This is an idea I had six or eight months ago but I didn’t have time to do it in the autumn or winter but today, at last, come and join me for my no-cruise cruise!
I’m not a cruise person. I never will be. First, emetophobes and long boat journeys don’t mix. Second, I’d rather have three days in one place than four hours in each of six places. Third, I think I’d get tired of being on the same ship for weeks on end. People who like cruises tell you about all the exciting things you can do on the ship – for some of them, I think it’s more about the cruise than the ports. Then I started to think about all the entertainment and the exciting things and it began to dawn on me that… all the things you can do on the cruise ship, you can surely do without leaving dry land. And so I began to plot a no-cruise cruise.
My inspiration for this was mostly P&O’s Iona. Even I, an avowed Not A Cruise Person, know that Iona and sister ship Arvia are the new, modern ones, the ones with all the best things to do, aimed more at the younger, dare I say first-time cruiser than the seasoned pros. These are the ships that reinvented cruising’s image, so that’s where I went for ideas.
Because it’s the UK’s cruise capital and because it’s not too far away, I chose Southampton as the destination for my no-cruise cruise. It’s a big enough city that it should have most of the things I want but not so big that I can’t get around by foot. Breaks the illusion if I’m constantly jumping on buses or trains.
The thing that could have stopped this trip before it started was the cabin. To reproduce the cruise experience, was I going to have to find the most luxurious, most expensive hotel in Southampton? Back to P&O’s website to examine Iona’s cabins. And what I discovered was that unless you get the two-storey mega suite with your own butler, even the pretty expensive suites kind of look like cheap hotels that haven’t been renovated since the early 90s. The Ibis Budget – not even the proper Ibis – would be the absolute perfect stand-in for a sea view cabin. And when I arrived on Friday afternoon, I even had a view of a cruise ship from my window! I also had a view of the Novotel opposite, the inner-city dual-carriageway that runs down to Ocean Village and the biggest pile of shipping containers I’d ever seen. Yes, I genuinely did consider printing a giant sea view to stick over the window for the duration of my cruise but that seemed like taking the joke too far.
The first thing on my list was a trip to the spa. People like a bit of pampering and a hydro pool at sea. As far as I could see, there are two suitable spas in Southampton. The one at the Harbour Hotel looked nice… but the one at the Hilton is a fraction of the cost. The trouble is that it’s five and a half miles from my cabin, which meant a drive, straight through the heart of the city. I’m a country mouse, not a town mouse. Give me a narrow lane with ten-foot hedges scraping the sides of my car over multiple lanes and traffic lights any day!
Once I got there, it was a nice enough spa, although the fact that everything was in the same room made it feel quite small. It had a light and a dark steam room, a sauna, a foot bath, an ice fountain, two experience showers, a relax room with heated stone recliners, a hydro pool and a hot tub outside on the terrace with views of the golf course and a glimpse of the admittedly-unheard M27. For total relaxation and privacy, there are no staff (or lifeguards) which means you can take photos. There was a couple there when I arrived and a second couple arrived half an hour later and I ran back to my locker for my phone while the first couple were in the hot tub. Taking photos without anyone else seeing and without getting anyone else in them – and without getting your phome too wet – is surprisingly stressful so I didn’t spend too long on it. I mostly lounged in the hydro pool, having discovered that its various bubble features work by buttons around the edge. A bubble bed? Yes please.
So that was embarkation day. Check in to my cabin, go to the spa.
Saturday, my full day at sea, started with a buffet breakfast in the restaurant. Might be overstating the Ibis Budget continental breakfast a bit. I have to say, I really enjoyed the size of the coffee mugs, which I used for apple juice. I had toast – actual hot brown toast with salted butter – and a mini croissant with jam and a mug of hot chocolate. You can upgrade to the hot breakfast for £6.50 but plenty of fresh toast and juice was enough for me.
