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Left Southampton on Aurora on June 30th first visiting Cobh (formerly Queenstown; Ironically Titanic left Queenstown in 1912 and the rest is history.) and then Dublin in Ireland where naturally I enjoyed the local brew. 

 

 After 3 days steaming in a north westerly direction we arrived in Greenland at the southern port of Qaqortoq passing many icebergs on the way in. We managed to miss them!

 

 

 

 

 

 Perched on the side of a mountain, Qaqortoq has the atmosphere of a frontier town with multicoloured wooden houses and fishing and freight wharves. Icebound in the long Winter, there were icebergs 100 yards off the shore. The next day we visited Nuuk the capital with 14000 inhabitants, a mixture of Inuits and Danes. Nuuk has the most northerly cathedral in the world although not very big.

From Greenland we moved on to Iceland and its capital Reykjavik a voyage of some 60 hours as we had developed engine problems! However while flown in experts fifed the propulsion unit, I flew over southern Iceland seeing volcanoes, waterfalls, rivers and geothermal vents and multicoloured mountains (caused by the

 lava etc). From the capital we sailed to the north of Iceland and the port of Akureyri which is 40 miles inland up a fjord. A 6 hour coach tour took in all the sights previously seen from the flight but at ground level. It was magnificent. The Godafoss waterfalls were particularly impressive although not as high as Niagra or Victoria.

 A very long day was enjoyed by all and we left Akureyri in the late evening for the voyage to our fourth country, Norway. It rained in Norway, each day in the ports of Olden, Bergen and Stavangar it rained! However tours were undertaken despite the weather, these included two trips by boat (coals to Newcastle!) on magnificent fjords and lakes.

 

 

So from Norway we sailed for the home port of Southampton, the 18 day cruise being one of the most enjoyable I had undertaken.

 

 

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