Portofino, the Millionaires' Playground

Friday, 25 September 2026. One of the highly anticipated days of our cruise. We are in Portofino and, as the ship is anchored off the port, we are tendering directly into Portofino with no need for a costly tour involving a ferry from nearby Santa Margherita.

One of just a handful of spots along the north shore of the Mediterranean Sea where the millionaires and A-listers flock, Portofino is a gorgeous tiny harbour with a curving access lined with pleasing coloured hotels, shops and villas clustered around a tiny space beore the land rises steeply to the truly magnificent and expensive properties on the hillsides from which those superstars rarely emerge before at least noon.

Luckily I can be up early mornings because at best I'm a K-lister (sold CDs around the world but in laughably small numbers, played on numerous ships from the Caribbean to the Greek Islands, been on TV and radio and also known for this blog which currently gets around 5k hits daily). Not exactly an influencer but not bad for a pensioner content creator...

Here you get an idea of the curved aspect of the approach into the harbour as witnessed by the buildings to the right of the photograph. The empty bay is where the ferries from nearby Santa Marguerita dock.

Between the ferry dock and that which we have just arrived at is a large bay devoted to the modest little motor yachts of the rich whether famous or not.

I'm in two minds about fame. I've had people come up to me in airports to say how much they enjoyed my singing on various cruise ships and once got recognised in a crowd of 12,000 people waiting to be admitted to an Andre Rieue concert and I always enjoyed it in such moderation but I imagine it must be a bit galling when you are constantly interrupted by fans in restaurants or whilst out with your family.

I think I've only ever been asked for an autograph twice, so I must be doing a good job of remaining relatively anonymous...

The last time we were here, we enjoyed a wonderful gelato at a table outside a cafe but this time we found it gone. A small kiosk nearby but without any tables and chairs carried the same name and was selling cones but we were ready for a sit down and found a place on the opposite side of the harbour.

Their gelatos were a bit more like sorbet but just as welcome and a limonata went down very well.

Then a sit on a bench on the edge of the harbour and relax...

Miss Franny woke me when I started to snore and I woke with a start, staring wildly around at the empty space where surely just a minute ago all the autograph hunters had been waiting patiently...

"Dream on..." said Miss Franny tolerantly, upon which instruction I closed my eyes again only to find an elbow in my ribs...

Oceania Sirena Cruise Index

A Rainy Day in Padstow

Friday 21 August 1992. We've made it! This is the final post covering our 1992 Cornwall holiday. Read, enjoy, laugh if you feel the urge, then please close the door and switch the lights off. Next on the list will be an up-to-date 2026 cruise around the Western Mediterrannean with Tomas and Maris!

This is Padstow on a very rainy Friday. Mum stayed at the tent and Dad, Fran, Gill and I walked around in teeming rain. We went into a cafe and asked for coffees and 4 towels...

Did I mention it rained? A typical case of making the best of it!

There is a long harbour wall at Padstow that takes the broadside force of any storms, keeping the boats and trawlers relatively safe from any battering.

The shipwreck museum had two World War II guns outside. One had to wonder whether they were connected... A sort of self-continuing business...

Dad takes a professional interest, having been kept well away from instruments of destruction during his army days! "Er... I think you look down this bit to aim it..." he tells Gill.

Later in the day it cleared up. We collect Mum and walk into Newquay, wishing a last farewell to it's beaches.

And a similar goodbye to Porth Island for 1992. In fact goodbye to quite a chunk of what you see here as a lot of it has fallen down onto the beach or into the sea depending on whether the tide was in at the time...

Cornwall 1992 Holiday Index

Zadar, Croatia

Thursday 22 August 2024. Today we are in Zadar. We've been here before but I totally fail to recognise the port. We must have been moored either somewhere else or perhaps somewhere so hideous that I've blocked it from memory... I do know that, like today, shuttle buses had to be taken to get into the city and that we had done it and enjoyed the city. Today we decided not to bother and spent the day again on the ship.

The view off the side of the ship was particularly pleasing with a harbour with twin piers directly opposite and berths and more piers to the rear of the ship from where a steady stream of ferries all bearing the company name Jadrolinija passed us by on their way either into or out of the port.