Then it was off to the pool – the Quays leisure centre is just a ten-minute walk. And because this is a pool on a cruise ship, remember, I didn’t go for the lane pool but the lagoon, the shallow irregular-shaped one with slides and things that would have sprayed water if the systems were working properly. Indoor pools are hot and the chlorine burned my eyes without even getting my face wet! A nice hour in the pool under a partially-glass roof and then I took my wet stuff back to the cabin and went out to look at the sea. No photos from the inside – leisure centres, especially the kind with children, don’t tend to approve of photos inside.
By pure luck, Iona herself was in Southampton this weekend. The dates were picked by when I had a free weekend, not when my cruise inspo would be in port but it did happen. So I walked down to Ocean Village to have a look at what I was not doing, via a little park where I could get close enough to the water to pretend this was the view from the deck. For a maritime city, Southampton makes it astonishing difficult to actually get at the sea. It’s almost all lined with passenger or cargo docks. Couldn’t get too near Iona: you have to imagine something like a mini airport for cruise terminals, you can’t just stroll up and pat its gunwales.
Next to Westquay for a little shopping. Iona has several high-end boutiques on board. I bought some tights in Primark, a new shampoo bar in Lush and failed to find a suitable guidebook for Morocco in Waterstones. I’d planned to have lunch but somehow I could still feel the breakfast inside me so I skipped straight to my afternoon activity. Iona suggests some sport. Maybe have a go at archery. I’m already an archery instructor so that’s not a novelty and anyway, I don’t think there’s anywhere to do it nearer than the heart of the New Forest. I’d given up on a climbing wall that didn’t require another long city drive. But in the Marlands Shopping Centre is axe-throwing!
Less than two weeks earlier I’d had my first go at axe-throwing there. My instructor assured me that they could arrange for me to be trained as an instructor but I’d had no response to my email. Nevertheless, I’d really enjoyed hurling axes at a wooden board and was delighted to come back for me. I got a lane to myself – each lane has two targets, so two players but the rest were a group of six (four of whom turned up 45 minutes late…) so they shared two lanes and I got the third to myself.
It was a deeply frustrating experience. Being a targetsport instructor and having done it before, I expected to be reasonably good at it. Certainly to get more than one in every nine throws to actually go into the target. But axe after axe hit sideways. The instructor came to observe, see if there was anything we could fix in my technique but in a reversal of the usual “can’t do it properly when someone’s watching”, two of my three throws went in perfectly and right next to each other. Just need to take my time.
It might have been ok if it wasn’t for the tournament. There were seven of us last time as well and the tournament was a speed throw where we all got to throw next to everyone else – six rounds. This time we got two, and they had a doddery old lady with them who had no concept that axes are dangerous and you can’t just shuffle past the instructor and chuck them whenever you feel like it. I’m particularly furious that I came joint last with the old lady who seemimgly had no idea she was throwing axes. She throws in the way a six-month-old throws the toy that it doesn’t know is in its hands. And that the people who missed three quarters of the lesson did better than me! I’m competitive and I’m angry to have lost to all these idiots.
I did get to throw the giant axe, though. That’s a privilege reserved for the winner, and for any male members of the group, as far as I can see. I’m sure it’s a coincidence but both my axe sessions have been six:one female:male. I clearly made eyes at the axe and the instructor relented, since it was my second session, and let me throw it. It’s heavy. It’s ok when it’s in your hands but when you raise it above your head, the steel head suddenly gets really heavy and when you throw it… well, I’m not going to be defending myself against any zombies with an axe that size.
I recognised that I probably needed food, even if I didn’t feel hungry. Restaurants and fine dining are a big thing on cruise ships but I have ARFID and in an attempt to upgrade from Subway, I went to Pizza Hut right up at the top of Westquay. First I was cross that it took so long to be seated when there were six children in aprons standing behind the bar chatting. Then I was cross that they put me in the “booth of shame” where I was out of sight of most of the world. Then I was cross that the three-cheese melt I wanted ceases to exist after 3pm – a special lunchtime deli price I could understand but not to be available at all? And then I was cross that I had to get out my phone and order using a QR code on the table. Would you like to add a tip? For what? Carrying over a bowl of cheesy garlic bread? I got my own drink, I ordered myself, you eventually hid me in a dark corner – it’s not exactly exceptional service.
