All at sea

We arrived early in Portsmouth to catch the ferry to Santander so that we could revisit the days of our youth.

The house where Alison was born in 1952 has long since fallen down.

The Savoy Ballroom where we met one rapturous evening in 1946 has been pulled down.

The alternative ballroom of the once vibrant South Parade Pier opposite, where stars including Harry Gold (who?) and his Pieces of Eight once performed, is now a sad looking amusement arcade.

If you wish to park your car anywhere within 5,000 miles of the pier it will cost you £2.40 for the first hour, £10 all day. Do they really wonder why so many flee the country for holidays at the first opportunity?

For old times’ sake we took our egg sandwiches in the gardens of Canoe Lake.  A small piece of bread carelessly thrown attracted a million pigeon and seagulls. No wonder there was a sign warning not to feed bread to the swans. Just look at the size of the swans - and the lady who threw the bread!

And so through old streets, less familiar than they once were, past the site of Portsmouth and Brighton Breweries where once I worked and, like the Savoy, demolished; by the Register Office where we started our thousand year journey, still there: at least they still have some respect for bits of the history that made Portsmouth famous.

Finally to the back of the dockyard from whence thousands of Bradley Wiggins once charged en masse to get away from work twice daily, when cycling was a necessity and not a sport and where now we joined the escapees from the worst British summer on record waiting to board the ferry heading across the Bay of Biscay for Spain.

The Pont Aven, relatively new flagship of Brittany Ferries, is a pleasant experience of efficiency at sea, even though the cabin, in size, bore a resemblance to a cell of an open prison. We dined well, attended by one of those fast running polite French waiters who cover more ground and customers in an hour than his counterparts in England do in a week.

I have never been cruising, but have heard tales of Germans who bag all the deck chairs at dawn. Surely these are not all Germans?

These days, dogs can go back and forth where once they were banned; although, clearly, only those who can read notices.

We enjoyed a calm crossing of the notorious Bay of Biscay, but one odd thing I had a job to come to terms with was the peculiar sense of the macabre of the designer of the carpet for a place where sea sickness on a rough crossing would hardly need encouragement.

All in all, a recommended means of getting out of the country. But 24 hours at sea is sufficient cruising experience for me, although I suppose it would be slightly different aboard my own ship!

Click pics for enlargement, especially the one on the right.