Day 9, 19th July – Reykjavik
Aurora docked at Reykjavik for two days. We’d booked an excursion here and boarded the coach at 1.30 pm. A great black monster of a thing. On finding our seats, I noticed a huge, thick crack going across the entire windscreen. I sat behind a man who turned to his wife and said, in a heavy northern accent, ‘blimey, that’s one heck of a crack.’ It certainly is, I’d thought. This doesn’t bode well at all. Surely, a humungous crack like that is in violation of every highway code and probably illegal. I pointed it out to the husband. ‘Oh well,’ he said. Nobody else seemed to mind the huge, illegal crack either. Nobody else seemed to value their lives quite in the way I did.
Our tour guide was a young ex-student, with a ponytail and a tattoo on one arm; a tattoo of his favourite place in Reykjavik he later told us. He was thoroughly engaging. Our driver, on the other hand, was mysterious and silent in dark glasses, and just a tiny bit forbidding. He was prone to exiting the coach and smoking a quick fag every time we stopped.
Before we set off a lady to the right of me called out, ‘excuse me, my seat belt is broken’ – no response from the tour guide. She stood up, ‘My seat belt is broken,’ she informed him again, in a charmingly lilting old lady voice, ‘I can’t get it to click.’ Still no acknowledgement. She called out again and there was a rapid, unintelligible Icelandic discussion between the guide and the driver. The guide came back with: ‘when we get off at our first stop just move to another seat.’ No apologies. No admission that their coach was clearly falling apart. The lady sat back in her seat, an anxious look on her face. I wondered if she’d ‘clocked’ the driver too, and what she thought of the dodgy windscreen. No-one said anything about the knackered windscreen. It was like Fawlty Towers – don’t mention the war windscreen.
Our coach set off ahead of schedule and our guide told us we would first be stopping off at a lava field, about 15 minutes away, then we’d carry on to the Perlan Observatory, from which it was very likely we would see the erupting volcano that had made the news. The husband was ecstatic.
The lava field looked very much like your average landfill site. In fact, our local council wouldn’t have been amiss in organising excursions to our local tip based on this Reykjavik local highlight.
We were given 10 minutes to look around. It took 10 minutes to get everyone off the coach therefore we took one frantic photo, just to prove we’d been to a grotty lava field and boarded again. The husband asked our guide what the chances were of seeing the famous currently erupting volcano. ‘Very good, in this weather,’ he said. ‘I was at the observatory this morning and had a clear view.’ I, on the other hand, was wondering what the chances were of us making it to the observatory in one piece.
Our driver pulled away from the lava field and, about 5 minutes into the drive, there was a sudden, enormous screech of brakes. We were all thrown forward in our seats. I instinctively put my hands out onto the seat in front of me, to prevent my head smashing into the back. Our seat belts were the type that only go across your lap. This incident proved to me that lap belts are utterly useless. The coach was now stopped at a roundabout and a van was visible, side on, just an inch away from our defective windscreen. Both drivers were hooting at each other. As far as I could determine, either the coach had driven straight into the van’s path or vice versa. Our driver uttered something low and guttural in Icelandic. The van moved on and so did we. The husband muttered, ‘now we know how he got the crack in his windscreen.’
The tour guide said nothing at all. He was out of our vision, so I was unable to see his reaction to the incident. Several completely silent minutes passed and then he piped up: ‘Well, that was interesting.’ And everybody laughed, as though near catastrophe was the funniest thing ever.
Call me a killjoy; call me a party pooper; you can even call me a wet blanket, but I did not join in with the general hilarity. Musing instead, I concluded that my fellow excursionists were in collective possession of mindsets completely alien to my own. It was a sort of Dunkirk spirit. What care they that we were in the hands of a lunatic. I surmised that when you’re getting closer to meeting whichever maker you believe in then avoiding near death in a tour bus might seem like a bit of a lark. A grand adventure. At least all this cruising malarkey makes you feel alive, so why not laugh in the face of the grim reaper. The husband is in possession of the Dunkirk spirit, and an enviable quality it is.
