After the choir, we headed back to the room for a rest, Jane was still feeling a bit rough, in keeping with the sea state. It was looking like our final visit to the Commodore Club wasn’t going to happen. That Captain had promised that once in the English Channel, the sea would calm down. It didn’t seem to. So we rested until it was time to get ready for dinner. When I was all clean and shiney we went to meet Pat and Giana for one last trivia quiz in the Red Lion pub, stopping only to place all the cases, bar one, outside the stateroom door.

It wasn’t to be our night again, we got our usual 9 out of twelve, but the winning team had 11. Jane was well enough to try a Bloody Mary

We got to dinner to find we were missing Linda, Peter had given her his cold, so she wasn’t feeling up to dinner and didn’t want to pass it on. I had a Crab Thermidor as a starter followed by Turkey Sallopini and Blueberry Cream Pie. We had some OBC left, so got a bottle of Fizz to toast our companions on a very successful cruise.

After dinner it was back to the room to pack the final bag with our dinner attire, use up the last of the internet minutes and nod off ready for tomorrow’s arrival in Southampton.

The skipper’s rush to beat the storm across the Bay of Biscay seems to have failed. We’re bouncing along merrily in the teeth of a gale. Winds of 60+ miles per hour, and 3 1/2 metre waves. All very exciting if you don’t suffer from motion sickness. Unfortunately Jane is not feeling top tippy, the wrist bands from yesterday’s shopping trip don’t seem to be having the desired effect.

I was sent to breakfast alone in the Lido, with orders for a cup of tea and a toasted bacon bagel. I got up to deck 9 to find my route to the Lido blocked by the bad weather. The doors to the Garden room locked, so a diversion to stairwell B via deck 8 was required. I had kedgeree before returning to the room with Jane’s order. It’s funny how with sea sickness you can be too ill to do any thing except eat!

After breakfast the Captain was taking part in a Q&A down in the Royal Court theatre. Jane had to have a mad dash to get showered and ready, but we made it with plenty of time to spare and more importantly, with free seats still available. These Q&A sessions are a bit contrived, but the Captain is very good value and it was a thoroughly enjoyable 45 minutes. This was followed by a chart auction which raised 400 USD for the Prince’s Trust.

A walk to the Purser’s desk followed to check our bill and to post the survey. We’ve still a bit of OBC to use, but not as much as I’d feared. We then had a quick drink in the Lido, the Kwells, Jane is using to supplement her wearing of seasick wristbands, dry her out. I left Jane there wile I headed back to the Royal Court theatre for John Sherlock’s final lecture on Renaissance and Revival. I now know my Nashes from my Inigo Joneses.

Suitably educated, it was now time to start the sad process of packing. It’s a miserable task at the best of times, but after having such a wonderful time it’s very depressing. We got most of it out the way before, ringing Jane’s dad for a bit of ‘Mac and Moo’ time. We now have our disembarkation time, so we let John know and Jane made her daily enquiry on Minty’s health and eating habits.

Lunch in the Lido beckoned, where we both had Pizza, freshly made by the chefs up there. That coupled with a nice cup of tea meant I was suitably refreshed. We walked down to the Grand Lobby where the guests choir were about to perform. Strangely I hadn’t been invited to join  them !!! 

We only had the one drink in the Commodore Club before heading down to the stateroom to get ready for dinner. We were going to meet Pat and Giana in the Red Lion for the wipeout quiz at quarter to eight. We weren’t successful in our endeavours, getting eight out of twelve questions correct, the same as the eventual winners, but failing miserably on the  wipeout question. Our winning streak had com to an end.

It was time for dinner and as is traditional on the final formal night, there was the parade of the chef’s, where all the catering staff are paraded through the restaurant to the applause of the guests. The maître de then went on to embarrass us with our gluttony over the past 16 nights. We’ve eaten 20000 eggs, drunk 3 swimming pools worth of champagne, etc. I made those numbers up, but you get the idea. Dinner was excellent yet again, Fois Gras, followed by Beef Wellington and Baked Alaska. Jane started with escargot, Wellington and ended with Macadamia Creme Brulé.

We’ve had a very good table this voyage, our companions for dinner have been brilliant. We are a table of 10, and because the size doesn’t allow for everyone to easily talk to each other across the table, we’ve been switching places every night, which means no one has to put up with me every night, apart from poor Jane. 

 After dinner we headed straight to bed to try and get a better nights sleep for Jane. The Captain has sped the ship up to try and get us across the Bay of Biscay ahead of a storm coming in from the West. Jane has invested in some wrist band snake oil to stave off the effects of motion sickness, let’s see if that works!

