HEADING SOUTH

A four and a half hour drive south from West Yorkshire to Portsmouth on a busy Easter Bank Holiday weekend; what could go wrong?…

Well, not a lot as it happens. Despite warnings on the media about a high probability of Easter-getaway traffic chaos, our journey went surprisingly smoothly, with no notable holdups at all.

In fact, our only minor concerns were related to our own car, which seems to have developed something of a temperamental clutch. We had even thought it might need to be looked at before we went away, but it’s been behaving all week… fingers crossed it’ll continue to do so until we get back home. There were just a couple of occasions on the drive down, when we were passing through sluggish urban areas, and when leaving a services after a brief comfort stop, when a more frequent change between lower gears was required, when the cluth reminded us of its potential to muck things up. When it does decide to throw a wobbly, it can be almost impossible to change gear or put it into gear if it isn’t aready engaged. When that happens, turning it off and then turning it back on again appears to be the only action that corrects it (not ideal when you’re on a motorway on-ramp and an irate driver is behind you leaning on their horn while you’re desperately crunching the gears trying to get it to behave).

Historically, transit from home to ship has always been a nail-biting time; last year, we had a car-related problem of a different kind that threatened to ambush us on our journey. I recall many similar events over the years, where the journey has caused palpitations at the eleventh hour; I was the last to board the Marco Polo for its 50th Anniversary tour after having sat in stationary traffic on the M25 less than 30 minutes away from the port, due to an accident (the weather was atrocious too, I seem to remember). It’s one of the reasons I prefer to book a hotel for the night before… I’ve been up at stupid o’clock to travel the length of the country on embarkation day many times; travelling down the day before just takes some of the pressure off.

Clutch concerns aside, we arrived at our hotel in good time, and with all out nails intact. Dinner came from a nearby Chinese takeway ordered en route, and we’re now only a 30-40 minute drive from the cruise terminal, were we are due to embark tomorrow afternoon. Let’s hope I can get it into gear in the morning…