight distribution. As it was, they were in the gondola before us, and we all made it to the top in safety, where we subsequently joined another long queue to make the return trip in a wicker basket. This traditional toboggan ride is the other “thing” to do in Funchal. We all know what happened the last time I went speeding down a sloping Portuguese street, so this was another trip taken in great trepidation. I needn’t have worried, it was actually quite fun, but after our boater clad toboggan handlers spun us Waltzer like down the hills of Funchal, I was promptly accosted to purchase the ubiquitous souvenir photograph. My polite “no thank you” didn’t wash with this particular salesman. I hadn’t asked anyone to take my photograph and therefore didn’t feel any obligation to buy it. What I didn’t expect was to have to substantiate my answer with ten good reasons.
In the relative calm of our next island, La Palma, we explored the national park and from a distance viewed the newly created Volcano which erupted in 2021. In Fuerteventura we were once again joined by the Aida cruise ship, and due to a national strike by Spanish transport workers, opportunities to venture out of the small town of Puerto de Rosario were curtailed. As the only alternative was to fight the Germans for a space on the nearest beach, after a quick walk around the town we headed back to the ship.
Azura returned to Santa Cruz in Tenerife and our holiday was over. We’d enjoyed our week of winter sun and had been wined, dined and entertained, and even won a pub quiz. And because I have a writer’s mind, a cruise is the ideal people watching opportunity. There were the usual niggles, the hot tub huggers, the sunbed savers, and the sad sight of people who seem determined to eat and drink themselves silly. They say travel broadens the mind, but when you cruise, it definitely broadens the waistline.
Back home in the UK I made the mistake this week of taking a Christmas shopping trip into Southampton. Lured by the lingering aroma of the bratwurst sausages on the German market, the city centre was heaving with tourists. And there in the docks was my nemesis – the Aida cruise ship had followed us home.
Fröhlich Weihnachten from me and Mr T.
PS – in case anyone is wondering, I am still writing, just very slowly. One of my new year’s resolutions will be to finish the old rom-com I re-started, and pick up on my historical weepie. The fact that I managed to lock myself out of my own website through lack of use, is an indication of how much I’ve let the whole writing thing slip. Having said that, my personal well-being has been so much better after taking a step-back from social media and decluttering. Hopefully 2026 will be all about finding the right balance.
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