January and the first wee blog of the year. Decided to return to Spain for Christmas and New Year and spend a bit more time looking around, cycling and 'taking the air'. Extended the time in the sun by taking the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander - removing three days of 'drive time' through France. Touristically France is kind of shut at this time of year, so not a lot lost, apart from a bit of the bank balance. Gained? A less stressful journey and time to take a few more snaps.
Among the first ones onboard, the corridor sucked us in towards our cabin.
Most ferry crossing we make across the channel are early morning so a relaxed mid-morning departure gave us time to see Portsmouth, The Spinnaker Tower and the boat itself. Portsmouth harbour is scheduled to lose most of it's boat building capability over the next couple of years so these cranes may disappear soon.
Checked out the lifeboats, but the forecast was good.
HMS Warrior was the first of her class of two armoured frigates built for the Royal Navy in 1859-61. She and her sister ship, HMS Black Prince were the first armour-plated, iron hulled warships.
The Spinnaker Tower seemed to be about to get it's windows washed as we sailed past. Not the right lens to get a good shot of the window cleaner.
Santander - warmer already.
Thanks for having me aboard :-) Nice to have a view on Portsmouth harbour : that Spinnaker Tower is really something else. Glad I don't have to clean these windows! Great pictures, Captain Nick!
ReplyDeleteI actually wanted to be that guy - not to clean the windows, just to be there for a bit.
DeleteI see the sea and a tiny bit of sun, but where is the warm, this is Portsmouth, not Spain! ;-) The BF cabin corridor is all too familiar. Usually smells too. :-)
ReplyDeleteI didn't know the Spinnaker had glass in it as I've only seen it in the dark and thought it was just a statue.
Hope you will be posting the Spanish pics here! Enjoyed these. :-)
(There's an error message when I clicked on Notify Me, by the way. Also the first time I clickd Publish my post disappeared. Luckily I had copied my test!
Well, well, well, who's hiding a blog next I wonder :-)))
ReplyDeleteNice to discover a bit of your journey to sunshine, although I share Mandy's frustration!
I guess this post is a cliffhanger of sorts, looking forward to the next instalment, Nick!
I must say I enjoyed your pictures a lot, great compositions too!
The tall ship is a beauty :-)))
Pure laziness Marie-Hélène. I was intending to do the photo diary while I was away but often the wifi was too iffy. Used to be that no one noticed the blog being posted - not any more :-)
DeleteThere will be another instalment. Despite the 'rambles' in the title, I don't like rambling blogs, assuming that people will get bored with holiday snaps. I've never successfully kept a diary so this was my experiment. You may have noticed the long gap in 2013 :)
Memo : Must do better this year. Merci, me dear.
Excuse me, am I invisible? :-)
DeleteInvisible - never! Magical - maybe. I've already replied but it's not here. Worse still I can't remember 'exactly' what I said.
DeleteOminous sign of late night typing, Must have forgotten to click the 'publish' button before closing the tab. I did say some things like:
No sun! What's that highlighting the Spinnaker (briefly) and shining on Santander? Ok, not much but it got better after another 500 miles. I took about 3-4 other pictures of the Spinnaker but most made it look very grey - only the last one when it was tiny, was it shiny white bright.
As mentioned to Marie-Hélène, never like inflicting dozens of holiday snaps on others. It was ok when I thought no-one I knew would be reading it anyway. Ok, I'm weird :-) Nobody is forced to read it. I will get round to the next bit of the holiday - honest.
PS Those carpeted corridors always smell of something indefinable but mildly unpleasant and are sort of intimidating I think. If you walk down it all alone it's quite possible that Jack Nicolson will spring out of a door with axe in hand.(The Shining wasn't it?)
Cheers Mmm. :-)
Oh that's OK then. I do that all the time, especially in G+. I always end up with half a dozen tabs open and then wonder why some of my comments are not there when I knew I wrote them. I just closed down my computer and forgot to press post. Ooops. :-)
DeleteI love seeing holiday snaps so let us be the judge of that. Other people seem to like mine! Anyway it's winter for Jan, M-H and me so we would love to see some Spanish sun and warmth - if you have more pics than you have already shared, that is. Post away!
BF corridors often have a really nasty pooey smell, all I can say is thank god it doesn't seem to seep into the cabins! Reminds me of when I visited Greece in the late 70s/early 80s and we'd be sitting outside having breakfast when the sh*t truck would come along to pump out the septic tanks. Lovely. :-)
Oh and despite the error message, I did receive emails for the other posts here and your replies, that's why I wondered why you were ignoring me. :-)