Jane had a particularly bad night last night. Being a lady of a certain age, she’s been experiencing”power surges” which has been disrupting her sleep quite badly. This coupled with the lively seas means she’s very tired this morning. I was late getting up, my knackered Achilles, means no running and there’s no fencing today so I didn’t stir until after 9am. After a shower, I headed up to the Lido for breakfast, with orders of bring me something nice, and a cup of tea following me out of the door. I had a freshly made ham and mushroom omelette before making Jane a bacon bagel, with tea. Her breakfast looked a lot nicer than mine had been, and going by munching noises as she devoured it, it was.

The lecture trail started with John Sherlock’s architecture lectures, this time entitled “Byzantine Skill, Romanesque Energy and Gothic Glory”. This covered the medieval period. I am now an expert at spotting the difference between Roman and Gothic arches, you never know when it will come in handy.

I didn’t hang around for Margaret Gilmore’s lecture on the Litvanyenko murder by the Russian secret service as I’d seen this on the QM2 last December. I went and collected Jane to see if we could spend some of our remaining OBC and put down a future cruise deposit for next year’s cruise.

The lunchtime lecture is David Mallinder’s reprise on Sammy Davis Jr. This is the lecture from the Singers of the Great American Songbook series I was most looking forward to and it was excellent. After the lecture, lunch beckoned, pea soup and minute steak, lovely. After lunch we went back up to get the last of the sun on deck 9, where I left Jane in the capable hands of Giana and I headed back down to the Royal Court theatre where Star Trek: Beyond was showing. The projector is on it’s last legs, with a yellow bleed across large parts of the screen. Apparently this will be fixed on return to Southampton, it didn’t spoil the film, but it wasn’t good.

It’s now Commodore o’clock, so I’m going to have a pint of Pedigree and Jane wants a classic bloody Mary, she’s all Martini’d out.

We had arranged to meet up with Pat and Giana for the quiz again tonight in the Golden Lion pub. We had got ready very early, so ended up having a look at the sale items racked up outside the ladies boutique on deck 3. Jane saw a pair of trousers she liked, but at 195 USD they were a bit tasty for me. She the saw another set that she liked, and this time they were more to my liking at 42 USD, so she went to try them on. The boutique doesn’t have a changing room, so she headed back to the stateroom to try them on, leaving me in the shop as collateral. Well they fitted and she liked them so bought them, feeling very pleased with herself when she got 50% off, a bargain at 21 USD.

I was sent to the pub to grab a table for the quiz while, she took her purchase back to the room. So suitably lubricated with a pint of Pedigree, and joined by Pat and Giana, we proceeded to go on and win the quiz with 9 questions of twelve correct, and doubling up by getting the wipeout question right.

With our quiz cards stamped we headed to dinner, stopping by the Queen’s Room where Gretchen and Thirsa, and Jeff and Hazel were on the dancefloor, dancing to a cha cha. We watched them dance then walked together to our table where Peter and Linda were waiting. I had crab tian, followed by saddle of venison and then a delicious treacle sponge. Thirsa has spring rolls, which she didn’t like. She asked Germane, our waiter, if he would change it for the crab, he did this with no fuss at all, which shows that there is no reason to suffer a dish you don’t like, they always willing to change it for you. BTW everyone else who had had the spring rolls loved them.

The show tonight was comedian Roy Walker, not my cup of tea, so it was off to bed to get ready for Cadiz.

I woke a little before my alarm this morning so was ready for it when it went off at 06.50. Jane was telling me to get back in bed while I was getting ready for the gym, but as this might be the last chance I get for a run I was determined to go. Once we past Gibraltar tonight we’ll be in the Atlantic, and if we have “Sea State lumpy” running on the treadmill might become problematic. As it turned out I needn’t have worried about running on the next few days. I was just jogging through 4.5km when I started to feel my Achilles tighten. I decided to complete my 5k, but as just as I got there it went on me and I had to hit the stop button. It loosened up again after I’d cooled down a little, but it’s not good.

We lazed in the stateroom for a while before going for a late breakfast in the MDR. There was no fencing class today as there was a tat bazaar going on the the Queen’s Room, so we had a quick look in there before heading on to the Royal Court Theatre for the first of today’s lectures. The Captain, Assume Hashim, was giving a lecture on the ship operations entitled Virtual Bridge Tour. Informative, interesting and very enjoyable. The Captain is obviously a people person, both witty and self deprecating, you can see why he has made it to the highest echelons of Cunard.

I had about 30 minutes up on deck 9 with Jane before it was time for my second lecture of the day. John Sherlock was back again with the second of his architecture lectures, this time covering the Roman period. Very good again, I learned a lot and I will certainly be going to his next one’s assuming they don’t clash with fencing.

I dined alone today, Jane was going to get a jacket potato in the Lido for lunch, so intending to be good I headed to the MDR only to be tripped up by a very nice burger and then the best trifle I have had in a long time.

