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8.55am – Just waiting for our home pickup. Our driver Rob is due any minute. We’re very excited!

11.29am – After a short stop at Toddington Services we’re back on the road again. The journey down to Dover is going extremely smoothly, and our driver Rob is doing an excellent job. We’ve about two hours to go now.

2.15pm – We’ve arrived at Dover and have just dropped off our luggage. We’re boarding very shortly now. This is a very slick operation here. Well done Saga.

2.29pm – We were personally escorted to our cabin and, as you can see below, it’s really quite glorious!

4.50pm – We had a lovely lunch in The Grill restaurant on Deck 11 and then had to attend a mandatory Muster Drill. Having done that we’re enjoying sitting out on deck at the rear of the ship and are due to depart in about 10 minutes now.

5.58pm – We’ve been going about 20 minutes so far and we’ve just had a ‘welcome to France’ message on our phones, despite still being very close to the Kent coast! The horizon is quite hazy, but I’m sure France probably is out there somewhere right enough!

9.33pm – Well, we had a bit of a drama at around 8pm this evening. Helen and I were enjoying a delicious dinner in The Grill restaurant sitting at a table next to the window when an air ambulance suddenly appeared next to the ship. Shortly thereafter, the captain made a ship-wide announcement that a passenger had taken ill and was going to be airlifted to hospital. The ship’s front lounges and cabins on all decks had to be evacuated out of an abundance of caution whilst the helicopter hovered off the front bow and winched-up the patient. Fortunately, we didn’t have to move from our table and we were able to watch as the helicopter circled the ship numerous times over the following 45 minutes or so. Eventually, the all-clear was given by the captain and we resumed our previous speed. What a shame for the affected passenger and those travelling with them.

The dinner in The Grill restaurant was delicious: I had a sirloin steak and Helen had chicken. The food is very good so far and the service is exemplary; our Indonesian waiter insisted on referring to me as ‘Sir Alan’, so I returned the favour and addressed him as ‘Sir Raymond’. I hope we’ll see him again as he was lots of fun.

10.58pm – After dinner Helen and I went for a walk around the Promenade Deck. As you can see above, there was a beautiful sunset. However, it was rather chilly and so we didn’t quite make a full circuit of the ship before going back inside. Apparently, 3.9 circuits of the Promenade Deck equals one mile – perhaps another day, ahem…

Going back inside we headed for The Playhouse which is the large theatre on-board, seating several hundred passengers. It was very nearly full, but we were able to squeeze into two seats at the back of the auditorium. The show was a montage of excerpts from musical shows and the performers were really very good indeed. After that we had a drink in one of the cocktail lounges before returning to our cabin.

Tomorrow is a ‘sea day’ which means we won’t be stopping anywhere, and so we’ll spend the day exploring the ship further and getting to know where everything is.

Tomorrow evening is our one and only ‘Gala Evening’ of this cruise. This means everyone has to dress formally. To really mark the occasion for ourselves we’ve booked a table at one of the three ‘speciality restaurants’ on-board – East to West – a pan-Asian restaurant. Hopefully, that’ll be a rather special occasion.

Today has been quite a long one, but we’re enjoying everything aboard ship so far – a great start to our holiday.

Here’s our final position before we sign-off for the night – nearly level with Norwich.