Port Vendres, France

Monday, 28 September 2026. We continue our cruise with a visit to Port Vendres, France. It's a new port for us but a bit of a dull day as yet!

We pass through customs and turn towards the town, finding ourselves walking along the inevitable marina. It's still a couple of hours off lunchtime but the place seems eerily deserted.

The only people about are our fellow passengers and the quiet of the place seems even to have affected them. One or two greet us in subdued voices. You would think it a Sunday rather than a weekday.

There's a row of parked cars along the dockside. Presumably somebody has been up early and gone out for a day's fishing.

The map we were given shows that there is still quite a way to go in front of us to round the corner where there is a park at the end of the bay and a church on the opposite bank.

The dockside path runs out and we have a choice of walking back and retracing our steps but on the higher level where the road and shps are, or climbing the staircase against the tall wall that supports the town and stops it falling into the bay.

I take a deep breath and we take the steps up the wall. "Oh, well done!" says Miss Franny as I reach the top. I don't answer... I'm too busy dealing with screaming back muscles and the invisible men who keep plunging needles into me... We take a moment.

We are now around the corner and the church is visible and thw trees on the left are the edge of the park. It contains a few statues and memorials to President Charles de Gaulle.

The park was as far as we walked. We came back along the row of shops on the upper level but failed to find an open cafe. Then by the time we arrived back near the customs house, the sun had decided to come out at last and altered the mood of the place.

After some lunch we made our way to Baristas again and I started this, cursing myself several times that I would start something so complicated and it would be the following day before I managed to finsh it!

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Excursion to Cassis

Sunday 27 September 2026. Today we awaken in the French port of Marseilles. We are booked on a half-day excursion to a lovely old seaside town called Cassis.

Getting there though turns into something of a will we - won't we, as there has been a bicycle race on the narrow roads surrounding the hills above the town and there has been a bad accident that has closed the road, leading to some long queues and delays. We eventually reach the coach park - there is no way a coach could get down into the village.

So we hop onto a road train and ride down to the lowest spot we can get before we have to take to foot, emerging down the steps shown here to the right of the pink building.

First priority is a drink. Luckily there are plenty of cafes open despite it being Sunday. After the steps I need to catch my breath before trotting off anywhere.

The marina is full of rather more modest yachts than Portofino, but sadly still out of range of my pocket... In fact about the only boat within range of my pocket would be an inflatable and I've watched too many programmes about lifeboats to fall for that option!

We have a slow wander up into the town centre, where a market displays a mixture of goods and crafts to tempt the traveller and Miss Franny disappears into the same biscuit shop we visited on our last visit here in 2007. We came out loaded with several bags of biscuits...

We had time to walk slowly around the marina. It's warm and already I'm wanting another drink! We settle for a tub of ice cream each as an alternative.

Then we take a seat near to the meeting place for the walk back up to the road train. I knew that I would never manage to keep up with the rest of the people in our party so I had a word with the guide and we set off up the hill. We got to the road train stop just as he arrived with another train load of passengers and soon the rest of our party was seen coming up the hill.

Back onboard the ship in Marseilles with the church of Notre-Dame de la Garde High on the hill la Garde for which it is named, it can be reached by yet another of those little road trains. It has an all-round 360 degree view of the city and from it, with a good pair of binolculars, you'd be able to spot us ignoring it for the more pressing needs of lunchtime...

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Down the Road to Lowestoft

Monday 19 August 2002. We are staying in Great Yarmouth for a week and after a relaxing day in the town yesterday, we wake on Monday morning ready for a bit of exploring.

So we set off after our customary trip to the beach hut for coffee and make our first stop of the day at Lowestoft just down the coast. It is the most easterly town in the United Kingdom and consequently the first town to see the sunrise every day. Well... on the days when the sun isn't blocked by clouds, rain, fog, snow, and vast alien space ships... The photo shows the East Point Pavilion from where you can sit in complete dry and strain to see the sunrise through the clouds, rain, fog, snow... (I may have exaggerated about the vast alien spaceships...)

As with many seaside fishing villages, the harbour has turned more into a marina for pleasure craft owned by people who rarely visit and even more rarely actually take them out to sea.

The Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club. Founded in 1859, the clubhouse of 1902-3 superceded an earlier one of 1866 that the club quickly outgrew. Meetings and races are held both at sea and on the easily reached Suffolk and Norfolk Broads, the nearest of which - Oulton Broad - we shall see in the next article.

Me, wistfully wishing I could afford to buy a boat and moor it and ignore it here... The yacht club does advertise its membership and mooring rates as competative, so I really should look wistfully at more exclusive marinas, perhaps in Monte Carlo or Portofino. At least I've now grown out of looking wistfully at the Marina in Stingray...

Lowestoft railway station. Opened as Lowestoft Central Station by the Great Eastern Railway in 1847, it was the eastern terminus for lines from Ipswich to the south and Norwich to the north west. A second station, Lowestoft North, was closed along with the direct line from Lowestoft to Great Yarmouth in 1970. It is now a residential site - Beeching Drive.

The station is half a mile from the main centre of town and they were originally separated by green fields along a cliff top. We walked through today's streets to the main shopping street.