The third lecture was Dave Mallinder’s reprise of Dean Martin’s life. An extensive lecture covering his early life in Ohio, the Jerry Lewis and Rat Pack years, and through to his death on Christmas day 1995.

Jane had stayed on deck 9 making the most of the last of the sunshine with Giana. Jane came back to the room, and we decided to go out and have a fancy coffee in the Cafe Carinthia with Pat and Giana which passed a little time, the American I had today was much nicer than yesterday’s latte. On the way back we spotted another of our dinner companions, Thirsa, in the Queen’s Room where she was watching Gretchen, another of our dinner companions, take part in the tap dancing classes, Gretchen was pretty good, soft shoeing to a track from Chicago. After that it was time for a rest back in the room. No Commodore Club for us tonight.

We didn’t hang around in the Commodore Club for too long, leaving well before the 6pm dress code cut-off. It’s the Captain’s cocktail party for the CWC members as well as being the Masquerade Ball, so tonight was a formal night. I was in the white tux, as I’d popped a button on my black tux jacket, and not having packed a sewing kit, wasn’t in a position to repair it.

We headed down to the Queen’s room for cocktails, when we saw Giana and Pat in the Golden Lion, so we made a detour to say hello and ended up chatting with them, and then joined their team for the 8 o’clock quiz. We’re not right bright, only getting 9 out of 12 questions correct and then getting the wipeout question wrong. The format of the quiz is you can bet, points scored in the first part of the quiz on a final wipeout question, which we got wrong anyway. It wouldn’t have mattered if we’d got it right as the winning score was 2000, and the most we’d have got would have been 1800.

Dinner was excellent again, with a Serrano ham starter and Fillet steak Rossini for a main, Jane had rack of lamb, so was in seventh heaven. Hazel and Jeff taken advantage of Captain’s cocktails, Hazel had had “3 or 4” glasses of bubbly and was very lively, they are a fun couple and a delight to have as dinner companions. Petit fours were passed around, and the surplus left on the table yet again, which meant I couldn’t keep my hands off them.

The entertainment in the Royal Court theatre were and acrobatic act, this wasn’t really my cup of tea, but I did enjoy it.

Today is a sea day, and as such has been designated as a learning day. It started off well, as I leapt out of bed at 06.50 with my alarm clock blaring out. I got dressed and headed of to the gym for my run. I then went back to the room as I’d forgotten my Polar Heart Rate Monitor. Eventually I got back to the gym and set off jogging on the treadmill. 5 kms later, I was on my cool down and I noticed that my performance index on the machine was 46. Now I have no idea what the number means, but on the first day, my run had a PI of 41. So the first thing I learned today is I’m 5 whatevers better at running than I was before the cruise. I may be fatter, but I’m fitter.

After a mad dash of shower and breakfast in the Lido, it was time for fencing. We’d been bumped again to the 08.45 slot because of a lecture on LS Lowrey in the Queen’s room at 11am. As is usual for the early session, there were only two of us, Eve was the other swords person. It’s good when there’s only two though, we got a lot more time free fighting, which was fast and frenetic.

I got back to the stateroom for my second shower and change of clothes of the day and it was only 09.40. Jane was just back from doing some ironing, and was now heading off upstairs to do some sun worshipping while I headed off to the first of three lectures.

The first was a lecture on architecture, given by John Sherlock, entitled Greek orders and illusions. It was very interesting and I am now much better informed on the difference between Doric, Ionic and Corinthian architecture styles.

The second, was Margaret Gilmore’s second lecture on terrorism, entitled Terrorist Hunters. I saw this lecture on the QM2 last December, it has been updated covering more recent events, but it was pretty much the same.

The third was a lecture on Nat King Cole by Dave Mackinder. This is the first in a series entitled Singers of the Great American Songbook. Again I really enjoyed this lecture, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s lecture on Dean Martin.

All this education was making me hungry and I’d arranged to meet Jane back at the stateroom, before heading to the MDR for lunch where I had salad and a sandwich, roast beef. Jane had left her book etc up with Giana, so I headed up to deck 9 with her to get a little sun. Jane has a massage booked at 15.15, so after a while chatting with Pat and reading Jane disappeared off to that and I snuck off for a snack while she wasn’t looking.

I actually fancied a nice coffee and after a pretty horrendous experience of the muck dished out by the machine in the Lido at breakfast, I opted for a latte in the Café Corinthia. It was better than the Lido, but I still wasn’t enamoured with it, I prefer the coffee served up in the MDR.
Jane came back from her massage “in agony”, the girl had given her a right pummeling. I don’t expect it will stop her going back for another though. After all that excitement it was Commodore o’clock, so we headed up to deck 10 where Jane asked for a Watermelon Martini, which she failed to get, it wasn’t our usual steward so he may not have asked the correct question from the barman. In the end she opted for the Breakfast Martini, always a good choice, and I had a Red Apple Fizz.