Great Western Coffee Shop

Early morning thoughts – travelling Transatlantic with P&O on the Aurora

It's early. The clock on my computer says 05:40, the latest forum post says 06:30 and ship's time is 04:40 (can't set my computer to that, as there's nowhere in that particular timezone in the database). The cabin is pitch black, save for the glow of this laptop. Clocks have been going back an hour each night as we head west, and a usually-early waken has woken even earlier.  Having pulled back a tiny crack in the heavy curtains that our cabin steward closed while we were at dinner, I can see the first glimmer of dawn giving me some sort of feeling of natural outside cycle.  A first cup of coffee sits beside me; unique on our various cruises (help, we're turning into regulars) P&O have a hospitality tray in the room and I'm not scurrying off to the night own coffee machine on some distant deck, trousers roughly pulled on. In time, this is the lull before the storm on Aurora - only 24 hour reception is open just at the moment; the late bars are (probably) all shut by now and almost everyone is asleep as they recharge for another day "busy doing nothing".

Aurora carries about 1800 passengers and about 850 crew. Deck numbers go up to 13, though the lower numbers are a mystery to passengers - starting at 4 for the medical facilities.  Lifts fore, mid and aft - in groups of three at each location - carry passengers up and down; big, wide staircases too but many passengers on the boat aren't physically fit enough to make it even from one floor to the next.  Our first cruise - with a different operator in a different part of the world - remains notable in my though that everyone else seemed 10% slower, 20% smaller and 30% older than we were.  That has mellowed with time - so this time I'll say 10% older (for I have looked in the mirror after 20 years) and still 20% smaller. I'm no longer tripping over slower people though, as I have slowed down.   Still busy though.

Still busy.  Still busy with catching up with papers, thoughts, coding.  The urgent was done before we left, but some of the important remain. And the lack of day to day mandatory things going on around us allow for some good quality chunks of thought / coding / output.  Still busy on board too - it feels "busy doing nothing" - open days with no "have to"s across the Atlantic, yet still breakfast, bridge class, lunch, cybersecurity lecture, and evening meal each being an outing from our cabin. We've not yet taken in any shows, any bars, any sports.  Busy doing nothing.

So much more to write up in chunks; of our fellow passengers, of food, of staff, of organisation, of internet access, of lectures and entertainment.  But I'm going to head off for another cup of coffee and then, perhaps, do some coding in ruby (it's a programming language, folks!).  2 hours to breakfast, 5 hours to "Bridge for beginners" where this innocent looking old couple (us!) did rather well - beginners luck and logic - against the couple we played yesterday, much to (his) upset, I fear.  He was ... bored ... done it a bit before ... thought he would romp through.   Oops.  Wonder who will be there today; I expect the "try it for a day" brigade will have moved on. Suspect we'll stick with it.

Now – where's that coffee??

Have to admit I love "sea days" - looking at your itinerary you're going to have quite a few.

I've only been on the bigger ships (Ventura, Azura and Britannia) but I note that Aurora has a lot of similar facilities.

You really can make yourself very "busy doing nothing" - by "nothing" I mean having a drink, eating (lunch), going to a presentation, eating (afternoon tea), doing a pub quiz, eating (burger or pizza from the poolside outlet), reading in the ships library or going to watch a film, eating (dinner - I recommend the "Beach House", as I see Aurora has that, if you fancy something away from the MDR), going to a show, eating (the buffet is open nearly 24hrs, at least on the bigger ships).

Did I mention eating? Anyway, enjoy!

With apologies if anyone's already posted this elsewhere: If you want to know how far grahame and lisae have got, look here:

https://www.seascanner.com/ships-position-aurora

I was slightly amused to see this clickbait headline come up while I was looking at the online version of the local paper

(http://www.mbob.co.uk/rforum/cruise1.png)

Although a decade is an extreme example, I have met people (of retirement age +) onboard who have booked concurrent cruises. I got talking to a couple on Ventura a few years ago, who had decided halfway through the cruise we were on, to book for the next one and stay onboard. I also met a old gent on one of our cruises (a widower, and ex-merchant seaman) who said he spent more time at sea than he did on land, as he'd been at sea most of his life and preferred it.

My parents did a lot of cruising and once returned describing their trip as a "care home at sea" - they were in their early 80's themselves at the time!

A friend of mine has made several return trips to America travelling as a passenger on board a cargo ship.
They speak very highly of this mode of transport.

The vast cabin would, on a cruise ship be called "super double luxury emperor class" or some similar superlative nonsense.
One crossing was exceedingly rough, to the extent that the highly experienced Captain pronounced it the worst he had known in decades of seafaring.
Another trip was in fine weather but delayed by dockside snow on arrival that hampered unloading.

Food and drink was reported as being of good quality but limited in choice if compared to a cruise ship.

Passenger travel by cargo ship is probably reasonably green. These ships burn a great volume of heavy oil, but the ship is running anyway and the EXTRA fuel used by carrying a passenger is too small to measure.
A cruise ship by contrast is running solely or primarily for the passengers, and if it conveys say 1,000 passengers, it would be reasonable to "blame" each passenger for one thousandth of the total fuel used.

Many cargo ships convey a few passengers, the law limits the number to 12 unless there is a doctor on board.
Most USA registered cargo ships don't carry passengers.

Yes it’s very different to being on a cruise ship.  I have a friend who used to be a captain on one of the huge cargo ships and his wife sometimes travelled with him as a ‘passenger’.  The food and drink is largely what the crew need for the voyage, and you have to make your own entertainment much of the time, but it would be a experience I’d love to try - more so than a cruise.  Not for everybody though!

