Just cruising

With thanks to Silversea for this cruise

 It's our last full day at sea, and it's been a gift: sunny, warm, calm and, despite our being plumb in the middle of one of the busiest bits of water on the planet - and one that the marine traffic app shows is heaving with boats - there are scarcely any other ships to be seen. Or even land, come to that. Clearly the English Channel is much bigger than I'd thought.

So, people were all over the outside decks and in the pool, but it still didn't feel crowded - just 300-odd passengers will do that. Both of us finally, and none too soon, starting to feel almost normal again after our bout of flu and subsequent respiratory problems, we enjoyed a breakfast of Swedish pancakes and tried not to think what we've been missing out on for the last two weeks.

At-sea days are always agreeably laid-back, so that's exactly what we did, at various locations around the ship, always finding somewhere comfortable to sprawl, with nobody else close by. Guernsey slipped past starboard, and then the Isle of Wight, port - neither of them close-up. The Captain announced our arrival times tomorrow, and we'll have to be up early to witness our passage up the Thames and finally through (not 'under') Tower Bridge at about 8am, no doubt causing some cursing amongst rush-hour traffic.

This evening there was the usual Farewell from the staff in the theatre, and then we had perfect Châteaubriand for dinner in the restaurant, sharing a table with six others who included two very relaxed and chatty concierge staff, open and easy about sharing their peculiar lifestyles, and dropping tantalising hints about the stories they could tell about what the guests get up to. Too discreet to share, alas.

Not somewhere you would come twice

With thanks to Silversea for this cruise

The Breakwater here at Holyhead is, at 2.4km, the longest in Europe and was built between 1846 and 1873. There, I've saved you having to come here now. There really isn't much else to say about this quiet and ordinary little town, with its empty streets lined by terraces of rendered houses, its High Street full of charity shops, a Spa and the Post Office, and the usual variety of pubs. 

There's a new bridge, an ancient stone church and a Roman fort; and being a port (you catch the ferry here to Dublin) it has some maritime history that was apparently really well presented in the museum that I didn't get to - as well as the South Stack lighthouse out on the point that I would like to have visited but didn't have the time, or the energy (still sick).

I think the main reason we're here is because it's a gateway to things like the Snowdon railway (a train up to the top of a mountain) and Caernarfon with its castle, and people set off early today on those excursions - but we've been there, done that already. So it was a muted kind of day, grey and showery despite its still being officially summer, and a short one - we departed at 3pm, heading back south and east towards London again, a whole day and a half's sail away.

Phamie the harpist performed again, pre-dinner, which was a treat; and tonight we were lucky with the open-seating gamble in the restaurant. Ponderous George was the weak link, with his OWM misogynistic comments, but there were also two doctors from Melbourne and John and Jean from South Carolina, and the conversation was lively and wide-ranging. It was also at one point satisfyingly gossipy, about the one couple on board who are simply not the right sort: our ill-fated Trivial Pursuit team-members, no less, who the doctors reckon are alcohol brain-damaged, and who aren't doing themselves any favours on a cruise where everything is inclusive and the wine glass never gets empty.

Not so much of the fair city today, Dublin

With thanks to Silversea for this cruise

We woke to stacks of Maersk containers this morning, with big cranes trundling up and down sorting them - who invented the container? I do remember the dockers' strikes when they were first introduced, with all their content security, thus depriving the workers of their tips. They really came into their own in Christchurch, post-earthquakes, propping some things up and making a protective barrier for others.

But anyway - Dublin. We're back in the Republic, and this is my third time in the city, I think - so I've done the obvious things, which I enjoyed, back in the glory days when I had health, and energy. Today, with neither, I shuttled into the centre, and was deposited alongside Merrion Square where the Oscar Wilde statue reclines improbably on its rock. 

I plodded through the streets, looking guiltily away as I passed numerous art galleries and museums no doubt full of treasures and interesting stories. There were flower-bedecked pubs, high-end and individual shops, buskers and a bloody-nosed man conversing cheerfully with some bemused policemen as passers-by eavesdropped. I fetched up at the rather lovely wrought-iron elegance of St Stephens Green shopping centre, where I bought paracetamol and decided I didn't feel strong enough to cope with the full-on banter of a HoHo bus commentary. For the same reason, I gave up on the idea of taking a train to the picturesque fishing village of Skerries, which I was sorry about.

So, getting lost innumerable times, literally walking in circles, coughing, sneezing and feeling so, so tired, I eventually found my way back to the shuttle stop, impeccably timing my arrival for the lunchtime break, so I sat there in the rain on some stone steps under my umbrella for over an hour, wishing many things were different.

Not that I was on a different ship, however. Crown Princess was moored nearby and veritably loomed over everything. It was immense - 3,000 passengers - and made little Silver Wind (294 pax) look like a dinghy. A friendly, personable and caring little dinghy.

