When we are cruising from Southampton we usually travel down the day before just in case of travel problems. On this occassion it turned out to be the right choice. After a very uneventful drive from South Wales we were nearing the end of our journey just leaving the M3 motorway. We were stopped in a line of traffic when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw a large arcticulated lorry approaching at great speed. Before I had chance to say anything to Sylvia it had hit the back of our car pushing us forward into the car in front.
The lady passenger in front and one of her children were taken to hospital to be checked over but thankfully there were no serious injuries. The police tell me that they are likely to prosecute the lorry driver for careless driving as it was clearly his fault. The bad news is, as you can see from the photo, my car is quite badly damaged. It was towed away and after dropping us at the hotel will spend the rest of our holiday being assessed for repairs. The recovery man reckoned it was fifty-fifty whether it would be written off. Hopefully the insurance will sort out a hire car for our return, meanwhile we are on holiday!!
Brittania is the biggest ship that we have ever sailed on being the largest and newest in the P&O fleet. The layout is very different from most of the ships that we have been on and it has the appearance of a good hotel rather than a cruise ship.
We don’t tend to travel in the middle of the school holidays so on this occassion we decided to book a suite, and what a good choice that was. The cabin consists of two parts a lounge area with a settee table and TV…...
…with the bedroom also having a separate TV.
The bathroom refects the opulance of the rest of the ship with tiled floors, a jacuzzi bath (that the children are looking forward to trying out), full-sized shower and separate loo.
Poppy and Joseph have made themselves at home in our cabin and have already booked an overnight stay in Granny’s Suite at some point during the cruise.
I’ll give a fuller review of the ship over the next few days as we have three sea days before our first stop in Valencia on Wednesday. Meanwhile the sailaway champagne has been opened and here’s to an exciting cruise with no further mishaps.