All day cars and vans were forming lines, waiting to board the next ferry and none of them seemed to have to wait long as another ferry sailed in well before the outgoing vessel had disapeared.

I once again got out the sketchpad and today used pastel pencils to produce a coloured sketch of the harbour opposite. The red roofs added to the mix of colours. I left any large boats and ships out but added a few very basic shapes to represent the small yachts and pleasure boats lined up against the harbour wall.

Miss Franny told me afterwards that I had several onlookers as they passed our table on Deck 12. I was mostly oblivious, looking out over the side as I was, but one or two stopped to talk and made nice comments.

A closer look at Miss Franny's bracelet which was made for her by our granddaughter, Grace especially for the cruise. It wouldn't be Grace if there weren't a few Disney motifs included!

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Bridlington, Yorkshire, 3-8 June 2023

Saturday 3 June 2023. After Great Yarmouth we had just two days at home then set off for Bridlington, again on the east coast. Stand by for more icicles...

We had two days at home to wash clothes, refuel the car and call in to visit my Mum before heading out again across the country but this time more or less in a straight line across from West to East.

The weather was pretty similar to Great Yarmouth with the exception that the sun was also hiding from us. A mix of grey skies, great gusts of wind and the occasional flying seagull dropping somewhere alarmingly close meant layering up. T-shirt, hoodie and lightweight jacket wasn't cutting it. I bought a new heavier jacket before the shivering stopped. I started to sketch this scene of the harbour, sitting on a bench on one of the narrow piers with a "pirate" ship taking punters on a "10-minute cruise in the bay" from just behind me.That would be 2 minutes out of the harbour wall, 3 minutes along the bay, with 5 minutes doing the same in reverse then. At least it was twice as long as you got on a Speedboat ride...

We opted for a 2.5 hour cruise on the newly refurbished Yorkshire Belle to see the seabirds at Bempton Cliffs. This was more like it. We sat on the foredeck, huddled up against the wind, watching the odd seal surface briefly before diving to shout to its mates "No... still cold!". One did a spectacular backflip right next to us, luckily away from the boat - I'm not sure how I'd have reacted to a seal landing on my lap! Then past Flamborough Lighthouse and the commentary started to mention birds, guillemots, kittywakes, gannets and occasionally the odd puffin. I couldn't tell them from guillemots unless you managed to spot the distinctive beak. They are a lot smaller than people think. Perhaps because they look a bit like penguins you expect them to be that sort of size. Anyway, whenever the commentator announced a puffin there was a chorus of "Oh yes! There!" whilst I was looking all over the place, spotting a bird, looking for the beak only to find it was a gull of some sort...

Our time at the cliffs came to an end and we turned round for the trip back. We gave up our spot and went into the enclosed deck where the heady odour of oil and marine fuel started to waft across us. Just out of dry dock, the boat had sprung an oil leak. We made it back to Bridlington and the Yorkshire Belle stayed where it was for the next few days whilst it got sorted out. As I stepped onto the pier a seagull welcomed me back. Well... front actually... "Oh! That's lucky!" called a middle-aged chap. "Yes, this too!" I laughed, nudging him over the edge of the pier. "Make a wish!" I advised just before he hit the water... (Disclaimer: The later part of this paragraph may not be strictly true...)

Monday 5 June 2023. We caught a bus out to Bridlington Old Town and Priory. I'll deal with the Priory in a separate article. Bridlington Old Town turned out to be just the one street. It was Monday. Most of the shops are closed on Monday... Never mind, we reached the end of the road and then crossed a main road upon which we were at the gates to the Priory.

The remaining bits of the Priory survived the Reformation being kept in use as a parish church. This was the Gateway to the Priory that apparently housed a museum. We didn't know that at the time...

Four beautiful white horses were being groomed on the green before the Priory. When we came back out later, a white horse-drawn hearse was standing waiting to be hitched up.

Plein air sketch of the harbour. I did some of the pencil bits in situ but it was numbingly cold. Too cold to sit for more than 30 minutes and I took the photo seen at the top of the page, then did quite a lot in the hotel bar, squinting at the tiny screen of my phone. I finished the last third of the pencilling on our last day. Luckily my original bench was free. Actually they were all free, no-one else was so foolish as to sit in the cold and wind. I did the colour in the bar on the last night.

