Got up about 8.30 this morning and looked out of our balcony doors at a grey choppy sea and a grey cloudy sky. Didn’t think we would spend much time out on deck today! We had been looking forward to our visit to Belgium as we had planned to get the train from Zeebrugge to…
At some point during the night we had woken up to see that the Arcadia was on the move again, making her way back along the North Sea canal. It was a pity we weren’t in Amsterdam again today, but we had a nice relaxing day at sea to look forward to instead. 🙂 In…
Woke up at 8.00am after an excellent night’s sleep. I’d been wearing some industrial-strength earplugs while I slept so nothing disturbed me at all, and I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I got out of bed, despite the fact that we’d had to put our watches forward an hour to European time. Looking outside, the…
We would spend today crossing the North Sea in the famous shipping forecast areas, hence the title of today’s blog. We would try not to get too depressed that this was the last day of our fantastic cruise and tomorrow afternoon we would be back at work! ☹ In the Ballindalloch I enjoyed a substantial…
At 7.00am this morning the Balmoral entered the Kiel Canal again, for our return journey to the North Sea. We got up about 8.30 and enjoyed a good breakfast before going out on deck for a look around. Although the weather was dry, it was fairly dull and cloudy and the brisk breeze still had…
We awoke this morning to a flat-calm North Sea with the sun tentatively peeping out from fluffy white cumulus clouds. We were up at 8.00am, and off we went to the Ballindalloch restaurant for our breakfast. As tonight is a formal evening, we found the usual bottles of cava next to the fruit juices, so…
The slightly-increased motion of the Balmoral on the waves this morning showed that we were in the open sea once again; we could tell we were on our way home because of the grey skies and threatening rain. Nonetheless, we had a full day at sea to look forward to today as well as one more…
Today we were setting off on another cruise, but there was no getting up at the crack of dawn because we were sailing out of Newcastle, and the Port of Tyne is only about half an hour’s drive from us. So we were able to spend the morning at our leisure, not having to leave…
We were up early this morning to make the most of our last sea day (in fact, our last night on the Black Watch) before our arrival back in Newcastle tomorrow morning. 🙁 I got showered and sorted before we went up to the Neptune Lounge to listen to a lecture by polar expeditionary /historian…
When we woke up this morning the Black Watch was gliding slowly along the river, just about to dock in Aalborg, Denmark’s fourth largest city situated right on the waterfront. We hadn’t booked any city tours today as the ship was docked literally across the road from the town; we could see a pub called…
