Monday 10 August - Gold Member

After a long, but stress-free, air conditioned, bumper to bumper queue to park the car, we had a short bus ride to the ship. At the terminal, ahead of us, ran the gauntlet of a long and winding queue; "Ah" I thought, now's the time to mention to the hostess my gold membership; "a gold member sir, you can take this path" - a path that led us straight to the front, ahead of hoi polloi, and within minutes we had our sea passes and were on board.

We headed straight for our cabin for an early inspection proved we had no disappointment, laid out just as we had dreamed with a balcony of better proportions. After a quick wash and brush up we headed to the Windjamer for a light lunch before our exploration of the ship, during which we managed to take in a round of crazy golf; Louise 35 - Trevor 31 - didn't realise how competitive Louise is, she's not a great loser - joking of course.

Back at the cabin, our cases had arrived so we managed to get unpacked before being summonsed to the obligatory muster drill, this lasted longer than it needed to, eventually the occupants of cabin 1096 turned up after two further announcements, looking bewelidered and remorseless.

On our first evening we were rewarded with a promenade around the deck watching the sun set whilst cruising past a wiggle of wind turbines waving to us from a distant wind farm. the evening was punctuated by a cheeky Merlot on our balcony.

A little trivia, our personnel valet is cheeky chappie who goes by the name of Shaun Jones; so is he Welsh or is he Irish? answers on a post card please, or just let us know in the comments...