It’s been a while . . . More than three weeks since I disappeared to the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena. Strange to think that in order to spend eight days there, I had a total of 14 days of travel.
An overnight flight to Cape Town was followed by a night in the Commodore Hotel, just a few minutes’ walk from the bustling Victoria & Alfred Waterfront. Then there were five nights on board the RMS St Helena before arrival in Jamestown. It was the same process in reverse to get back to the UK.
Well worth every moment, though.
I will be writing up my impressions and editing my pictures over the next few days. Some of my thoughts will be posted here, although pictures have become a problem for some reason. They will have to go to Facebook and Flickr.
My interview with the captain of RMS St Helena has already been published on the island’s Wirebird blog. The Mirror’s travel editor will have to let me know what he wants for the paper – it was his idea for me to go in the first place, although he still seems to think I was in St Helens.
He is in Washington at the moment. Whether that’s the US capital, the US state, or a town in the north-east of England, we may never know.
A couple of magazines have commissioned St Helena features from me and I promised to supply copy to some of the UK’s top regional newspapers. So I’d better knuckle down and start churning it out, sorry, that should have been “pen some purple prose.”
Meanwhile, there’s plenty of news to catch up on from my weeks of isolation – not least the effects of that dreadful typhoon which has devastated the lives of so many Filipino cruise ship crew and their families.
At sea, propulsion problems plaguing Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas will force an unscheduled dry-dock for repairs next February. The city of Venice has finally decided to restrict access to the biggest vessels, which means that the 135,000-ton Costa Diadema, which was floated out of dry-dock in the city’s Marghera shipyard today, may never be allowed to return after it is launched next October.
I hope to be back in full swing again next week. First, there’s the small matter of CLIA’s River Cruise Convention in Cologne to keep me occupied over the weekend.
I’ll be back again soon . . .
About the Author: John Honeywell
John Honeywell is a travel writer specialising in cruise ships and cruise travel. Winner of CLIA UK's Contribution to Cruise award 2017.
Great to have you back.
Looking forward to some interesting yarns!