Le Havre cancellation

[pat714]

We are currently aboard the  Carribean Princess and have been advised that our stop in Le Havre has been cancelled due to a workers strike. Princess is re-routing us to Portland England. Very unhappy to miss this stop as it was highly anticipated and the highlight of this trip. 

[edinburgher]

10 hours ago, pat714 said:

Princess is re-routing us to Portland England

There are a number of past threads with the word PORTLAND in them.  If you have not already searched for and read some, choose from these as you may find some helpful info and/or suggestions.

 

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/search/?q=portland&quick=1&type=forums_topic&nodes=148

 

[Hlitner]

I seem to recall that when we went to Portland, most folks decided to go over the Weymouth for the day.   DW and I really enjoyed Weymouth, as we had excellent weather and liked strolling along the beachfront.  

 

It is a shame that you are missing Le Havre as that port does have so much to offer including the D-Day beaches or trips as far as Paris.  Unfortunately, strikes are part of life in some parts of Europe (such as France and Italy).  

 

Hank

[Harters]

Weymouth is a typical small British seaside town. We used it a a base for a week while touring the area a couple of years back but I reckon you could happily spend a day there. There is a link to D-Day in that many American troops embarked from the harbour. Portland itself has a small D-Day museum which, perhaps surprisingly  (to me, at least), majors on the American rather than British contribution to the action.

 

As I've suggested before, a fish & chips lunch at Bennetts, at the town bridge at Weymouth, is highly recommended. So good, it could be northern. 

[John Bull]

On 9/23/2024 at 12:42 PM, Harters said:

Weymouth is a typical small British seaside town. We used it a a base for a week while touring the area a couple of years back but I reckon you could happily spend a day there. There is a link to D-Day in that many American troops embarked from the harbour. Portland itself has a small D-Day museum which, perhaps surprisingly  (to me, at least), majors on the American rather than British contribution to the action.

 

As I've suggested before, a fish & chips lunch at Bennetts, at the town bridge at Weymouth, is highly recommended. So good, it could be northern. 

 

Knowing your expertise on WW1 & 11, I carefully checked before posting.

I learned that Portland & Weymouth were the main jumping-off points for the American soldiers, hence the American focus of the Castletown museum.

 

BTW, cruise ships berth in Portland close to a pair of caissons, part of the Mulberry Harbour which was towed across the English Channel to the Normandy coast to create a temporary harbour for the Normandy campaign. 

After the war, a number of the caissons were towed back and re-used at various UK ports

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry_Harbour_Phoenix_Units,_Portland

 

Weymouth is an attractive English seaside resort typical of those which grew because of the boom in rail travel in Victorian times. Lots of British holidaymakers in summer months, few foreign visitors.

 

Portland is a secure port (it's a naval base) - you need to take a ship's tour, or a shuttle service for the one mile from the ship to diminutive Portland Castle & the nearby excellent volunteer-run D-Day museum, or the 6 miles to Weymouth. I've been told that the shuttles are now provided by the port and are free. 

There are local tour operators to places like Durdle Door/Lulworth Cove, or Corfe Castle, or Bovingdon Tank Museum (regarded as the best in the world), or the Jurassic Coast. Altho' time is short, this is presumably a late change so there will probably be availability but because they're not permitted in the port you would need to pre-book and they meet their clients at Portland Castle.

Details on the link provided by @edinburgher

 

Ships' tours are usually to either Salisbury/Stonehenge or to Bath.

Both involve long coach travel and are best visited at some other time (Salisbury/Stonehenge is very easy from Southampton).

 

It's a shame that Le Havre has ben cancelled, but you can still have a great day in Portland/Weymouth

 

On the matter of N vs S fish & chips, any southern chippie has one big advantage over those in the north in that you don't have to remember to say when you order that you don't want your chips smothered in revolting curry sauce 🥵😃  (or is that just in Birmingham) 😉  

 

 JB 🙂

ps You didn't mention your date but since this is a late change it might be worth advising info@ddaycentre.com of your ship's visit.

