DamianG

3 minutes ago, P&O SUE said:

I’d be a bit worried if I was Lulu!

Lulu often goes nose to nose with Teddy through the hutch grill and they are very relaxed in each other’s company. 
 

Vala is very excitable but it doesn’t seem to have phased Lulu at all!

We have my sister-in-laws huntaway Vala staying with us over the weekend. She is a handful on the lead but well behaved overall. She is obsessed with our guinea pig Lulu who lives in our summer house. 
 

17 hours ago, Megabear2 said:

Very cold and miserable here at the home of racing. Took nearly 6 hours yesterday in torrential rain and today it continued.  Who in their wit and wisdom decided to dig up the M25 near St Albans for two junctions in the run up to a bank holiday and to proudly announce it's until Summer 2025!  All very depressing. 

 

For the first time in 50 years my packing for this weekend's racing consists of three winter weight woollies, two pair of boots, my Austrian winter hat and a heavy raincoat. Certainly no hope of glamour this year!  On a more positive note the hotel has switched the heating on, Dutch Decoy is declared to run and the new super horse City of Troy has arrived from Ireland.  I just have to not freeze to death or get washed away before the big event!

Good luck today @Megabear2

Instead of a tall “tower block” ship with dozens of decks let’s copy the Queen Anne design & stretch it instead.

33 minutes ago, kalos said:

 

Same here but a pet hate of mine and most floggers do it ..

 

Take your shoes off if stepping into the shower 🤬It's a  brand new ship .

 

Do they all march around their showers at home in outdoor footwear ? 

 

Ha! I said exactly the same!

9 minutes ago, DamianG said:

Good morning all, I’d like to request a one day pass for the wide awake club! Our dog Teddy accidentally brought a tiny slug into the house last night (we think that it stuck to a paw) & that was enough for our son to make a fuss & refuse to let him sleep in his bedroom. Ted slept on our bed & loves a snuggle so he was either pushed up against me or Michelle all night causing a very restless night’s sleep. I was awake at 4:30am & realised our son’s bedroom light was on so I went to switch that off then couldn’t get back to sleep. I had to be up at 5:30am anyway for my latest trip to London & it’s been a long day already. Looking forward to getting home around 9pm tonight!

 

We watched the Queen Anne arrival & a few vlogs showing the club class balcony cabins. The ship looks fantastic & we’d love to sail on her one day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec86Q_aND9k&pp=ygUdUGF1bCBhbmQgQ2Fyb2wgbG92ZSB0byB0cmF2ZWw%3D

Good morning all, I’d like to request a one day pass for the wide awake club! Our dog Teddy accidentally brought a tiny slug into the house last night (we think that it stuck to a paw) & that was enough for our son to make a fuss & refuse to let him sleep in his bedroom. Ted slept on our bed & loves a snuggle so he was either pushed up against me or Michelle all night causing a very restless night’s sleep. I was awake at 4:30am & realised our son’s bedroom light was on so I went to switch that off then couldn’t get back to sleep. I had to be up at 5:30am anyway for my latest trip to London & it’s been a long day already. Looking forward to getting home around 9pm tonight!

We watched the Queen Anne arrival & a few vlogs showing the club class balcony cabins. The ship looks fantastic & we’d love to sail on her one day. 

9 hours ago, S_latham said:

We have the basic refresh drinks package. It says we can get the soft drinks which are "on tap". Are these available at all the resteraunts and the buffet? 

“On tap” may be a bit misleading. It means soft drinks poured from the tap at a bar (i.e., those multi drink dispensers attached to a hose). There are no self service options so in the buffet it’s a case of trying to catch the attention of a drinks waiter. It also means no bottled soft drinks are included. Our son quickly got bored of lemonade and Pepsi on our last cruise so we ended up getting him a bottled soft drink on occasions. 

I would like to request Oriana’s Al Fesco (maybe it could serve the Beach House menu in the evening).

Have a great cruise @AndyMichelle I hope that Britannia is well stocked with Peroni and Hendricks Perfect Serve ingredients for you.

We enjoy watching a handful of vloggers who make an income from it and are very good in front of the camera. By all accounts they need a huge amount of followers and views to earn a decent amount, but that doesn't seem to have discouraged the large amount of other folk who seem to think that it is so easy that anyone can do it. 

We've not encountered any onboard during school holiday cruises but I can well imagine that it's becoming more common on the cheaper cruises. As @Megabear2 stated, personally I've found passengers having loud conversations with someone whilst their mobile phone is on speaker mode more of an annoyance.

27 minutes ago, grapau27 said:

No.

I don't bother using their app.

There is a McDonald's,Greggs,Burger king and Starbucks close to each other and I'm not particularly loyal to any of them.

They are a short distance to the beach and convenient to get a snack to take to the beach.

I’m not loyal to any particular brand either. I’m pretty sure you don’t need to use the app though, and I’ll be looking to get the deal before catching the train for my next working trip to London in a week’s time. 

22 hours ago, purplesea said:

Morning everyone,

Hope you're all well or on the road to recovery.

10c and overcast down here, but dry. We've been spoilt the last few days with sunshine😲 and it feeling warm.

Our 48th wedding anniversary today so going out for a meal this evening, but not sure where.

Enjoy your day, whatever you have planned.

