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…
When we woke up this morning we’d already lost an hour of the day, as we’d had to put our clocks forward an hour last night in line with European time. The day was already dawning bright and sunny although there was a brisk sea breeze and quite a lot of movement of the Black…
This morning it seemed strange to be getting up and going to work, especially considering we were setting off on another cruise today! We were joining Fred Olsen’s Black Watch later on but we were due to sail from the Tyne at 5.00pm, and as that is only about half an hour’s drive away from…