This near head-on collision had caused the bloke in front of me to drop a giant plastic bottle of something or other, and it had rolled underneath his seat to my feet. I scrabbled around to pick it up, without undoing my useless seat belt, to find it chock-a-block with huge white pills. Blimey, wonder what he’s taking those for, I thought. I handed them back. ‘Thank you,’ he said, with a big, Dunkirk spirit grin on his face. Do you want one? One of your massive pills? I thought, hysterically. They’re mints, he said. Yes, the cruising experience was causing me to slowly lose my marbles.
We continued on. Our driver’s modus operandi (other than near miss collisions) was to drive at speed towards every green light, registering his shock when it turned red by smashing the brakes on. Our guide prattled on, keeping up our spirits in the face of being regularly thrown around in our seats. He gave us the same spiel about the pure-bred Icelandic horse as our previous guide – ‘so don’t be bringing any horses over here,’ he admonished, causing another round of jollity. ‘We’re passing in the vicinity of some hot springs now, thought to be very beneficial to health. Pregnant women are advised against going in the hot pools though, in case it has a bad effect on the baby. So, you ladies – promise me you won’t be going in the pools, yah?’ Cue delighted hilarity. Our guide certainly knew his aged audience. The guides were remarkable, actually. So effortlessly multilingual. I take my cruising hat off to them, for it can’t be easy repeating the same routes multiple times a day, whilst hammering out the same script.
We arrived at the Perlan Observatory. Climbed up four flights of stairs – there were two giant lifts which I avoided – and at the top our guide pointed out the erupting volcano in the distance, about 15 miles away. We took photos, to prove we’d seen the volcano ‘in the flesh’ and here it is, to the right of the photo, looking like an overlarge ant hill, but at least the husband was chuffed. The cloud to the left is actually gases from the volcano.
Day 10, 20th July
We walked along Reykjavik’s harbour wall. A lovely wall made up of giant stones, which began at the port with a cute little yellow lighthouse. Our aim was to walk to a famous harbour sculpture called the sun voyager. It was metal and sort of in the shape of a minimalist Viking ship. After slogging along for an hour, we gave up and turned back. We knew it was about another 40 minutes’ walk, after checking google maps, and neither of us could have survived a near 4 hours walk at our senior and rickety age. The highlight of this walk, for me, was spotting Tom, the classical guitarist, whisking past us on an Icelandic electric scooter. ‘Oohh, oohh, it’s Tom!’ I screamed at the husband. These electric scooters could be seen lying all over the place; on kerbs, verges, in Reykjavik town (it’s technically a city but feels like a town it’s so small.) Anyone could use them. You just picked one up, scanned it with your phone and off you went. I’d initially thought they’d been stolen and abandoned as you found them in the oddest places.
Back on board the tannoy suddenly went off, whilst we were having dinner in the buffet. It was the Officer of the Watch informing us that three killer whales could be seen on the port side. Everybody got up and rushed to the windows to our left. I followed the husband, squealing ‘oohh, killer whales,’ despite having zero interest in whales – that’s what cruising does to you. Looking out the windows I saw three miniscule black fins moving through the water. The husband was over the moon. He’d hoped to see whales on the cruise and, a couple of days after we’d first set sail, had gone to the top deck at 4 am, as advised by our captain in a midday announcement, and seen about four whales, one with its tail curving up out of the water.
Day 11 and 12, 21st July, 22nd July – Sea Days
I spent a couple of days catching up with The Brontes. The only Brontes now left were Charlotte and her dad. Branwell, Emily and Anne had died in quick succession and Charlotte had not spared her correspondents the excruciating details of her siblings’ last days. Then Charlotte suddenly decided to marry her dad’s new curate, after previously writing the most derogatory letters about him to her friends. But who can blame her. Alone as she was, cooped up in a dark, cold house in unsanitary Haworth, with only the ghosts of her family for company.
We attended an audience with Captain Love in the Curzon Theater. He was 62; hoping to retire in three years; a fitness nut (he’d hiked up one of the mountains at Andalsnes he informed us.) Someone asked him if he’d had any disasters at sea – yes, there’d been a rogue wave ten years ago, and one of Aurora’s engines had blown up last year whilst at sea (yikes!) and oh, there’d been an iceberg in our path when we were approaching Akureyri. The husband and I looked at each other in astonishment. ‘Titanic,’ the husband whispered, then started humming the theme from the film.
