All at sea

Apologies for the lack of posts these past few weeks. 

Towards the end of July I was extremely busy. Since then I've been on holiday.

Specifically I spent eight days aboard Queen Mary 2, crossing the Atlantic to New York with a single stop at Halifax, Nova Scotia. My wife and I then spent five days in Manhattan.

Our first transatlantic cruise was to mark our 25th wedding anniversary. But we didn't go alone. Accompanying us were our friends Bill and Patty, who got married a few weeks before us; and Gary and Helen, who married a year earlier in 1991.

I've known Gary since we were at university in Aberdeen and I've known Bill even longer. We were at the same primary school in Wormit, north Fife, and later went to the same secondary school, Madras College, in St Andrews.

(By coincidence, someone who was in my English class at Aberdeen responded to a photo I posted on Facebook by declaring, "Good grief. We must have passed you in Southampton. Just got off yesterday morning!" Small world.)

Anyway, I've been on several cruises in recent years – to the Baltics, Iceland/Norway, East and West Mediterranean – and this was certainly different.

On a 'normal' cruise you spend almost as much time off the ship as you do on board. Or it certainly feels like that. Every other day (sometimes daily) you arrive in yet another port and have five or six hours to eat, drink and wander around, but always with an eye on the clock.

I've lost count of the number of places we've visited (the list includes Tallin, Helsinki, Stockholm, St Petersburg, Reykjavík, Seville, Rome, Cannes, Dubrovnik and Santorini) but apart from a handful of memories there's little to say because we weren't there long enough.

Instead, on every one of those cruises the announcement I craved most was, 'Tomorrow is a day at sea'.

On a transatlantic cruise almost every day is a 'day at sea'. The one exception was Halifax where we got off, hopped on an ancient Routemaster bus and enjoyed a 90-minute tour of the city.

(I recommend bus tours. Instead of wandering round aimlessly you see something of the city and if there's something that takes your fancy – like a brewery or an enticing waterside bar or restaurant – you can go back to it, if there's time.)

Anyway, after six days at sea I appreciated Halifax more than I might have done had we been getting on and off every day or so.

I was happy though to return to the ship because if there's one thing cruising does to you it's this: you become a little institutionalised. 

Notwithstanding the well-known fact that a week on board a cruise ship can add at least half a stone to your weight unless you exercise some discipline, you are inexorably drawn to yet another cream tea followed (a few hours later) by cocktails, three-course dinner and several (shared) bottles of wine.

That night, lying in your 'stateroom' feeling bloated and a little queasy, you convince yourself that tomorrow you'll eat and drink less.

It makes no difference. Come morning you're back in the restaurant eating blueberry pancakes (with gallons of maple syprup) followed by kippers and a full English (or American).

The former includes bacon, eggs, black pudding and Cumberland sausage, the latter hash browns and corn beef.

Soon it will be time for lunch, and the cycle continues.

Although it's larger and can carry more passengers (2,620) than the Queen Victoria (2,014), another Cunard ship we've been on, the QM2 is significantly smaller than the latest generation of cruise ships, most of which resemble floating hotels with the largest carrying 6,780 passengers.

It's built though to be far more stable on a transatlantic cruise. 

Funnily enough, at a tobacco event in London a couple of years ago one of the speakers was discussing smoking on the great cruise liners of the past and he mentioned that the original Queen Mary was renowned for 'rolling', which caused a lot of seasickness.

That was the norm, apparently, and passengers just had to accept it. In the Thirties, of course, there was no alternative if you wanted to travel from Europe to America, or vice versa – unless you went by airship.

Airships were the Concorde of their day. They were significantly faster than ocean liners, saving several days' travel, and were therefore popular with businessmen.

Airships were also pretty safe, until the Hindenberg disaster altered people's perceptions. (Even then the majority of the 100 passengers and crew escaped the blazing inferno.)

In order to keep the weight down however facilities were relatively spartan. Cabins were more like the compartments you'd find on a sleeper train and there were no theatres or ballrooms. Obviously.

Contrast that with a ship like the Queen Mary where, bouts of seasickness aside, first class passengers in particular could travel in enormous comfort.

As it happens we didn't encounter any seriously bad weather on our trip. Some days it was overcast or foggy but the sea was never more than mildly choppy and often very calm. Only once were we warned not to walk on the outside decks.

Talking of which, and in line with most of today's cruise ships, smoking is now banned almost everywhere on the QM2 with the exception of "designated areas of the open deck on the aft of Deck 7".

To be fair there were seats, tables and even deckchairs in the 'smoking area', which offered a good view of the ocean beyond, but how long before those God awful joggers start to complain that 'their' air is being polluted?

In my experience the entertainment on cruise ships is a mixed bag. There are no shortage of things to do but I prefer to find a quiet spot (with a waiter close at hand) where I can read without interruption whilst drinking coffee or something a little stronger.

Shows in the ship's theatre tend to err on the side of cheesy but they're rarely more than 45 minutes.

Daytime entertainment will include a guest speaker who will give two or three presentations in return (I assume) for a complimentary holiday and a suitable fee.

Last year (aboard the Queen Victoria) it was Baroness Wheatcroft, the former business and city editor of The Times, who later became editor of the Sunday Telegraph.

This year the QM2 events team chose to book Lord Paddick, the retired police officer who stood as the Lib Dem candidate in the London mayoral elections of 2008 and 2012. Oddly enough, the American passengers who attended his lectures seemed to love him.

However the daytime programme was dominated by a series of very well-attended events featuring American veterans of World War II, including a sprightly 93-year-old who took part in the D-Day landings.

Day after day one veteran after another received a standing ovation. Quite what the German passengers on board made of it I really don't know.

Anyway, we arrived in New York, eight days after leaving Southampton, in the early hours of Saturday, August 12.

But that's another story ...

Above: arriving in Nova Scotia, photographed from my bed! Below: Manhattan from our cabin balcony, shortly after our arrival in New York.