In fact we walked up the shopping street further into the town than we had on previous visits and found the old part of the town. Here we found the old High Street with buildings kept in the character of the old town.

Narrow alleyways known as "scores" led from the High Street to where the fishermen had their huts in the old days. The name here suggests the brewing of beer may have taken place somwhere near! Malsters Score twists and turns - turning to the left at the far end of this photograph. In the past because of these blind turns, it was known as a dangerous place to walk at night and there were instances of robbery particularly of sailors using the score to return to their ships.

Spurgeons Score has no such twists and turns, but starts as a stepped alley and continues today down a long straight street. In the past dwellings would be much more crowded than they are today...

South Flint House is faced with knapped flints, a feature of many older buildings in this part of the UK. This one goes back to the 1500s.

Here and there what is obviously a building of greater age sits amongst the more modern box-shaped shops and whilst this is no different to almost every town in the country the sight of a more attractive and less severe building does make you wish that modern architects could apply a little more creativity into their work these days.

Inside the old pharmacy. The old shelving had been retained and preserved but had, of course, modern-day products on the shelves. I suppose most of us buy liquid soap these days, but I can still get nostalgic about a sudden whiff of Cusson's Imperial Leather soap bars and was amazed once in a "living museum" at the familiarity of cakes of pink carbolic soap that I wouldn't have smelt since early childhood in the 1950s at my grandparents' house. Not that I'd particularly like to go back to living like that, but it brought back memories of Mum scraping a cake of dark green Fairy soap on collars and cuffs before putting shirts in the washing machine.

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

Barcelona

Monday, 20 May 2019. Our last port of call for this Mediterranean Medley cruise is Barcelona. Marella Dream docks away from our usual spot opposite the statue of Columbus and we will need to take a shuttle bus to that area before we can have a wander.

We've done Las Ramblas, we've done the outside of La Familia Sagrada, we've done the Gaudi park and houses and we've done the aquarium. We've even done the bike ride (just the once!) so this time we are going to walk round the harbour over the swing bridge and just take things easy.

There's enough going on to keep us amused and there's a variety of ships and boats for us to look at. This is a training ship. It looked as though they were taking on a new crew as we walked past it.

An outdoor restaurant and bar at the side of the training ship. It soothes the nerves of the instructors after a voyage...

The obligatory arty-farty photo of the cruise. A bit of a stench was building up. Ah... it's the refuse truck come to empty the bins!

There were a few large yachts amongst the private craft in the harbour area. No doubt some were biding time before heading off to Monte-Carlo for the Monaco Grand Prix the following weekend. I would have been too, but I'd told the gardener to take the yacht home...

We went all the way round the harbour to find the far end full of fake goods sales people. Notices on poles warned that you could be fined for buying from them. There's no way for the police to stop this trade other than that. They have lookouts and there are so many of them that you'd need hundreds of men to be able to contain them and then what would you do with them? They just gather their goods up in the blankets on which they are displayed and dodge round corners until any police have gone past.

We stopped for a slush drink each from a cafe. Miss Franny had strawberry and I had lemon. It was very warm and pleasant sitting outside drinking it. Whilst we were there a bright green parakeet flew just over our heads and sat in a tree behind us for a few minutes before making us duck again as it came back and disappeared off in the distance.

We came back to our starting point and I made myself sit near the swing bridge and draw the sailing ship seen at the top of this page. A French family came to sit next to us on the bench. They had cooked meats and breadsticks which they shared round with each other and a growing collection of seagulls which made me a bit wary. I kept my cap pulled down...

Then it was back to the bus for the return trip to the ship. There were a lot of Italians at the bus stop and it was a bit before I realised that the buses served more than one ship. Ours would be the third of four stops along the dock. As we passed over the bridge onto the dock the Volcan de Tinamar, a Ro-Ro ferry was just leaving port. From what I can gather she usually sails for Armas between the islands of the Canaries. She was built in 2011.

We spent the afternoon packing - otherwise known as "throwing stuff in the suitcases". It would be a late night as we spent our last evening with Tomas and Maris, Bob and Anne and Eric and Jean. A glance out of the window showed that there was a fittingly superb sunset for our last night onboard Marella Dream.

For my last song of the cruise I played Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. "Will you?" I asked cheekily with a grin at Maris. She nodded. "All tomorrow..." she confirmed. And seeing as we had to leave the ship first thing in the morning, she knew she was on safe ground...

Anne's photo of us all from the previous night. We'll be back on Marella Dream and with Tomas and Maris later on in the year.

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A Cool Day in Savona, Italy

Friday, 17 May 2019. We moor alongside the dock in Savona, Italy. Excursions are available for Genoa, where we have been before, Turin and Portofino (where we hope to go later in the year). We have never been to Savona so we opt for a look around on foot.

The harbour elongates and narrows into what could almost be a river, but it's not. At the end the harbour does a dog's leg bend to a marina for small boats.

The walk into the city takes us past several Africans selling cheap goods, mainly blankets, all of whom are happy to see us walk past their colleagues, convinced that they will be able to persuade us to buy.