Our captain told us that the bridge had been informed that an iceberg had broken off from Greenland, unseasonably early, probably due to climate change, and had been heading our way. He’d taken the decision to not mention this in his midday announcement in case it caused general panic and mayhem. I doubt it would have due to the pervading Dunkirk spirit, but yours truly would have been flapping about in a panic – me and the seat belt lady. He was then informed that it was 7 miles away and no longer a possible threat.
Force 8 gales. Rough seas. Erupting volcanoes. Terrifying excursions and now an iceberg. Definitely an unforgettable holiday, just not in the way P&O’s brochures like to describe it.
Back in the cabin the husband had a nap while I opened The Brontes again, to read that Charlotte and her husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, were on their way to Cork, Ireland as part of their honeymoon. I had to read it again. I couldn’t believe it, for Cork was our next and final stop on the cruise. In a time-warp of epic proportions Charlotte was now travelling with me, a mere 169 years apart.
Day 13, 23rd July – Cork, Ireland
Aurora docked in the port of Cobh. We had breakfast in the buffet. I fetched a bowl of cold porridge and apricots, reverting back to my healthy diet being this was practically the end of the cruise. I was munching away on my revolting breakfast when I espied something long and thin in my porridge. I pulled it out with my fingers – it was a slimy bit of grated cheese, my stomach heaved. I then found another one. And then I spotted a bit of green cabbage. I placed them on a side dish. ‘Look at this!’ I said to the husband. ‘Complain,’ he said, ‘that’s food cross contamination that is, we might get some money back.’ I didn’t complain and, what’s more, I carried on eating the porridgey mess; most unlike me, and spent the rest of the day worrying about food poisoning.
Cork was 21 miles away but we’d not planned any more excursions. We exited the ship and walked around a bit. We then went back to the port and bought tickets for the Titanic Experience, housed in a building right next to our ship. We got £4 off for being cruisers.
I’d questioned the wisdom of going round this particular tourist trap fearing we’d jinx the rest of the journey. I tend to get round museums in record time, finding the reading of all the notes etc really boring, but the husband was fascinated, stopping for ages to read every snippet of Titanic info. I can only surmise that this was because the Titanic is, of course, an epic tale of fear and disaster and the husband can’t get enough of that kind of stuff. You’ll find him glued to the telly whenever Alone, Deadliest Catch, Swamp People etc etc are on, revelling in the scariness and discomfort.
Day 14, 24th July – Sea Day
We attended another talk given by the friendly geologist. This one considered if there could be alien life out in the universe – intelligent life that is. His opinion was probably not, unless you count alien microbes and such due to volcanic activity. If there was intelligence out there, then it would likely have got in touch with us. We saw an Eric and Ernie tribute act in the theatre (very good but didn’t seem to catch alight with the audience.) The husband went to see Neil Lockwood (had never heard of him) former member of ELO part 2. The husband raved and Neil got a standing ovation.
Aurora pootled back to Southampton at an absolute snail’s pace of 10 knots. The upside of this was you couldn’t feel any ship movement at all. I spotted a rainbow outside our cabin window at roughly 7 pm. I rushed onto deck 7 to take a photo as I’d never seen a rainbow at sea. It formed a complete arc right over Aurora but I could only ‘take’ the lower bit.
Day 15, 25th July – Southampton
We arrived back home early in the morning and were booted off the ship at 8 am to make way for the next lot. We stood at the terminal waiting for a ride home. We were cruised-out and exhausted. I recognised fellow passengers getting into taxis, boarding coaches, and heading for their cars. Oh, there goes that nice young couple who seemed to be everywhere we were, I thought. And there goes that bloke who helped me at the burger bar when I couldn’t aim the ketchup into the little cup. And there goes that woman who slept all the time, on any available seat. Back they go to their lives; and back we go to ours.
Only I’ve been walking Aurora’s decks ever since.
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