It seems a very long time since my Baltic holiday in July, with work being at full throttle ever since I returned.

At some point in the spring, I booked this week away, knowing that I would be ready for a break by the time November arrived. This trip was slated to be short and simple, and on the whole it was.

Pre-departure

There were a few minor niggles before setting off. Usually P&O confirm the cabin numbers during the booking process, but for whatever reason on Azura, this wasn’t the case. For me at least. So I was a little concerned to find I’d finally been assigned a cabin very close to the pub and Atrium areas, which are usually busy and quite loud. But it was what it was, so I packed my earplugs and hoped for the best.

The flight out from Manchester was uneventful, despite the 3.45am start for the red-eye flight and an hour delay due to thick fog at the airport. But the upside of this was that I was onboard and checked-in by 1.30pm. And it was nice to be in the Tenerife warmth having left Manchester as the mercury was plummeting.

First run in Tenerife

Having been sat down for much of the day to that point I grabbed a bowl of soup for lunch and then headed out for a run to shake out the legs a bit.

The run took me along the port front to the opera house, a building that stood out looking a bit like its namesake in Sydney, although apparently the architecture was possibly designed to look like a wave breaking over the building. Having then carried on towards the colonial-looking buildings nearby I then worked my way through the city itself, trying to find my bearings.

We had our honeymoon on Tenerife and I was a little confused as to why I had little memory of the streets of Santa Cruz. It was only the following day that it dawned on me that we hadn’t stayed in the capital and thus any “memories” I had of it were entirely fabricated by my mind – Whooops.

Teide National Park

We stopped overnight in Tenerife and so I booked a coach trip out to the National Park. It was a place I would have liked to have visited when we were here in 2010 but unfortunately Mark’s health was such that such a trek was beyond limits.

Since then my enjoyment of hills and mountains has only grown so this was a trip I was looking forward to, although I was worried the night before as the mountain was shrouded in cloud.

It turns out that this isn’t unusual, and the clouds help provide some of the moisture required by the pine forest, which surrounds the volcano, to survive. The tree-trunks were all blackened due to a huge fire which engulfed the woodland a couple of years ago, but amazingly the trees survived the burning and were rapidly regrowing their greenery.

The volcano didn’t hide away from us, and indeed, the famed sea-of-clouds even stayed away which provided great views of the island all the way down to the coast.

We then continued further on to look at some of the incredible rock formations that were due to how and where the lava had flowed many years ago and had since been eroded back to the hardest rocks.

A Day at sea

We left Tenerife in the late evening for our day’s sail to Madeira. With the lack of commitments along with the hectic nature of the previous couple of days, the chance to chill out completely was much appreciated.

The first issues with the ship became apparent by now. There seemed to be a periodic issue with the smell of sewage on the ship. I first experienced it in my cabin and realised the smell must be percolating through the air conditioning. I complained and a maintenance crewman came out who stated he couldn’t smell anything, although by that time, the smell had subsided. The smell was frequently there on deck though, so it’s something the staff must be aware of.

It was also apparent that there was some sound transfer from the music in the atrium into the cabin during the evening. Again, I raised the issue with reception who promised to raise it with the night manager. But that didn’t seem to make a jot of difference which meant that there wasn’t really any chance of sleep before 11.30pm when the music stopped. As a result I had to rejig my plans to fit around this which wasn’t ideal on the days where I needed to be up early.

One general issue I do have with P&O cruises however is that there’s very little I want to take part in on their itinerary. Other cruise companies have several speakers on board, some talking about specialist topics, others about what to see in the ports. P&O managed one speaker doing the latter, but the rest of the talks are by the various shops onboard about the things one can buy from them, or by the spa/gym staff about various detox diets or other such things they are peddling. Aside from that, there was a single craft based thing which you can pay to do, or watch films and/or sunbathe. So whilst it might suit those who want to do the latter, beyond the one talk plus making use of the gym, I was restricted to reading my book. Not so much of a problem for the odd sea day here and there, but I would never book a cruise with P&O which involved multiple sea days at a time e.g. a transatlantic crossing as I’d go stir crazy very quickly.

On the positive side the food was, on the whole, decent and the ship’s entertainment company in particular were excellent (although the same couldn’t be said for their “Pulse” band who were not as good as their equivalents I’ve seen on previous cruises).

Travelling as a solo passenger, the cruise companies do seem to be reasonably well geared up to getting the solo crowd together, be it for get togethers or for dining, and again it was great to be on a friendly table for dinner.

On both sea day evenings we had the black-tie formal dinners which is a rare chance to dress up, and about the only time the dinner suit gets an airing.