Doing my best with Belfast

With thanks to Silversea for this cruise

Another day, another grand old city - and another wasted opportunity, though I did my best, truly. It was my first visit to Belfast, and I really would have liked to do it justice, but tiresome health problems intervened and yet another nebuliser session with Silver Wind's doctor down in the bowels of the ship meant that we missed the departure time for the city tour we had booked - and paid for. Ouch.

But we soldiered on into town on the shuttle when we were free, and took a taxi to the Titanic museum, which was the high point of the tour we'd booked. It's a remarkable building, all angular and modern and silvery. Inside, it's very efficiently organised, and you follow a trail through it, covering everything to do with Belfast's marine history and the Titanic  in particular, from design to, well, destruction. There is a slightly silly gondola thing you sit in and are dangled around a shipyard mock-up, past all the stages. Most impressive was the riveting process, which was incredibly hard, hot, noisy and dangerous work, and the only relief from the repetitiveness must have been the terror that the RIVET CATCHERS diced with throughout their long shifts, literally catching the heated rivets (in a bucket) and passing them to the men who hammered them into place.

There are mock-ups of the interior, and lots of interesting facts such as there not being a laundry on the ship for all the tons of linens they used for sheets and tablecloths and so on - though they did have a drier so cloths that got wet didn't go mouldy. There were voice testimonies from survivors, radio messages from the rescue ships, video of the wreck (showing the captain's bath which - in a not-coincidence - the news a few days later reported has now disappeared). Fascinating.

The OH retired back to the Silver Wind then, but I carried on, walking doughtily along the bank of the River Lagan to the 10m tiled Salmon of Knowledge (you're meant to kiss its lips to glean something useful), to the modern Victoria Square shopping centre with its high domed observation deck overlooking the city, past the historic crooked Albert clock tower, various statues, and appealing pubs all with piles of metal beer kegs on the footpaths outside.

Then I gave up a bit too, and took a HoHo bus tour, not doing any hopping on or off, but getting quite a bit of exercise on the top deck swapping from side to side as the sights demanded, and also ducking under cover at the front when it rained. The live commentary was very good, full of appealingly bad jokes and sincere pride about George Best, but suitably serious about "the dark days of our Troubles" which was a big part of the tour, as we went along the Shankill Road, past some confronting street murals, Crumlin Jail, and the chillingly practical (and still used) Peace Wall. If I'd had the time, and the energy, I would have done a proper job of exploring this side of Belfast, full of such familiar names from the nightly TV news when I was living in England through the '80s.

But I didn't, so I trailed back to the ship, to gaze from our veranda at the hulking, yellow, and motionless Samson and Goliath cranes in the Harland and Wolff shipyard opposite - which, not coincidentally, besides the Titanic, also built HMS Belfast. The shipyard has been a huge part of Belfast's history, but just a week or so ago went into administration, falling silent apart from a cluster of protesting (former) workers outside the gates.

Helpful Roy, our butler, proudly presented us with our invitation to dine at La Dame, the intimate and exclusive Relais & Châteaux restaurant that's the only one on the ship you have to pay for ($60 each). We'd been too late to book for it, and there were no available tables any day - but somehow Roy had got us in. We didn't like to tell him we had no appetite whatsoever, so we dutifully trailed along, were seated with a flourish at our table with its fancy china, and proudly presented with the menu. I'd like to describe the culinary delights that I indulged in - but, with no hunger or even functioning tastebuds, the whole performance of preparation, presentation and service was entirely wasted on me. What a shame.

Golf and giants, history and a harpist

With thanks to Silversea for this cruise

We moved early this morning from the rugged utility of the LSS jetty with its ranks of tanks full of oil and chemicals along to the, er, equally rugged utility of the cruise ship terminal, with its huge heap of scrap metal - both places a decent drive from Derry itself.

I was doing a ship excursion today: a full day's guided tour focused on visiting the Giant's Causeway. We drove through neat and pretty countryside, all fields and hedgerows and trees, listening to Adrian telling us the history of Ireland. That's a lot of ground to cover, especially since he started way, way back in the pagan days, and included invasions by Vikings, French, Spanish, Germans and, of course, the English. Unsurprisingly, he didn't get through it all, being distracted by disparaging, at considerable length, Scotch whisky amongst other things (bagpipes also, naturally).

The Visitor Centre at the Giant's Causeway is run by the National Trust and is modern, stylish and well done. I took the 15 minute walk down to the sea listening to the recordings on my electronic guide, and found myself at the Causeway feeling initially a bit underwhelmed. I saw similar basalt columns in Iceland last year, and they were immense and raw-looking. Here they are clearly more eroded, and aren't that high - but, picking my way around (and negotiating all the many other tourists inevitably most focused on their selfies) I came to accept their being accorded World Heritage status.

