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map of cruise, will animate route as we go Holland America Line

22-DAY TOP OF THE WORLD
Blog Date Port Arrive/Start Depart/Meet
0 23 Jul 2010 London, UK ON    
1 24 Jul 2010 London, UK   05:00 PM
2 25 Jul 2010 At Sea. CC Meet & Greet 10:00 AM Crows Nest

Today is excursion day for those who have arrived from abroad and wish to see London or the South East.   Not much point for us, we can sight-see London and surrounds at any time.   Once we spent three hours looking at a small piece of the M25 along with a load of others who got out of their stationary cars to sunbathe on the bank.   That's another story.

breakfast in te Lido restaurantThis morning was the first day of our holiday, so we didn't rush to get up and took a leisurely breakfast in the Lido, after the excursion rush had gone.   To my great disappointment they did not have biscuits and gravy, rather strange for a ship with headquarters in Seattle.   It did appear later, in the dinning room one day, but that day we breakfasted in the lido, so missed it.   The other problem with breakfast is you can not get decent bacon.   It is always burnt to a cinder, so that it fractures if you try and cut it.   The Americans explained that it was "they way they liked bacon", otherwise it is too fatty (are they unaware of back bacon and only know streaky?).   So I asked for Canadian bacon, but that was like a processed roll, sliced into neat circles.   Oh well, apart from the bacon, the food was pretty good, with plenty of choice.

After breakfast my first job was to sort out an Internet connection for the Allfine PC 703 mini net book we had brought along.   I quickly found, with help from the Internet manager, that Netbooks do not have good WiFi devices inside them, but by sitting underneath a distribution point (the white cones on the ceiling), access can be improved.   However my netbook used Win CE and not Windows 7, and so I could not configure it to suppress constant warnings that made it impractical to use.   Win CE may be OK on phones, but it is no good on a laptop replacement.   We had to continue checking our e-mail via the provided terminals.   Still I was able to run my offline copy of my initial blog that told us where we were going, and had all the Google images and maps stored on it, and my film database.   I had several comments from people who saw me working with it who thought it was "real neat", it was certainly small and convenient for a trip, but next time I would pay a bit more and get a proper netbook with Windows 7 on it. The software on mine was just too limited and clunky. (Added 2021. This was before the days of tablets.)

the MV BalmoralI had a few jobs; sort out a wine card, some details at the front office, so the morning soon went and it was time for lunch.   During lunch we saw the Balmoral steam past.   (Note this is the motor vessel Balmoral, not the Fred Olsen cruise ship).   Waverley Excursions Ltd used to run pleasure cruises with her and her sister ship the paddle steamer Waverley, but now they seem to be managed by separate companies.   Balmoral was built in Southampton in 1949, I just managed to catch a photo of her through the restaurant window.   The Waverley is doing a trip from Southend Pier up to Clacton (with a coach return) that some of our friends from the camera club are doing, but we have had to miss it to come on this trip.   You can get good shots of the engine room in action on the old paddle steamers.   Both ships took a severe knock due to Covid restritions, but are both still in operation due to support from donations.

GravesendWe have to be back on board, fed and ready for departure at 5:00 p.m., so we decided we wouldn't bother with Gravesend, inviting as it looked.   We can do that anytime, and not have to fret about the ferry breaking down, and leaving us stranded on the wrong side of the river.   So we just used the afternoon to explore the ship, find our way around and have a lazy time taking photos.


pilot boatGravesend ferryThere is quite a bit of activity on the Thames around Tilbury.   There is pleasure craft a plenty passing by, tugs bussling up and down between jobs, activity in the container port next door ready for departure and arrivals on the next hide tide, the pilot boat ferrying the pilots for the container ships (the red boat) and the gravesend ferry itself (the white boat).   These two video stills show these, being video the quality is not so good as a photo.   The ferry looks as though it is arriving, but is in fact backing out.

Captain Albert swinging her out Although we know the north bank of the Thames pretty well and the south bank fairly well, we have never seen it all from mid river.   So we were on deck ready with our cameras to watch the preparations for departure, whichwas at 5:0 p.m. or 1700 hours zulu time..   Some of the passengers had tried out the Worlds End pub and made friends with the Hells Angels there, who gave us a rousing send off from their outdoor disco and barbie.   I more or less only took video on our journey down river, but I managed the odd snap with the compact.   We had very nice shots of Hadleigh and Southend with a Thames Barge quite near the pier.   We stayed on watch until we got to the Munsell forts and then went in for dinner.   The weather was excellent, so we had good views.

We went for dinner at 6:15 p.m. and while there passed a wind farm and also I think the Goodwin Lightship.   The first part of the journey, Tilbury to Southend, is covered by this satellite image, and the Southend estuary by this one.

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