Royal Portbury, Bristol

Today, we joined the CMV cruise ship Magellan on its two week voyage to the Mediterranean. We travelled down from North Yorkshire yesterday, staying overnight in a Travelodge near Bristol. Doing that takes some of the pressure off; I’ve had enough near-misses, when I’ve been caught up in stationery traffic, worrying that I’m not going to make it to the port on time, to appreciate the extra safety net the strategy provides.

Embarkation didn’t start until 12:50pm, which we figured should give us enough time to find breakfast somewhere and do a little last minute shopping for essentials, so we headed for Cribbs Causeway, a huge retail park a mere stones-throw way from the port.

We decided the small in-store cafe at Morrisons would provide us with a good value breakfast. Good value it is, but unfortunately, the service was diabolical. Having queued for ages just to get to the checkout to place our food order, it was a whopping 45 minutes before our breakfast finally arrived at our table. All the time we were waiting, we watched the minutes tick away, and were on the verge of cancelling the order order altogether (which we really didn’t want to do because we were both starving). At the thirty-minute mark, Tracey enquired as to how much longer we were going to have to wait, and was told that it would be just another 5 minutes. 15 minutes later, we were tucking into our breakfast. Top marks for the food and the price – Bottom marks for service. To be fair, it was busy, but I imagined one person slaving away in a tiny kitchen out back, over a single-ring camping stove. Come on Morrisons (Bristol)! Get your act together…

With less time than we’d hoped we’d have, we dashed around The Cribbs Causeway Mall, reminiscent of our manic taxi-drive dash into Guiaquil in Ecuador a couple of years ago, when we had to acquire a pair of binoculars at the very last minute. It’s something we seem to end up doing time and time again.

Finally, all our shopping done, we headed off towards Bristol Cruise Terminal, only to find, when we got there, the gates closed and printed signs telling us to go to Royal Portbury Dock a couple of miles away. When I queried the change, it turns out that the dock we usually sail from (which has always been on the Marco Polo), isn’t big enough for the Magellan, which is much wider. Both docks have a loch through which the ship must pass to get out into the open sea. It just surprised me that no-one had figured that out a little earlier.

Embarkation was relatively painless. I groaned a little at the fact that the long-stay car park is a short bus ride away from the terminal, and that they wouldn’t allow me to drop my piles of art materials off at the terminal first, before parking the car. The man in the high-viz jacket who was co-ordinating the influx of traffic, was quite insistent, that we go straight to the car park and take the shuttle to the quayside, meaning the art materials had to be placed into a wagon with the rest if the luggage. Don’t get me wrong; this is nothing to do with me having any qualms about the art materials sharing the same space as passenger luggage; it’s more to do with the logistics of how my art materials are all bagged up on a sack barrow, ready to just wheel on board. When we finally got to the quayside and I was able to retrieve my art materials from the wagon, the man who was managing the operation asked me why I hadn’t just driven straight down to the terminal directly… (aaargh!)

We were on board ship in no time at all; one of the great perks of being a tutor is that we get fast-tracked through the check-in and security process.

So, here we are on the good ship Magellan. I’ve been given my schedule of classes, and my first task as art tutor was to appear on stage alongside my fellow crafters and lecturers during the ‘Welcome Aboard’ show, to advertise my classes. Frankly, I could have done without that, mostly because it’s likely to increase the number of people who turn up at the first class, and subsequently the number of disappointed people who we won’t be able to fit in. Hey ho…

The rest of the evening was spent relaxing in the Taverners Pub, playing darts and being entertained by an Irish singer (who we haven’t seen in there before, but who is absolutely perfect for that environment… he was going down a storm!).