Seafaring Holidays
YEAR after year the enticement of friends to show me the " prettiest spot imaginable " has upset my plans to take a seafaring holiday. But this year I have tarried long enough to avoid them, and am determined to go on a cruise. I have consulted an expert and have come home not by any means with any settled notions of where I want to go, but with a load of the most beautifully-coloured advertisements I have ever seen.
If time had been of secondary consideration, nothing coal have attracted more than a cruise round the world on the ' Empress of Australia.' Firstly, it was an oil-burner, and specially built for the tropics. In 164 days I could cover over 96,000 miles, and be sure of the best hotels and motor cars ashore and special trains to outlying spots of interest. The services of guides, interpreters and dragomans would be at jay command. Apart from the cost of £427, this tour was not for me,, as the Canadian Pacific liner was not due to sail until November 14th. Nor could I devote time to a six- weeks' cruise 1,000 miles up the Amazon, despite the fascina- tion of such a journey. How pleasant would it be to board the ' Hildebrand '—a 7,000 ton Booth liner—in mid-Septem- ber, just when the summer here would be ending, and spend until the end of October basking in a tropical sun, as the boat wended her way through lagoons and Equatorial forests. The journey would be broken, so that I could spend some days among the wine-lodges of Oporto, the castles of Cintra and the mountains of Madeira. Again, the Blue Star liners offered me a 48-days' tour to Argentina from Lona6zurat foOp*htly intervals, which would include a stay of ten days in one of the
best hotels in Buenos Aires. .
But in my workaday world holidays of such length are not permissible. Other shipping companies have arranged Shorter programmes and offer me the use of their sumptuous steamers for holidays for which I have the time and money. One of the P. and 0. ships, for instance, the 16,000-tonner, Ranehi,' is destined for the Norwegian Fjords and the Mediterranean, and I could undertake a visit to either of these places in the short space of two to three weeks. The Northern Capitals and the Baltic are enchanting, but so are Spain, Algiers and the Balearic Isles. After that to Sicily, Venice and the Dalmatian Coast. Which am I to choose ? This year, though, a new star has appeared in the firmament. I find that I am able to tour round Ireland—has that been possible before in an ocean liner ? The Royal Mail Line has inaugurated a novel cruise occupying only fifteen days, which will allow me to leave Southampton, cross to Dublin and then wander leisurely round to Portrush, Sligo, Galway, and Glengarriff among other places, and back to Liverpool. The R.M.S.P. ` Avon,' after returning from this Irish tour, starts off the same evening for a visit to the Western Isles of Scotland and elsewhere. Now this is the sort of trip which must appeal to many motorists whO, like myself, have tra- versed almost every motoring highway in the North. Nowa- days, a car can probe almost any place on earth, but only with great difficulty reach the outlying islands of Scotland.
Here then is a trip for the motorist, especially if he be a little weary of motoring. First of all, after leaving Liverpool, he would see the Isle of Man, then Belfast, then the Firth of Clyde as far as Greenock. Leaving Greenock it would be a pretty sight to come through the Sound of Jura to Oban, and the next day, after one of those wonderful sunsets for which Oban is renowned, through Loch Linnhe to Fort William, with; Ben Nevis towering above. In sunny weather I can picture nothing to make a holiday more'pleasur- _ able, particularly as this tour wanders through many delightful Sounds and Lochs to Stornaway before it turns round John o' Groats for Inverness, Leith and then London.
Another cruise which I might choose is arranged by the Union Castle Line every fortnight. It would, I see, take me to Antwerp and Rotterdam and Hamburg, and from those centres I could journey away on my, own hook to Brussels and Ghent and Namur, to The Hague and Dordrecht and Leyden and to Kid and Bremen. By the Cunard liner,
Carinthia,' I could also go to Norway on a 17-days' cruise, visiting the fjords, Oslo, Copenhagen, Bergen and so on.
Having exhausted the various booklets from which I have written, a stronger-minded person would already be on the way to book his passage for one or the other. But I can't make up my mind ; they are all so attractive.
Perhaps I shall go to America. The White Star Line runs a regular service of " Cabin " ships to New York, Boston, Quebec and Montreal. Although this type is in a class apart from ships like the Majestic' and Olympic,' it offers pas- sengers every conceivable comfort. If economy has to be studied, there is no reason why a third-class passage, costing no more for the return journey than £38, should not be booked Despite the attraction of other sea holidays, if I am ever to visit the United States I ought to do so while the rivalry existing between companies like the White Star, Cunard and C.P.R., who all own luxurious boats, is keeping down the
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