Congratulations, hope you had a lovely meal.

20 hours ago, grapau27 said:

Good morning.

The rain is pouring down here.

We called at the beach this morning with our coffee and snacks.

 

20 hours ago, grapau27 said:

Good morning.

The rain is pouring down here.

We called at the beach this morning with our coffee and snacks.

 

 

 
Are you taking full advantage of the current McDonalds offer of a sausage McMuffin and drink for £2.49?

We've booked G626 & G627 - back to back cruises on Iona during the main school holidays.

We've booked an ED grade deluxe balcony cabin which has worked out around £135 pppn. Considering that this is a fairly unique aft cabin during the peak school holidays we are quite pleased with the price and very excited about the back to back aspect allowing us to stay onboard on changeover day (I'll have the launderette to myself for one thing 😆).

Presumably we will get double perks too, such as upper tier embarkation lunch, sailaway drinks etc?

We are looking forward to revisiting Norway for the first time in years, Cherbourg which is new to us, and Northern Spain which we love. 

23 minutes ago, john watson said:

It is not a good idea to participate in the organised luggage carry off by the crew and them try to self-disembark.  This is because once in the baggage hall the staff expect passengers to  leave the area immediately.  The organised luggage will be coming into a separated off area in large pallet type containers and spread out in piles.  They do not tolerate people waiting in the baggage hall who have disembarked before they are told to. This is all part of organising things Only passengers whose luggage has been laid out in the hall are wanted in the hall and the staff keep in contact on progress by radio.

 

Regards John

I completely agree, sadly there were a load of passengers being intercepted on that particular cruise. 

4 hours ago, MyriamS said:

Hmm why? Did the staff suspect these passengers to be trying to "sneak in" early in the luggage hall by joining the self-disembarkation queue?

If so, I hope we won't be held back because it looks like we don't have enough luggage. We really have nothing more than 1 backpack each, as hard as it seems to believe for some people (last time we flew to the US, the check-in agent seemed flabbergasted by our lack of suitcases).

The couple that were in front of us were carrying a single small bag. They were stopped by a steward in the terminal who asked where their luggage was. "We are going to collect it now" was their answer. At this point they were directed to a waiting area and advised that general disembarkation had not yet commenced as luggage was still being unloaded and moved to the baggage hall.

So they had either missed or deliberately chosen to ignore the disembarkation information that would have been left in their cabin for them to read.

I do not think you will have any problems self disembarking and if challenged you will be able to deminstrate that you are carrying all your luggage (if you really need to).

We’ve self disembarked Iona (albeit not at full capacity) and Arvia (a sold out school holidays cruise) with no problems either time. As others have pointed out it’s an early morning time slot and though there was a large queue around the Atrium both times it moved quickly. We joined the queue both times around 7:30am and were on the road home before 8am.
 

Just a general observation, on both occasions there were passengers in the self disembarkation queue without any luggage! They were being intercepted shore side and made to wait until the end of self disembarkation before being allowed to enter the baggage hall. 

3 hours ago, Purdey16 said:

Pep after her bath 

Fabulous photo, what a gorgeous girl. We struggle to get Teddy to sit long enough for a photo after his grooms. 

It’s a few years ago but we also found taking the train to Den Haag very straightforward. We walked from the dock to the train station but these days would probably look to take a tram or other option from the public transport hub very near the dock (as mentioned above).

We've registered our interest in G626 and G627 and are now waiting for our travel agent to process and confirm the booking next week.

Thanks again for all the comments.

21 minutes ago, kalos said:

 

Hope you enjoy your cruise Damien . We did two weeks on the Azura and due to those 

on for just a week ,you get to see those leaving and the new ones arrive .

For a few hours in between the ship became very peaceful and nice to walk around ,

even the buffet was calm but only until the coaches began to arrive with folk.

You get to hear the captains welcome /goodbye speeches again through the PA .

Hope you enjoy 

Thanks Kalos, it’s also occurred to me that I’ll have the launderette to myself! 😂

Thanks for all the replies. We’ve now found an opportunity to sail on back to back cruises on the same ship (Iona) so are shopping around for the best price. 
 

Staying onboard between cruises when most others are disembarking & embarking sounds like a unique thing to do, and we’ve love to hear anyone else’s experiences of this.

We are looking at various itineraries during the main school holidays in 2026. Yet again some of the Mediterranean cruises have very few days in port, such as this one with just five and a half days:

B618 Mediterranean (pocruises.com)

At least there are some new ports (for us anyway) on certain cruises, such as Gijon, El Ferrol, Santander and Cherbourg (somehow we've never been there). It's also good to see Cagliari again on some itineraries from Southampton.

Finally, I don't recall seeing an itinerary like this one before, with a combination of the Mediterranean plus a call to Madeira:

N619 Spain And Portugal (pocruises.com)

At first glance the cruises all looked a bit "same old" but after some research I think there are some more interesting itineraries (for us) than we've seen for a while.

Best regards

Damian

Hi all

Has anyone ever done back to back cruises on different ships from Southampton? I have half an idea to do a week on one ship, disembark, then embark another same day (obviously from a different dock). 

I know that @daiB has completed many back to back sailings. Any advice Dai?

It's just an idea for now but I would be interested to hear anyone's experiences of swapping ships same day in Southampton.

Thanks

Damian