I am now on my next ship sailing towards Norway. As we sailed near the English coastline last night, we could see some of the wind turbines that are located a few kilometres off the coast. At that distance it looked like a set of short white sticks standing upright as though to filter out what might come in from the sea. I have seen many wind turbines on my travels, especially in Austria where they have thousands near the border with Slovakia.
But back to my weekend in London. I actually did not stay in London for the weekend after all. Instead I spent the weekend in Cheshire - a beautiful rural area with quite narrow canals, cosy cottages, enticing townships, beautiful trees and a patchwork of crops and small fields in which I saw cattle or sheep. Idyllic!
And to add to the delights of this setting, I had the most wonderful meal - roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings - in the most stunning-looking, very old pub in this region. This is called ‘Old Hall’ and is situated in a village called Sandbach. According to its brochure: “It is one of only two pubs in the UK listed as Grade 1, and is a near perfect example of wattle and daub architecture. It is probably the last example ever built.” It was such a pleasure to sit there in such an historic setting and enjoy the atmosphere and the old paintings and the company of my very hospitable, lovely friends, one of whom I met n the Queen Mary, who invited me down there. The photos below will give you a glimpse of 'Old Hall'.
And to add to their great generosity and immense kindness, whilst I was there one of them spent hours fixing the problems I was having with my Apple devices. In the process he solved the mystery of why I could not Skype. It turned out that Microsoft had detected someone illegally using my email address to send off Spam, so had shut down my Skype. In fact, whilst he was installing updates on my laptop, Apple detected someone in another place in England trying to hack into my Apple account, when it knew I was elsewhere, and sent me a message to check this out, with a map of where the hacker was located. So we were able to thwart this person. And now I can Skype, although I will not be doing so until I am off the ship. In addition, I was shown how to avoid excessive phone accounts, for which advice I also am extremely grateful. The problems I was having resulted from poor though well-intended advice I received from various quarters, plus some wrong guesses on my part, as to how I should use the phone while on board a ship. The result is, it will now be turned off whenever I am on a ship.
It was very hard to say goodbye after such kindness, warmth and generosity. I only hope I can reciprocate before too long.
My journey to Southampton yesterday morning was very interesting too. Once we were out of London, the scenery became very picturesque, with many cultivated green fields and trees. Once again I encountered great kindness from a fellow passenger, a very salt-of-the-earth British man who was racing to catch the train himself with his own suitcase in tow, then spotted me and insisted on helping me to the train and lifting my bags on board. “You can’t do that on your own, Luv. Here, let me help! I will put them up into the train for you.”
Before we set sail yesterday, when we were doing our drill regarding emergency procedures, I noticed the ship has many teenagers on board. One group of four teenage friends standing near me - no parents to be seen - was very defiant when asked to turn off their smart phones whilst they were receiving instructions, and started to use them again the moment the officer’s back was turned, smirking away. In contrast to that, another group I saw later noticed me looking for the dining room and very politely explained how to find it. Chalk and cheese! I hate to think what the group of four will get up to on the ship. I guess this is a universal problem, though. And, sadly, it is a problem encountered in adult behaviour too.
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