Diary of a Retired Parson
Who said cruising was simple? Christopher Lewis-Jenkins discovers otherwise on his latest maritime jaunt.
So, I had an email from the Missions to Seafarers: Can you sail in two weeks’ time? Panic stations! Where to, how long for, where do we pick up the ship etc.?
You’re flying out to Capetown via Frankfurt and joining The Ambience cruise ship, one of the Ambassador ships. Leave your car in Tilbury and get to Heathrow to join your flight. Okay it sounds easy enough...only it wasn’t.
First of all the Tilbury car park doesn’t open unless there’s a ship in port so, just two days before departure, we had to arrange public transport to Heathrow. Taxi to Tescos in Pembroke Dock, National Express to Heathrow but on the way we had to rescue another NE coach that had broken down and take on their passengers.
Then we had to wait for the police to arrive to close the very busy motorway lane to allow us to pull out and continue our journey, worried now that we would miss our flight but by the skin of our teeth we made our flight to Frankfurt and on to Cape-Town.
What a lovely welcome to South Africa, not the normal sullen looking immigration officers but a wonderful smile. We were met by a rep from the ship who took us in a cab to the ship. Now you may have thought that it was all easy enough but it wasn’t, what with under two weeks to prepare everything that I had to do to prepare services, hymns, sermons, organise everything that serving passengers on board entails.
Anyway, everything turned out fine with Morning Prayer every day, Mass on Sundays, a Healing and Wholeness service, Songs of Praise and quiet time after the services for anyone who wanted to have a personal chat with me on anything that was troubling them. I also conducted an ANZAC service commemorating those from Australia and New Zealand during the first and second World Wars.
Our itinerary was Capetown to Tristan Da Cunha, Cape Verde islands, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Recife (also in Brazil), Casablanca in Morocco, Lisbon Portugal and home to Tilbury. 31 Wonderful days. Lots of sunshine but the only thing I bought in Brazil was an umbrella as it absolutely chucked it down in Recife. Reminded me of home.
We’re looking forward to the next cruise. Who knows when – or where - when that will be?