Bridlington, 2023 Index

Paignton Harbour

Thursday 12 August 1993. We drove from Sidmouth to Paignton. We had been in 1990 but just about the only thing I could remember about it was drawing the harbour from near the public toilets. Yes folks, it's all glamour on one of our holidays...

Anyway the harbour is a lovely place to start so let's have a look round here before we wander off.

There are plenty of boats tied up here, from commercial small boats offering fishing trips to visitors. The visitors come with visions of huge big game sailfins and probably arrive back from a trip with a few herring. "But you should have seen the one that got away...!"

The ends of the two harbour walls are labelled IN and OUT to ensure that no landlubbers crash into each other going in opposite directions on the same side of the opening out to sea.

Fishing trips are bookable on the harbour side, with each boat having its own small kiosk. There are ferries to Brixham and Torquay, River Dart cruises and one kiosk offering both mackerel and wreck fishing. I imagine that means fishing for fish over the site of a wreck rather than any amateur salvage operation. Hook onto any sunken U-Boat and you'd soon be joining it...

Once we have laughed derisorily at the tiny fish some would-be shark killer has brought back, we leave the delights of the harbour and out to see what else Paignton has to offer. There's this bit of thatch that catches my eye and I amble around it before coming across an old red telephone box and an anchor. Apparently it used to sail off when it got fed up of people shouting "Hello? Can you hear me?"

There is a very attractive and probably ancient green sward along Esplanade Road. Not many towns can boast a space large enough or with architechture of a quality fit for calling an Esplanade. I was born in such a town which had a long wide thoroughfare fronting the town hall which was famous the world over apparently. In fact my grandfather, stationed out in Burma during World War II sent a letter back to the local newspaper in Rochdale saying how everyone, on being told where he was from, answered "Isn't that the town with a grand centre?"

In appreciation of Paignton's foresight and continuing good sense in keeping it, I plonked myself down to enjoy it whilst reading a book. It was The Silence of the Lambs in fact. And in truth I heard not a solitary bleat the whole time I was there...

Return to Sidmouth and Devon Holiday 1993 Index Page

Weymouth and Maiden Castle

Thursday 22 Feb 1996. We left Poole and drove to Weymouth where the sun came out for a while to cheer us up.

By the time we got to Weymouth it was dinnertime and the town was surprisingly crowded. We even had to queue to park the car. The cafe we had visited on a previous visit was full and we ended up with a somewhat disappointing sandwich in a dockside pub that was crammed full to bursting.

Once twin towns of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, to either side of Weymouth Harbour, they were rivals for the use of the harbour to such an extent that Queen Elizabeth I got so tired of the steady streams of complaints and petitions by one against the other, she united them as a single borough through an Act of Parliament in 1571. Despite Melcombe Regis being the main centre, the new borough became known as Weymouth. In the 18th century the town was patronised by King George III. There is a statue of him in the town and at Osmington, four miles to the north east, is a chalk cut hill figure of the king riding a horse. Perhaps unfortunately for the town, it shows the king riding away from Weymouth.

The harbour was a major embarkation point for some half million Allied troops to board for the beaches of Normandy on D-Day in World War II. At the time we visited it was the port for ferry crossings to the Channel Isles.

Havelet is a roll-on roll-off car ferry. She started life as the Cornouailles with Brittany Ferries in 1977 and later transferred to British Channel Islands Ferries as Havelet operating for them between 1989 and 2000 between Weymouth (later Poole) and the Channel Islands. A bit unstable, she had aft sponsons added in 1990 at which time her rear deck was extended towards the stern, making a longer ship. In 1992 travelling out of Cork and bound for Roscoff in Brittany, she was struck by a large wave and in danger of sinking, but managed to right herself and return to Cork for repairs and reports. The only damage found was to the cars she was carrying. In 1994 she transferred to Condor travelling between Weymouth and the Channel Islands in which role she is pictured. Subsequently she was sold to Prekookeanska Plovidbla, the parent company of Montenegro Lines in 2000 and operated between Bar and Bari being renamed Sveti Stefan before being scrapped in 2013.

