For two people quite so attached to their own village, we are surprisingly keen on leaving it. We get away twice a year if we can, and almost always by sea.
Cruising suits us extremely well: you unpack once, the view out of the window is different every morning, and somebody else worries about the navigation. We sail most often with P&O Cruises, and have been out with Ambassador as well.
Over the years that has taken us a long way north and a long way south. What follows is a tour of the places that stayed with us.
North
Norway
Norway is the one that spoils you for everywhere else. The ship takes you right up inside the fjords, with the mountains rising sheer out of water deep enough to carry her — you come up on deck in the morning and find a waterfall a few hundred yards off the rail.
And in summer the light simply refuses to go out. You look up from something at one in the morning and it is still not properly dark.
Russia
The far end of the Baltic, and the most striking arrival of the lot. You come in off the grey water of the Gulf of Finland and step ashore into a city built on an altogether different scale from anywhere else — palaces, canals and gilding in every direction.
The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood is the one everybody photographs, and quite rightly. Every inch of it is patterned, and the domes are worth the trip on their own. You are not the only person to have thought so, mind — the crowd in the foreground is the usual state of affairs.
It is a part of the world we feel fortunate to have seen when we did.
The Baltic
St Petersburg is the landfall people remember, but the Baltic run takes in a great deal more on the way there and back. Over various trips we have been ashore in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Germany and the Netherlands.
It is a wonderful part of the world to travel by sea. The distances between ports are short, the old trading cities are still very much themselves, and you can be in a different country and a different language every morning without ever packing a bag.
The Atlantic coast
The other direction from home is the long run south, which is a very different sort of trip — warmer with every day that passes.
France is the nearest foreign coast to home and the easiest to love. Spain and Portugal follow, and by the southern end of Portugal you have properly changed climate. The Canary Islands are further out into the Atlantic again — volcanic, steep and remarkably unlike one another — and Madeira further north of them, where the gardens are the thing people remember. Closer to home, we have also been across to Northern Ireland.
The Mediterranean and the Gulf
Further afield again. In the Mediterranean we have been to Italy, Corsica and Greece; and rather beyond it, to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman — about as far from a Cornish fishing village as it is possible to feel while still stepping off a ship.
And not by sea at all
Some journeys are too far, or too particular, for a ship. Most of these have been to see family, which is the best reason for going anywhere.
We have made numerous visits to the United States, where Paul's father has lived in Texas for over thirty years now. That is the one we have done most often by some margin.
We have also been to Japan, to see our son and daughter-in-law, who live in Tokyo. And to New Zealand — about as far from Cornwall as it is possible to get — to visit Rachel's sister.
That trip took in Singapore on the way, which is not just a stopover as far as Rachel is concerned: she lived there for a few years as a child, so going back was rather more than a night in a hotel between flights.
We have flown to Croatia as well, and crossed from there into Bosnia and Herzegovina to see Mostar — that one with our daughter, and worth the journey inland on its own account.
Longer ago, we flew to Malta when our son was still a toddler — a holiday remembered rather differently by the two of us than by him.
And Venice, which we flew to rather than sailed into. It seems only right to admit that on a page about cruising.
Belgium, the hard way
One trip deserves its own mention. We drove to Belgium in Paul's Pontiac Trans Am Firebird — which was, to put it mildly, an experience.
A large American V8 was never designed with Continental town centres in mind, and the fuel gauge has opinions of its own. We got there and we got back, and it is still one of the trips we talk about most.
The Caribbean — the furthest south cruising
The furthest south we have been cruising is the Caribbean, which we reached on a fly-cruise — flying out to meet the ship rather than spending the best part of a fortnight crossing to it.
It is a slightly different way of going about things, and for somewhere that far away it makes complete sense: you arrive with the whole holiday still ahead of you instead of behind you.
Everywhere, in one list
For anyone who likes a list — and one of us very much does — this is the tally so far:
- The far north: Norway, Iceland
- The Baltic: Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Germany, the Netherlands
- Nearer home: France, Northern Ireland
- The Atlantic coast: Spain, Portugal, Madeira, the Canary Islands
- The Mediterranean: Italy, Corsica, Greece
- The Gulf: United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman
- The Caribbean — the furthest south cruising, by fly-cruise
- By air, not by sea: the United States (Texas, many times over), Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Malta, Venice
- By Pontiac Trans Am: Belgium
And beyond the list, the ports nobody has heard of that turn out to be the best day of the trip, and the hours on deck with nothing in sight at all. That, in the end, is what it has been about. The places are only half of it.