There are 40,000 of them, after all, up to 12 metres high (much of that length buried) and they do all fit together in a marvellously satisfying way. The sea broke white on the black ones at the bottom of the slope, while those higher up were redder. They are certainly a feature, leading from the hillside down and into the sea, and the legend that goes with them, of originally linking Ireland with Scotland and allowing the Scottish giant to come and threaten the Irish Finn McCool (saved by the cleverness of his wife Oonagh) is inventive. 

Finn McCool, incidentally, I've known about since my extreme youth, listening to a story often repeated on the Sunday morning Junior Request Session on the radio that my parents set up for me each week, to give them a bit more time in bed. "I'm bigger and stronger than you, Finn McCool!" was the catchphrase that entered my brain then and has never left.

Adrian took us then to go and see a rather dull golf links course where The Open had recently taken place, to the huge excitement of the locals - but the drive along the coast with its limestone arches and derelict Dunluce Castle was worth seeing, especially as we were lucky to have sunshine.

Hanging out for something like soup and a sandwich for lunch, I was disappointed to be served an immense helping of roast beef with Yorkshire puddings and two sorts of potato, followed by pavlova. How Irish isn't that (apart from the two sorts of spud)?

And then we did another detour, to Bushmills, to make a quick visit to the whiskey distillery there. This led Adrian into talking about Brexit and how it's going to lose jobs once a hard border is in place again - not just whiskey makers but also farmers, who will have to cull thousands of cattle.

Finally, he got onto talking about the Troubles, during yet another detour, this time through Derry, where we got to see some of the dramatic murals in Bogside, the fortified police station, the memorial to the dead, the tall peace walls still standing between Protestant and Catholic, and the statue of two men on opposite sides of a wall leaning across to clasp hands. It was an interesting listen, and clearly close to Adrian's heart - how could it not be, he's a local man who lived through it - and that alone made the day's outing worth while.

Our butler Roy was pleased to be able to find us a spare table at La Terrazza tonight (our late entry onto this cruise meant that everything was already booked solid) - but we were less pleased because, sadly, still sick. But we went through the motions, eating mere mouthfuls of delicious food, feeling guilty about waste and insulting the chef and disappointing the waiter. Such a shame.

The day ended well though, with a performance in the Show Lounge by harpist Phamie Gow, who is Scottish, striking to look at, and a very talented musician who's performed at Carnegie Hall. I really enjoyed her 'Raindrops' composition.

Doing Derry

With thanks to Silversea for this cruise

This morning we slid into Derry/Londonderry (our enrichment lecturer insists people also call it Stroke City as a nod towards trying to reconcile those on opposite sides of the Ulster-Eire political divide).

Still struggling with what I am sure now must be the flu, since it is exponentially worse than a simple cold, I took the shuttle into town from our mooring here at an oil tanker jetty - our proper berth won't be available till tomorrow, which is when we were meant to arrive, before the weather hurried us up.

I didn't/couldn't do much - I walked around the four centuries-old city wall, uniquely in the UK still intact, and got good long views over the surrounding countryside and the rows of neat terraced housing outside the walls. Inside there was a cathedral, a church, lots of stately buildings, a war memorial and the commercial centre, none of which I got to.

I did have a look inside the grand Guildhall, walked out onto the Peace Bridge, and found the fairly new Derry Girls mural, which is beautifully done. That's a TV series that it's really worth trying to find: a comedy about teenagers, against the background of the Troubles. Very funny, with a dark thread.

But most of Derry's richness and long and eventful history passed me by today, because everything has been such a struggle. We'll still be here again tomorrow, though, so I hope to get a bit more of a handle on it.

Sigh. Also cough, sneeze, groan, ache and otherwise suffer

With thanks to Silversea for this cruise

I don't know how they measure waves. How do they decide where the bottom is? Anyway, though these ones don't look especially dramatic, they're big and bouncy enough to have prevented us from visiting Galway today, so that city's delights will also remain a closed book to me.

We're scurrying ahead of the weather to Londonderry, so it's an at-sea day during which various extra entertainments have been put on for us, none of which we're taking advantage of because - did I mention we're sick? Still sick. It's horrible, and no fun at all, and we both wish we were at home. Not Silversea's fault, but disappointing none the less.

We're not even going to distract ourselves today with Trivial Pursuit, since all the fun and satisfaction have gone out of that, too. Our as-per-usual randomly-assembled team this time has meant we've dipped out. The others are enthusiastic, noisy, energetic, but... let's just say we have yet to discover their fields of expertise.

So, we're just grimly clinging on, waiting for it all to be over. But there's a whole week yet to go, sigh.