Mediterranean Spirit Cruise on the Island Star, 5-12 July 2008

A series of articles describing our cruise around the Western Mediterranean with Island Cruises on their ship, the Island Star. Our Itinerary will be: Palma, Majorca > Day at Sea > Messina, Sicily > Naples, Italy > Livorno, Italy > Toulon, France > Barcelona, Spain > Palma, Majorca.

Each article can be accessed by clicking or tapping the photographs below. A link at the end of each article will bring you back to this index page.

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Flickr Viewings

For the last few days I've been keeping a record on Facebook of the top scoring photographs from my Flickr collection.

Inevitably on a daily basis this leads to some repetition as my most viewed photos come top on a regular basis. But on those days I choose the No.2 or No.3 photo to feature.

The celebrity photos understandably come high up on the list of most-viewed photos with this one of actresses Carol Hawkins and Sally Geeson being all time top scorer by far. Currently (and this will change in 10 minutes or so) it has been viewed 13,452 times. Carol played Sharon in Please Sir having taken over the role from Penny Spencer. Sally was Sid James' daughter in Bless This House. Both appeared in Carry On films also, notably Carry On Abroad.

All time No.2 currently with 7,319 views is this one of me with Helene Hunt and Carole Ashby, who were both member's of Octopussy's all-girl team in the James Bond film of that name.

I'm actually sitting on Carole's knee here - at her insistance I hasten to add! We'd met a couple of times previously and she has a great sense of humour. She played Communist Resistance girl Louise in TV's 'Allo 'Allo.

Both of these photos were taken at the Memorabilia events at Birmingham's NEC. There's always a number of film and TV people there signing autographs and willing to pose for photos. Just don't expect treatment like this until you've got to know them though! And even then don't expect it!

Here's some of the quirkier photos to crop up in the top 3 ratings this week. The Citroen was found in St Tropez in 2008 and at first I thought it was a surviving 1960s Mini Moke. As seen in TV's The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan. Even the gear stick coming out of the dashboard or the chevrons logo didn't make me twig it was a Citroen based on a 2CV chassis from the 1980s until some kind soul commented on the photo!

Yesterday for some reason the focus was on this shot of Manchester Cathedral from 1998. It was Fran's birthday and we'd gone to Manchester for the day and the shopping got a little much for me so I left Fran and daughter, Gill, to the shopping and wandered round with the camera!

The black granite stone used inside is slightly oppressive I thought. A bit of limestone would have lightened the place up a bit.

Large versions of the photos: Carol and Sally, Helene and Carole, Citroen fun car, Manchester cathedral

North Pier Carousel

The photos are from 1991, probably August. There was a Motive Power display going on along the Promenade, but a Google search failed to tell me the exact date!

The North Pier had just installed this magnificent two-storey carousel. It would later be partly obscured by some glass screens that were put around it to shield it from salt spray from the sea and the harsh winds that Blackpool is prone to.

I've seen similar carousels all over the place. In fact here's an example from St Tropez on the French Riviera!

The decking of the North Pier at the time was being taken up to lay a track for a tram that would take passengers from the entrance to the pier along to the theatre at the far end.

The tram would be mainly used at theatre time and at other times was destined to trundle up and down the pier with a handful of passengers.

And as if all this excitement wasn't enough, a helicopter was landing on the end of the pier to take passengers on a (very short) trip all the way down the Promenade almost as far as halfway to the Central Pier...

This did not do a lot to excite those who had been accustomed to fishing from the end of the pier...

In a blindingly obvious statement a sign reads: "helicopter rotor blades are dangerous".

Return to Blackpool North Pier Index Page

St Tropez

Thursday 10 July 2008. Ah... St Tropez! The name conjures up glamour, luxury, the rich and famous. Will it live up to the image?

We have moved on now to the French Riviera. The Island Star docked in Toulon where we got off the ship and boarded a coach for the 90-minute ride to St Tropez. One passenger felt aggrieved at this... "90 minutes without a toilet stop?!?" He was a bit eccentric anyway - we had noticed him a couple of times on the boat wearing the most bizarre clothes you've ever seen.

I swear he was dressed as Robinson Crusoe one night...and there are no fancy dress nights on the Island Star... Can we carry on? Well yes, we're going to anyway as the French guide has merely stared at him and said "That is correct..." We were on the front seat and my French is just about good enough to understand the driver saying "I think he should have gone before we left...!" I did learn some new swear words as a motorbike cut us up!

And so we reached St Tropez. Again we dispensed with the walking tour and set off to walk from where the coach dropped us along the coast and into St Tropez itself.

We admired all the boats - there were indeed some luxury millionaire-only type yachts. We walked to the far end of the harbour wall and then decided to get a bite of lunch as this was our only full-day tour of the week. We found a nice pizzeria and ordered a couple of pizzas.

The loo was an experience for Fran as there were two toilets opposite each other. One had no light and no window. The other had no lock. She waited for the one with no lock and sat jamming her foot against the door. When she came out, a bloke was sitting on the loo opposite and had left the door wide open so he could see...

A few artists had set up stalls along the harbour. This one specialised in boats floating in a red sea and sky - quite effective actually - monochrome naked females with robotic joints and the odd realistically coloured landscape.

We had a look around the shops to have a laugh at the prices. All the big name high-end fashion shops were there. A half-recognised famous face (which looked much younger than her arms...) came out of one, glanced at me and hurried on.

We looked at several collections of price tags with too many zeroes and finally bought a fridge magnet.

We saw quite a few of these cars. I'm afraid I mistook them for mini mokes as made in the 1960s and used in TVs cult hit The Prisoner. Perhaps someone had bought a job lot and transported them here after the sixties were over? But since then, someone has commented on the photo at Flickr (now unavailable) that they are modern cars, based on a Citroen 2CV chassis. So they lose a number of glamour points for that then! Tres chic though! We made our way back onto the coach and then waited for ten minutes past the time for a couple to roll up. They claimed to have got lost but they were not exactly hurrying back...

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