Madeira

It has been a long time since I visited Madeira previously and I had practically no memory of Funchal itself. As the weather forecast hadn’t been great, I chose not to book any excursions but as it happened, the weather was great on arrival.

In my usual madness I decided that I would walk up to the Botanical Gardens, something that involved walking up some extremely steep hills to get there. On the plus side, once there it was really quiet as there were no coach parties in at the same time and I had a nice mooch around, in particular noting the designed garden as it looked very similar to a photo I took when I was there last time!

I noted that there was a cable car out of the Gardens which I wasn’t previously aware of, and thus that was my next trip in my vague voyage of random wanderings. This took me up to the village of Monte which, it turns out, is where the street toboggan rides start. Seeing the huge queue confirmed that I wasn’t going to be doing that myself, however the heavens subsequently opened and I suspect most of those in the queue would miss out too (they can only do this in dry conditions apparently). I got soaked heading to the main cable car and thus didn’t really get the views on the way down to the sea-front as it was mostly engulfed in cloud.

It was dry when I got to the bottom and by the time I had walked back to the ship, so was I.

Again following lunch I went out for a quick run (my first on Portuguese soil) before heading in for an evening meal, evening show and then a drink in the ‘Planet’ bar until it was possible to sleep in my cabin downstairs.

Gran Canaria (after another sea day)

There’s not much to add about the second sea day that I’ve not already covered so I’ll skip forward to the next shore day, on Gran Canaria.

I’d looked at the trips and surmised that most of what was on offer I could do myself. What I hadn’t realised was that the old town was quite a bit further from the port than in other ports. It didn’t help that I followed a couple of signs and ended up in the middle of nowhere; on Apple Maps it looked like I was heading for a greenspace, however in practice it was waste ground!

After much re-routing I made it to the old town and enjoyed my fill of old buildings before taking the more direct route back to the ship. The walk ended up just over 11 miles in total!

Following lunch I had a run along the front but became aware of my hip being a bit painful. I suspected it was probably bursitis in the hip which really isn’t good, given how stubborn it has been in my heels in recent years.

As such I realised that I’d probably have to curtail the walking and running for a while. That said, I was booked on a coach trip for our last port of call so at least that reduced the risk of making things worse whilst still being able to enjoy the holiday.

Lanzorote

This was my only other pre-booked excursion, off up into the active volcanos in the south-east of the island. The area in the National Park has featured in several films owing to its alien-looking red landscape – if you’ve seen anything set on Mars, it’s possible this was where it was filmed.

Our first stop was at an aloe vera factory shop where we were told a lot about the plant and its benefits to health before being taken to the store where we could purchase said products. It’s almost as if P&O created this on the same template as their sea day “talks”!

We then carried on into the National Park to the “Devil’s Kitchen” a restaurant built on top of a volcano and where all the food was effectively barbecued from the heat of the volcano. They did a couple of demonstrations of the heat of the ground upon which we were standing, with water being vaporised instantly when poured into a metal tube buried in the ground, and dry vegetation combusting within a few seconds of being tossed into a hole in the ground.

We then went on a coach tour in the Park itself looking at the ravaged landscape from the last major eruption a couple of hundred years ago. It was interesting seeing cracks in the rocks that have formed more recently reminding us that the beast within was still very much active and would explode again at some point in the future.

We finished the tour at a winery (I’m not sure what the difference between a winery and a vineyard is) where there was an opportunity to taste the local wine. And of course purchase some in the process!

And then it was back to the ship to start packing ahead of the journey home. An evening of goodbyes from table companions and no chance of an early night due to the volume of the atrium music, despite the fact that much of the ship’s passengers were due an early morning.

A return home

The return to the UK was not without complications. Despite getting to the airport in loads of time, Jet2’s boarding process left a lot to be desired. Having eventually boarded most of the plane, we sat on the tarmac for another hour before an accessibility bus arrived with the remaining passengers. Given they all had mobility issues, it would have been far more dignified had they got them on first, rather than having a plane full of frustrated passengers watching on as the last few passengers were man-handled into their seats. Anyone would think the airline hadn’t had to manage such passengers before, yet they were all flown out of the UK in the first place…. Go figure. Anyway, 90 minutes later and we were finally taxi-ing down the runway and on our trip north.

Despite the pilot assuring us we would make up some of this time, we didn’t! And despite my luggage coming off promptly, a screw-up with the taxi booking meant a further delay meaning I was about 2 hours later home than anticipated. Still, these are minor niggles at the end of an otherwise pleasant break. Although I did ensure to complete the P&O satisfaction survey on my return. So hopefully things on the Azura will be better in future, although I doubt I’ll be returning as a passenger.