 

 

[Harters]

1 hour ago, John Bull said:

Knowing your expertise on WW1 & 11

I only claim some expertise about WW1, although I have researched the WW2 men on my local war memorials but it's scant details in comparison with the WW1 guys. 

 

There's a plaque at Weymouth harbour noting that American troops boarded there. It's rather small and insignificant unfortunately. 

 

FWIW, curry sauce with your fish & chips certainly isnt a northwestern thing (where history tells us fish & chips was first recorded in, I think, 1865 in the Greater Manchester town of Mossley). Some places have it, of course, as a chargeable extra. It's an acquired taste, even for those who like South Asian curries. I have yet to acquire it - it's peculiar. 

[Hlitner]

I sure don't know about a curry sauce, with fish and chips, as I come from old school America where a nice malt vinegar works quite well.  We would pay a fee to watch JB wash down his fish/chips with a pint of Guinness :).   At the risk of annoying our friends from the UK, both DW and I agree that the best fish/chips we ever had was from a pub in a small village on South Island, New Zealand.  Unfortunately, we cannot remember exactly which small village but will never forget the beer battered fish and chips.  

 

Hank

[Harters]

17 hours ago, Hlitner said:

the best fish/chips we ever had was from a pub

I have standard advice for anyone wanting to eat fish and chips in the UK. Don't eat it in a pub, unless the pub is in sight of the sea and has a reputation for good fish & chips. As ever, research is all, if you are to avoid a truly dismal f & c. 

 

It may be one of our national dishes but it is much, much easier to find truly awful f & c, than good f & c. Applies not just to pubs but anywhere serving it. My other advice, if buying from a chip shop, is to know which fish is most liked in the area. Some are cod areas, others are haddock. Broadly speaking, that's cod in the south and haddock in the north (although my part of the northwest is a cod area) Know what's liked, then order the other. The popular one will probably have been batch cooked and kept warm on the steamer shelf (so the batter goes soggy). The unpopular one will be cooked to order. 

[John Bull]

22 hours ago, Harters said:

 

FWIW, curry sauce with your fish & chips certainly isnt a northwestern thing (where history tells us fish & chips was first recorded in, I think, 1865 in the Greater Manchester town of Mossley). Some places have it, of course, as a chargeable extra. It's an acquired taste, even for those who like South Asian curries. I have yet to acquire it - it's peculiar. 

 

19 hours ago, Hlitner said:

I sure don't know about a curry sauce, with fish and chips, as I come from old school America where a nice malt vinegar works quite well.  We would pay a fee to watch JB wash down his fish/chips with a pint of Guinness :). 

 

Hank

 

 I'm glad that John & Hank both have more class than to want curry sauce on their chips.🙂

 

But it's a shame that Hank doesn't have the same standards when it comes to booze 😧We recently toured the Kerry corner of the Irish Republic, and the evil black liquid was everywhere

No, offer as much money as you like Hank, you won't get me to spoil my taste-buds with that iniquitous Irish treacle 🤢 

 

I gotta agree that the best fish & chips come from chippies, who buy fresh fish & prepare their own batter -  and that now includes Rowlies in Pembroke, where we stopped-over en route to Irish Ireland.

Neither they nor our local chippies cook in advance - all cooked to order.

But many pubs - and that includes Ireland - buy frozen fillets, often pre-battered, tho' I do understand that's because pubs offer a much broader menu than chippies.

 

But we had excellent fish & chips with mushy peas in the Wheelhouse Pub on a Princess ship.

The only negative was that the "mushy" peas were more like blended peas. We came to the conclusion that this was the Princess chef's first attempt at mushy peas and after following the instructions he thought "this congealed lumpy mess can't be right"  - it is - so he whacked it in the blender. 😃

 

JB 🙂

Might we just be straying a little off-topic ?

[Harters]

45 minutes ago, John Bull said:

and that includes Ireland - buy frozen fillets, often pre-battered

A few years back, we were driving from Dublin to Kinsale. Stopped in  a little village for some lunch because we'd seen a sign for an open chippy. Ordered the fish & chips. Bloke opens the door of a freezer, pulls out a frozen battered fish and throws it straight in the fryer. It was not a good lunch.