A swing bridge divides the harbour from the marina, affording a pedestrian shortcut to the city. Passengers happily ignore the warning klaxons and red lights to walk across, only starting to panic and run for safety as the barriers at each end start to close prior to swinging...

We crossed without need for running (happen as well...) and set off towards the castle that we can see beyond the marina. We pass some bell towers and equally narrow buildings.

The castle was built by the Genoese in 1452 to keep the population cowed after their conquest of Savona. From 1820 to 1903 it served as a military prison.

The space in front of the castle was raised from the road and afforded us this view of the marina. We walked towards the right and descended some steps doing a full circuit of the marina which meant we had to re-cross the swinging bridge, which of course opened again just as we got to it... There is a museum dedicated to Apple computing and technology here. I'm not a fan of i-equipment so will just make the following observation. There is just the one Apple museum here. I now invite you to count the windows...

We crossed the bridge once it had swung back into place and wandered up an arcaded shopping street, where Miss Franny went looking for fridge magnets. We bumped into Eric and Jean from Edinburgh and Bob and Anne from Glasgow who were also on the ship and who we had met on the first night. Bob was what I'd call irrepressible, always impishly cheerful and with a joke never far away. We bumped into them several times during the cruise and our holiday was made all the more enjoyable because of them.

We returned to the marina and found a small cafe to sit outside of with our favourite Italian beverage, a latte machiatto. This is like the British version of a latte, but without the froth which to my mind adds nothing but fresh air to fill your cup. The temperature was around 17 degrees centigrade, an improvement by around 5 degrees on what we had left behind in England, but we noticed all the locals were wearing jackets and in some cases heavy coats and we were being looked at as though we were slightly deranged in just t-shirts and summer thickness trousers. We don't take coats on holidays to the Med. We may, however, just slightly regret that tomorrow...

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Parked In Palamos

Friday 25 May 2018. Our final port for the week is Palamos in Spain. Excursion trips include Barcelona but, as most cruises on the western Mediterranean call there, we have been there five times so we are going out on foot to explore Palamos itself.

Our route from the ship takes us past the marina. According to the map there is another, the other side of the small headland we are moored against. There is a local chap standing watching us at the point where the path joined the road. His whole attitude suggested he was thinking "bloody tourists!" I nod and say "Hola!" and before he can stop himself he has half smiled, lifted a hand in greeting and said "Hola!" back.

We decide to have a look at the other marina. We have to get to the other side of this. Walking to the end of the pier and taking the road seems preferable to clambering over it, so we follow the road to our right and ... clamber up the steep road!

There are plenty of chandlers and boat build/repair companies about. There's a few Euros worth of stock in this particular warehouse!

A nice jumble of rocks too on the other side of the headland. There are steps up from the road to reach a small path on the top of the rocks, so where I am standing is a lot safer than this appears!

There's something hypnotising about the sea washing over rocks. I stand, fascinated and in my own little world, until Miss Franny slaps my face hard a few times and we carry on.

We reach the other marina. It looks as though we might have to make quite a long detour to get to the road leading back into the town and we decide it is probably quicker to re-trace our steps and go round that way.

We walk up into the town and through its shopping streets which are enjoyable without being spectacular. We spend a good hour or more wandering through it, then decide we will head back towards the seafront and have a sit for a bit.

We find a vacant bench and sit down. After a while this couple start waving and then wave in unison and then dance up and down the beach. It looks as though they are waving at us but we don't know them from Adam. (Hello, Adam, what are you doing here?) They could be waving at people on the benches to either side, or to any number of people in the bar which is the building to the left. Whatever... They keep it up for a good ten minutes then he leaves her and instead of walking straight towards us, he walks at an angle until he gets close enough to crane his neck to stare at us properly, then he turns back to his wife who is still doing semaphores and dancing from side to side and he starts making chopping gestures at his throat. They have obviously mistaken us for someone else!

The Marella Explorer cutting a bit of a dash at her mooring. She's certainly dwarfing the boats in the marina!

We have a wander up the promenade and bump into John and Vera. John was one of three Johns in just six seats on the plane as we flew over. It turned out he was on the ship and we saw them most nights and exchanged a few words and later this particular night we will spend an hour with them having a drink and chatting. A nice couple.

It is very warm. We sit on another bench for a while and decide to go back into the shopping are so Miss Franny can buy the inevitable fridge magnet and a few other bits to take home. There's a lot of whistling and shrieking going on as we walk along one street and Fran spots the culprit - a parrot in a cage outside a first floor window over a shop. It could have been saying "Bring me in - it's too hot out here!"

The view from our balcony that afternoon. Some packing must be done before we head for our evening meal unless we are going to forego all the pleasures of bars, lounges and shows for the night. And we are not... Tonight we sail back to Palma de Mallorca for our flights home tomorrow. Our cases must be packed, locked, labelled and left outside our cabin by 2:00am so that the crew can pick them up and crane them in cages off the ship so we can pick them up off the dockside in the morning.

Saturday 26 May 2018. The following morning it has obviously rained during the night! We hadn't heard anything at all but we are told that the ship had sailed through skies lit by sheet lightning. We had noticed our first bit of movement on the sea, but it just gently rocked us to sleep!

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