The sunshine was somewhat illusory - the cold drove us back to the car and the car drove us seven miles to a hill just outside the county town of Dorchester. Maiden Castle is one of the largest and certainly one of the most impressive iron age hill forts in England. Despite a complex system of zig-zag paths that attackers had to negotiate to reach the gates whilst the defenders threw all sorts of nasties at them, the Romans succeeded in storming the place after bombarding it with rocks with their siege engines.

It was windy and bitterly cold. Miss Franny opted to stay in the car whilst I trudged uphill, bent almost double against the wind and cold. I found the ramparts guarded now as they would have been when the fort was still inhabited - by companies of highly trained 'battle sheep', more commonly known as 'battering rams'.

Get back in the car you silly old fool! Hey - less of the old. I was only a silly middle aged fool then...

Return to England South Coast, 1996 Index Page

Bournemouth to Poole

Wednesday 21 Feb 1996. We have reached Bournemouth after a day circumnavigating the Isle of Wight yesterday in snow and a howling wind.

Just as a small contrast, this is what Bournemouth looks like once we wake, have breakfast and leave the hotel.

Though it appears sunny and gorgeous, it hides a fierce temperature. I'm not talking about heat!

Bournemouth is a hilly town with an attractive seafront and pier. The shopping centre up the hill nearby awaited us. And, oh yum! - a Wimpy burger bar! Actually the temperature was so horrendously cold that, even after a full breakfast, we found ourselves having a Wimpy burger at 10:00am and only an hour later had hot apple pie with cream to warm up again!

It was so cold in Bournemouth that by lunchtime we had decided we couldn't just spend the day walking about and we returned to the car and drove along the coast to Poole.

After finding somewhere to park we wandered around the pottery. I got into conversation with a glassblower who was so grateful at being spoken to by someone in the large but hitherto silent crowd that he kept bringing his work over to show me at every stage, pointing out bits and pieces and explaining exactly what he was doing. He was making small coloured scent bottles and they were beautiful.

I'm not sure whether it is because of the abundance of sailors wanting to get drunk whilst on dry land, or whether it is just that Devon's seaside harbour towns catered for families gathering to wave off their drunken menfolk being stretchered back onto ships deleriously happy, but these towns always seem to have built their pubs with special care for architectural attractiveness and a unique presentation that pubs from the mid 20th century onwards had almost lost entirely.

At the time these pubs were built they may well have been brewing their own ale I suppose and thus not subject to the standardisation that large breweries were to bring to the publican trade in later years. Anyway, the gable end of the Poole Arms was entirely tiled in green and I couldn't help wondering how many poor souls had staggered out after a night's drinking and thought they were in the Gents...

Return to England South Coast, 1996 Index Page

Boscastle

Friday 9 August 1996. We left Tintagel and a few miles away we came to Boscastle where we had tea.

We looked in vain for the real cottage that is the inspiration for one of Fran's models. As we were in the last shop before going back to the car I found a postcard of the cottage and we were able to ask the shop owner where it was.

Boscastle is another of those never-changing fishing villages of Cornwall. The cliffs make a natural harbour, protected from the sea by a long inlet and harbour wall.

The village winds its way down alongside the River Jordan - what? Well not the one in the Holy Land perhaps but another smaller River Jordan that flows into the River Valency, seen here. There is a Museum of Witchcraft here, apart from the gift shops, perhaps the only nod to tourism. It very bizarrely contained the skeleton of a local "witch", Joan Wytte, who died in Bodmin Jail after being jailed in 1813 for brawling. She had been known for a local healer and clairvoyant and before her death aged 38 had become quite bad tempered violent, possibly due to a tooth abscess. Her body was somehow not buried and instead her skeleton became used for pranking the locals and for use in seances and eventually spent 40 years hanging on the wall of the museum. She was eventually decently buried two years after our visit, in 1998, after poltergeist activity in the museum.

We wandered down to the harbour and its boats with the neat coils tangles of rope. They young-uns must ha' been at they scrumpy agin'...

There was an aged bridge crossing the River Valency and I sat on the river bank to do this sketch. Eight years later it was totally destroyed by the great flood of 2004 and is now an elegant, though much less pleasing steel footbridge.

There was the gentle creaking and clank of a water wheel, almost hidden in shadow. The shop on the left promises books, music, crystals, candles, arcane artifacts & pictures. I do like a good arcane artifact!

Return to Cornwall Holiday 1996 Index