EMBARKATION – SMOOTH AS YOU LIKE
It’s Tuesday and we’re on board the Sprit of Adventure, bound for Norway.
The process of getting here could be broken down into two distinct stages. Stage 1 was to drive down to a hotel in the vicinity of Portsmouth in preparation for embarkation. That all happened yesterday. It’s a long, five-hour drive from West Yorkshire, and I’m pleased to report that it went as smoothly as could be expected; no major traffic delays and dry weather the whole way.
My only minor gripe, not in any way directly connected to the trip, but with definite knock-on repercussions, is to do with an unsolicited attempt by someone to use my bank card a week ago; it wasn’t stolen, but the first I knew of it was a notification from the bank that a transaction had been declined – twice – and that my card had been cancelled as a result.
Top marks, then, to the bank for not allowing such a fraudulent event to happen and leave me out of pocket. Having spoken to them immediately afterwards, I was assured that no funds had left my bank account and that a replacement card would be sent as soon as possible. Which is where my minor disppointment comes in. The event happened last Tuesday, a whole week ago, yet at the time of leaving home yesterday, a replacement had still not arrived in the post. In this day and age, with all the technology available, you’d think getting a replacement to me in time for me joining a ship sailing to Norway for two weeeks wouldn’t be a problem. Clearly I was wrong.
Not that it’s a major problem, since I have alternatives to hand… however, we do live in a world where our bank cards mean so much more, and where such cards are locked into other services. You’d think they could turn it around in a week.
For years, I’ve relied on a dedicated TomTom SatNav when driving. Over the last few months, I’ve been weaning myself off it in favour of Google Maps, which not only provides me with good, clear, accurate mapping and navigation, but also live updates which notify me of upcoming holdups and suggesting alternative routes on-the-fly, in an efficient and logical manner.
Using Google maps means running my mobile phone, which uses power, both because it has to constantly update and download maps, but also to maintain my location from GPS. Because it was a five hour journey, I had the phone plugged into a power cord, and because of that, I also took the liberty of bumping up the screen brightness knowing that it was on constant charge. Except… as it turns out… it wasn’t. We can only presume that the charger wasn’t seated properly in the car socket, since by the time we arrived at our destination, the phone was warning me that I was now down to 3%, and proceeded to shut itself down. My take from this is actually a positive one; I’m currently using a Pixel 7a, which I’ve only had a few months, and knowing that it could continue working full-on like that for five hours solid without dying on me is, frankly, reassuring. My previous, 7-year-old Galaxy S9 wouldn’t have lasted an hour under those circumstances.
Anyway. That was yesterday, and today is embarkation day… That would be Stage two then…
All of which went smoothly. Saga are very good at receiving large numbers of passengers, processing them quickly and painlessly and getting them all on board ship with as little fuss as possible.
We poled up at about 12.40pm and joined the queue of cars waiting to offload luggage. Within minutes we’d been relieved of our four suitcases and handed the car over to the car parking people in return for a receipt to pick it up again at the end.
One thing that fascinated us, once on board and watching the activities shoreside, was how the luggage appeared to be transported from the main terminal building to the ship using only two or three relatively small fork-lift trucks. With such a large vessel and so many passengers, I would have expected to see a much larger truck, big enough to carry many more suitcases in a single trip… they managed it though.
It is now Tuesday evening, all are on board, the emergency drills are complete and most passengers are now well on their way to completing their first dinner of the cruise, so as I write this, we are finally on our way… Next stop Norway…
Additional…
Photos to come. There seems to be some issues with the onboard wi-fi, which we’re hoping is a temporary problem and one that can be resolved after a chat with the reception tomorrow.
Additional Additional…
My classes start in the morning, so it’s an early night for us…
