BRITISH ISLES CRUISE: Days 1 & 2

Friday, August 16

This morning we had our final breakfast at our little neighborhood café and then tackled the job of packing up the suitcases again in preparation for heading to Southampton to board the cruise ship.  It’s raining when we take a taxi from the hotel to Victoria Coach Station to catch the Princess Shuttle bus.  We are so thankful that we had good weather for all of our days in London.  The Coach Station is extremely busy and we’re not sure where to go but the cruise line had a representative right outside the entry door and she noticed our boarding tags on our suitcases and turned us in the right direction to find the bus.  After a 2-hour ride to Southampton we are eager to board the ship.  Unfortunately, the check in line seemed to be about a mile long.  It wasn’t, but it did take a full hour to snake our way to the check in desk.  Then it was a breeze to find our stateroom and get settled in on the ship.  After the mandatory muster drill with lifejackets, the Caribbean Princess set sail at 5:00 pm and we enjoyed a nice dinner that evening without any prices on the menu!  This segment of the cruise will be 12 days and only 2 of them are sea days.  It will be a port day almost every day.

Leaving Southampton Port

Saturday, August 17

We could sure use a sea day to get our energy back after 6 days in London, but that won’t happen as our first port of call is St. Peter Port, Guernsey England.  The British isle of Guernsey lies just eight miles off the coast of France. The second largest of the Channel Islands, it has been a long-time link between France and Britain.  The local speech is a blend of English and Norman French.   Technically the Channel Islands are not part of Great Britain but rather possessions of the royal family.  And that provides a tax shelter of some kind.

The harbor at St. Peter Port, Guernsey is shallow and that means that we must tender into the port on small boats while the ship is anchored off shore.  This is one port that is missed about 50% of the time a cruise ship is scheduled due to winds and high waves.  I grabbed a photo from the internet of a tender trying to get to the dock just a few weeks ago.  We are fortunate; there are waves but nothing to stop the tenders from getting ashore.

 

This was NOT our tender day, but one just a few weeks ago.

We had much calmer seas for the tender.

Castles and forts dot the Guernsey coastline, including German fortifications from World War II. The Channel Islands were the only part of the United Kingdom to be occupied by the Nazis.

Castle Cornet, Guernsey's ancient royal fortress, has stood guard over the town and harbor of St Peter Port for nearly eight centuries.  We decided not to tour the castle as we’ll have several castle viewing opportunities in the days ahead.  Instead we chose to do a walk alongside the cliffs and stop at the Underground Military Museum, which was occupied by the Germans during WWII.

Castle Cornet

A better photo of the castle (from the internet)

I had downloaded a Guernsey walk from the internet and we headed off toward the cliffs which offered some excellent views and a number of items of historical interest.  As we started climbing up the cliff trail we passed the bathing pools of La Vallette.  The locals enjoy these pools and soon we saw a few of them making their way into the waters.

 

Bathing pools

We continued our climb along the cliff and came to Clarence Battery.  It was first built in 1779 to help defend St. Peter Port.  Some alterations were made during WWII by the German occupying forces as this continued to be an important coastal defensive position.

Clarence Battery

We continued to climb and came to a gate of the Old Fort George and this is where we learned that the trail was closed beyond this point because an unexploded bomb was found!... and subsequently this is where we had to deviate from our walking map and guess what…..we got lost. 

 

Outside the Fort George walls

We ended up walking around a neighborhood of beautiful homes with beautiful gardens and wandered around the courts and cul-de-sacs until we found a main thoroughfare to exit.  This just confirms that as much as we would like to think we could be a member of the “Amazing Race” TV show, in reality, we would be eliminated quite quickly as we probably would not be able to find the pit stops.

 

Lost in a beautiful neighborhood but we probably should
not have been walking around there.

Anyway, we did eventually find our way back down to the street running into the town and then backtracked along the cliff trail to the LaVallette Underground Military Museum.  

The underground tunnel system was used by the Germans in WWII and is now a wonderful collection of items describing the occupation of Guernsey during WWII.  It was an interesting 5 years of occupation.  I’m currently reading the book, “ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society” which is an account of fictional Guernsey residents during the occupation—fiction but based on facts. 

Didn't take much to commit a war crime and die for it.

Back on the ship for a 2 pm departure, we attend a Meet & Greet of Cruise Critic rollcall members for this cruise.  We have private tours arranged with several of the people that I have been in contact with for several months via emails and postings on the internet rollcall.  It was fun to finally put faces on the names and I think we’ll be having some fun tours with these cruisers!

Our first chance to tour will be tomorrow as we port in Cobh, Ireland where we’ll go to the Blarney Castle.