Blogs from Southampton, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 6

I'm all packed, think I have everything I may need, half of my library, a Portuguese flag, notebooks, Andys broken laptop and oh yeah some clothes. This wuill be my last time online in this country for quite a while. So its off to the pub with me for a pint or two and then when I wake up in the morning it will be goodbye to Southampton for quite a while.... read more

This year we are off to the Netherlands and Germany Again, if you don't want to receive these email reminders then let me know and I can knock you off the list. I am not sure about the access we are going to have to the wifi network on our travels so this may be the only entry till we return in September. However, I hope we can let you know of our success in finding interesting things to see and do while we attend the International Tandem Rally in Applesha, Netherlands followed by a tour of northern Germany. We are thinking this is what we shall do but as the weather is so awful we might head straight down the the south of France to find some settled weather and sunshine. Anyway, we are now ... read more

The last leg of the cruise - from Spain through the Bay of Biscay to Southampton should have been a dawdle. However things didn’t go as planned, nothing strange about that. We had planned to get all our packing done in the 3 days from Spain to Southampton. What we didn’t count on was the weather…. Heavy sea swells and although not seasick, we would have broken our necks trying to pack 6 suitcases in the confined space of our cabin at the beginning of the crossing. So we decided to do our packing on the last day, before docking in Southampton… Mmmmm great plan… We sort of, enjoyed our last days on Arcadia, visited places and people on board and generally had a great if rocky time. On the last day before port we got ... read more

It was hands on today on the fire fighting ground of the institue. We were all dressed up in our Gucci gear and were given a taste of what it would be like to have a fire onboard a ship. It was a real eye opener for me. We got to try fire extinguishers and fire hoses. We were given breathing apparatus and went in to experience what it is like to feel a real fire. It was very strenous - the breathing apparatus - similar to dive tanks - was heavy to carry. I did get panicked when I couldn't see out of my visor when we went into rescue a casualty, however there were loads of instructors along the route to assist me. The Far green structure in the fire ground pic is built ... read more

here are the pics... read more