I have a vague memory that Michael Palin used them once or twice on his various journeys?

There is some considerable truth to that ... a story for another day, though.   But think this. 1850 passengers plus 800 crew for 30 days about 80,000 sea days. Which equates to 217 years.  With life expectancy what it is, and the skewed age profile of passengers, I suspect it would be an exceptional cruise (and I already know it's happened on this one since we boarded) on which the crew don't have to deal with someone passed away.

Ah well ... back to my coding ... reverse engineering a Perl script and data files to rewrite as object based Ruby. "Goodness your pack is heavy" said Lisa .. it contains "Ruby in a Nutshell", "Programming Ruby" and "Ruby Pocket reference" and as I code it's all coming back to me.

Re cargo ships it's getting harder all the time less ships and more health checks.  I have a friend who is currently on his way to Australia by train and Ship! Train to China Ship to Brisbane.

He's coming back via Singapore and train from then on if, I think it's Cambodia, has reopened its railway.

He had terrible job booking and has had to have an up-to-date health check because of the no doctor on board. So for coming back he'll have to have another  check up before he leaves Australia as the outward one will have expired..

Indeed, a very sad but not infrequent occurrence - which is why all cruise ships have a morgue.

I've not seen the morgue, but did see the Medical Centre on Britannia (after a minor cycling accident on a Norwegian mountain path) - it's impressive (like a hospital intensive care ward) although thankfully most passengers will never see it.

Can you get a health check for your health check to prevent that?

Somthing I have always questioned, can you get a decent pint of cask ale (real ale) on a cruise ship? sounds like a floating prison to me, and there are no walks or cycle rides through the trees, so being able to keep the other half happy, and enjoy a nice few pints perhaps?
Know it can be done where the yeast is in little teabags, or the beer is racked off each day. just wonder if it is done?

You raise some interesting questions ... along lines I'm looking to address in what, I suspect, will be the next travelogue.  I'm sorting out a few more things yet though, in relation to the server.

Beer flights in the Pub on Azura when I was onboard a few months ago. Included my local favourite "Good Old Boy" from West Berskhire Brewery. Impressed.

The likes of Doom Bar, London Pride and Marston's Pedigree are routinely available on the P&O ships. Not sure about other cruise lines.

I have to ask if this Norwegian mountain path was on a shore visit or an onboard equivalent of a Snow Dome?

It was at Flamm in Norway, which is a spectacular end-of-fjord location - the ship sails around 5-6 hours inland from the open sea to get there. Spectacular views all the way in and out.

It has a quite famous mountain railway, which we rode up on and hired bikes to cycle back down. I came to grief about 1km into the approx 25km downhill ride, so went to the Medical Centre on Britannia to get some cuts and grazes cleaned up.

They looked after me very well, but as it's not the NHS (or the EU) I had to pay around £75 to be cleaned up.

As the Flamm Railway is on my bucket list, I've noted this and will avoid the temptation to get on a bike to get back down again if I get there - thanks for the tip TC!

Many cruise ships sell ALLEGEDLY cask conditioned beer, but I very much doubt that it is "real" as defined by CAMRA.
Proper real ale contains sediment, and often hops also in the cask. When delivered it is not yet fit for consumption. The casks have to be placed in the pub cellar, and vented which causes a secondary fermentation and gives the beer a modest degree of sparkle and allows the sediment to fall to the bottom of the cask.
I do not think that this could be achieved on board a ship.

I suspect that the beer is specially produced by allowing the secondary fermentation to occur in large tanks or vats at the brewery, the beer is then drawn off, clear and ready for immediate consumption.
Most traditional brewers offered beer "racked clear and bright" for use at outdoor events, parties in private houses, and other situations without a proper cellar and time for secondary fermentation. Also useful for public houses that had run out of beer, since the "racked clear and bright" product could be sold within seconds of delivery without waiting a day or two for it to be ready.

Such beer has very limited keeping qualities and should be consumed within a day or two or it becomes flat and then goes sour.
For use on a cruise ship, such beer would have to be stored under modest gas pressure to keep it sparkling, and prevent oxygen in the air turning it sour.
So not really "real ale" by the accepted definition, but should still be enjoyable.

The extra costs of special treatment would be offset by the absence of excise duty.

But then add cruise company profit back on, which makes it similar to large pub chain prices  >:(

The ales that I mentioned earlier appeared to be out of the bottle. Guess I'm not enough of a purist - and even the likes of West Berkshire Brewery aren't either?

Bottled beer keeps well and is more suitable for use on board a ship.
MOST bottled beer contains no sediment, a few brands of which Worthington White Shield is the most well known, do contain sediment.
Such bottled beer should be stored upright for a few days before consumption. The bottle should be opened carefully and the beer poured gently into the glass, taking care to leave the sediment in the bottle.

Coming late to this, but I've just really enjoyed reading Graham's first post - the perfect post-lunch start to a wet holiday afternoon in Scotland.

We'll be crossing the Atlantic by sea in exactly a year, bound for San Francisco - I should say, to keep vaguely on topic, by Amtrak across the US.

Thank you.  I wondered whether to just post a day or two, but a succession of heavily-liked posts has encouraged me to keep going.   There won't be one today - I'm posting from St. John's, Newfoundland, on a day packed with activity.  I rose early to write / email a strategy report to the chair of the board of Railfuture prior to tomorrow's meeting, and then took to the decks as we came into port.  A morning looking around the town - just coming to a close - and Lisa and I have an excursion planned this afternoon.   Currently having a "fix" of decent Internet connection in the local Starbucks!


Would love to read some more travelogues.  Lessons from overseas can be so informative to the UK ... I expect you'll find that in my post tomorrow.