Through The Porthole - Day 16

And so, almost as if it never happened, we wake to the familiar sight of Dover Harbour, our phones reconnect to UK providers, at UK times, and we pack away our chargers and toothbrushes.

Time to retire to our beloved Library to while away the last hour between room vacation time (8am) and our assigned disembarkation time. 

Farewell port hole, farewell Maud. It's been a blast.

Through The Porthole - Day 15

The North Sea is well known for its heavy swells. This shot shows a sea that has calmed down considerably since last night. Despite the captain's best efforts, he had eventually to abandon the shelter of the coast and set off across.

It was a rough night, and great care was required to navigate the few feet of cabin and "head" for several nightly "visits." 

The good news is the weather is expected to improve during the morning, and we should be in calmer waters by lunchtime. A good thing, since we'll be confined to a darkened room for the last of our Astronomy lectures immediately after.

Pea Shoots, Pea Scores

Fairly early in this trip, it became obvious that our chef liked to use pea shoots as a garnish. I say "liked", but it soon began to look more like a compulsion. Pretty much the only meal where you could be guaranteed not to see a pea shoot was breakfast. Lunch and dinner? They were everywhere. Starters, mains, we even had them poked artistically into pots of chocolate or raspberry mousse.

I remarked on it to our fellow diners (the Astronomy group, alone among the guests, were always seated together) on the second or third night, and it rapidly turned into an amusing trope for the whole voyage.

But it wasn't until our "Meet the Officers" session this afternoon, that we learned the ubiquitous presence of pea shoots had been noticed by others. During a round-robin question session at the end of the talk, someone asked the catering manager to estimate how much food and drink was consumed during the trip "and in particular, how many kilograms of pea shoots do we get through." :o)

The answer was sixty. 60kg of pea shoots!

I'd conceived this entry in the blog as soon as the question was asked, but it wasn't until the answer arrived that Nikki came up with this much snappier title.

And then something spooky happened. Knowing my nerdy love of numbers, she said I should work out how many pea shoots that worked out at, per passenger, per day. 

I found an academic study on the average size and weight of a pea shoot (yes, really), and a simple average of the results from the five methods of statistical analysis used (really, really) comes out at around 1g. So that 60kg of pea shoots translates very simply into 60,000 of the little green buggers.

But here's the spooky part. If you divide that 60,000 by the number of passengers on this trip (198), and the number of days we've been on board (15), it comes out to this number.

So many "scores" you might think I've fixed the numbers to match the title. But I haven't. It's just one of those weird coincidences. 

Incidentally, we've also chewed our way through...
4000kg fish/seafood
5000kg meat
6000kg fresh veg

...and consumed 3860 bottles of wine. >burp<

Through The Porthole - Day 14

For absolutely no reason whatever we woke early again today. Still not far enough south for the sun to be up at that hour though. 

Google Maps revealed that we had, in a way, been a little hasty in bidding farewell to Norway yesterday. To avoid choppy waters for as long as possible, our captain had made a left turn at Haugesund, allowing us to benefit from the protection of the island of Karmøy as far south as Skudeneshavn.

That we were still in sight of civilisation was revealed once the sun made an appearance.

Leaving Norway

We were actually sat in a fascinating lecture (about the truths hidden in the Zodiac) when we set sail from Ålesund, but as soon as we were released from the confines of the lecture room, Nikki sprinted for the deck to catch the fabulous light of the rapidly setting sun.

We're still hugging the coast, but we can already notice an increase in the swell. These last few hours of the first day of February will allegedly be the worst of the weather for the last leg of our trip. If these are the heaviest seas we encounter then we'll consider that a win.

So for now, it's farewell to Norway, if not quite yet hello to Blighty. The land of the Norsemen has definitely imprinted itself on our hearts. We're already beginning to talk of returning (which for Nikki obviously means researching future trips, sights, ports of call), but determined to do it, if and when, in warmer weather!

Ålesund

A pretty place, made even prettier by a bright sun. Something we've not seen for several days.

While we waited for our bus - delayed by 45 minutes owing to a technical problem - we caught sight of the first of today's kayakers preparing to set out around the harbour. Their last chance too, as we'll be setting off back across the North Sea after lunch today.

Having discovered the icy state of the pier, we beat a hasty retreat back aboard. With the ship safely moored, and therefore stable, we took advantage of that to complete most of the return packing, leaving out only those clothes we'll need for the next two days.

Neither of us fancied doing that in the middle of the North Sea, even though the weather is predicted to be "mild".

For the rest of the morning we enjoyed the sunny sights of Ålesund, together with the interesting refuelling activities going on alongside.

Through The Porthole - Day 13

Another early arrival today - our last Norwegian port: Ålesund. A local supply ship stopped by to say hello.

We were hoping for a morning ashore today, after being stuck on board for two days. Sadly the icy dockside put paid to those ideas. The state of the pathways here is enough to make you wonder why they're not better at dealing with ice. Have they never heard of salt?