You know what? With some hot cheese and carbs in me, I was in a much better mood by the time I was heading back to the cabin! Moral of the story: maybe have some lunch before axe-throwing next time.
The evening’s entertainment was a trip to the theatre, another cruise ship staple. I know, for I’ve done a lot of research since I had this idea, that very few ships these days enforce formal nights but I wanted to dress up a bit for my theatre trip, so I had a little black dress and my silver glitter Converse-a-likes – added the red Primark tights because it occurred to me that even on a pleasantish day in April, it might be a bit cold by the evening for bare legs and then I walked out the back of the hotel estate, across the railway and up to the Mayflower Theatre.
I’m not really a theatre person any more than I’m a cruise person. If I’m at the theatre, 98% of the time, it’s to see stand-up comedy and the last two percent are for plays featuring a very narrow spectrum of favourite actors. I have seen musicals. There have only been two I’ve wanted to see and one of them was in this very theatre – I saw We Will Rock You in London and Priscilla: Queen of the Desert at the Mayflower. Tonight was Bonnie & Clyde. If I hadn’t been set on a cruise ship visit to the theatre, I wouldn’t have bothered but I wanted to do it and that’s what was on. I quite enjoyed it – at the very least, the cast are phenomenal singers. I had to use the interval to check up on how the story goes and check that Bonnie and Clyde were real people. I can’t keep track of everything. Is this the movie with Brad Pitt when he was really young and pretty? No, that’s Thelma and Louise. They both involve cars and two first names so you can see why I might be confused but they’re not the same. So I spent the interval speed-reading the history of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, real life armed robbers and murderers, who led a gang (who mostly don’t appear in the musical) and led a life of chaos, death and destruction that ended abruptly when they were 23 and 24. Would we glorify them today in this way? Absolutely. Have you not seen how much people love true crime? Anyway, I particularly enjoyed Raise a Little Hell and those heavy guitars and the way they skipped out on the big dramatic ending by putting it right at the beginning and then I limped home to my cabin.
Sunday began with another buffet breakfast, packing up my cabin and moving out – or at least, taking my suitcase and my shopping out to the car before heading into Southampton. I thought quarter to ten to finally get out was a bit late but it turns out Southampton city centre doesn’t wake up until at least 11am. I took the lift up to the walkway between the Ikea car park and West Quay’s deck and strolled along there, pretending this was the promenade deck of my cruise ship, complete with a little photoshoot leaning against the railings. The light was pretty terrible but it was the first opportunity to take timer selfies of the entire non-cruise.
My plans had been crazy golf and an art gallery and maybe an ice cream, scuppered by the fact that everything was closed. The crazy golf looked like it hadn’t been open for a while but to be fair, maybe it’s too soon after the winter season for it to have reopened? The art gallery apparently isn’t open on Sundays. I sat in the park for a while. The Southampton marathon was going on around me – a handful of runners would run one way along the path and then a couple of runners would run in the opposite direction and I had no idea how the route worked, and neither did the marshal who I overheard being questioned about the finish line. Maybe I should have strolled back down to the sea, got an ice cream in the park or in the cafe or gone up to the shiny ice cream place in Westquay but honestly, I had ridiculously sore feet after wearing unsuitable shoes all yesterday afternoon (needed closed shoes, not sandals, for axe-throwing, so I wore the silver plimsolls for my hike down to Iona and now have a wonderful big blister just below my toes). Maybe I’d stop in the New Forest on the way home and have the ice cream there. But in the end, I just limped back to the car and drove home.
Did it work out as well as I’d hoped? No? But also I spent a weekend away doing things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise done and got a blog post out of it! I proved to myself that there probably isn’t enough to do on a cruise ship to make the ship more worth doing than the shore excursions and I found a way to make a weekend in Southampton interesting.