The spring of 2024 was pretty heavy going dealing with a variety of issues, both within running and within life in general.

It was therefore nice to get away for a couple of weeks to recharge. Given I’ve recently celebrated a significant birthday I decided to spend this time on Cunard’s newest cruise ship, the Queen Anne, as she visited eight ports in and around the Baltic Sea.

As well as bit of sightseeing, my road trainers came along for the ride as I wanted to try to incorporate a bit of running whilst I was away. Smashrun always notes “firsts” and so the opportunity to grab a few new countries in my running log is something I enjoy. The plan was not to follow any particular training plan (I am on holiday after all) but to focus on base fitness, keeping it very slow (not difficult!) and at low heart rate. My foot is generally more amenable to flat pavements than it is to my preferred off-road terrains so whilst it was never going to be my favourite flavour of running, it would allow me to do a bit of wider sightseeing. 

Arrivals

The cruise didn’t start off particularly well. Chaos reigned in Southampton following the failure of the air bridge which resulted in a lot of queuing to get embarked. Nothing too major although the “tutting brigade” were out in force! It’s not like the ship was going anywhere until everyone was boarded, but hey…!

The bigger problem was that, two weeks before departure I had my room changed due to a “maintenance issue”. Given the ship is only a couple of months old this seemed a bit odd, but that was the reason given. And I was moved out of my nice and quiet room to one above the “Queen’s Room”, one of the event venues. And despite the newness of the ship, it appeared that soundproofing hadn’t been considered that highly, based upon the bass sounds that reverberated throughout the cabin. Not good at all.

Thankfully, despite the ship apparently being at full capacity, following a complaint and demonstration of the noise to the head steward, I found myself back in my original (quiet) room as the maintenance issue was mysteriously fixed. So I don’t know what was going on, but at least something that could have been a real issue had been resolved.

One thing I like about Cunard’s cruises is that they have plenty of interesting talks and things to do on the sea days. In contrast, P&O’s talks are barely more than thinly veiled sales-pitches for products being sold onboard. So that first day at sea was a busy affair bouncing between talks and events, which is far better than being bored doing nothing.

Hamburg

Our first port of call was (day 3) Hamburg, a place I have transited through whilst on a school exchange many years ago, but had no memory of. What a treat Hamburg was. A city of interesting buildings and many green spaces to explore. And whilst the weather wasn’t amazing, it was fine for a wander.

I came back to the ship for some lunch, a process made a bit more complicated due to the many new arrivals waiting to embark. But fully fed (again) I went out for a jog around the city. Some of the route was the same as the morning wander but it was an excuse to go a little further afield.

We were back on for another sea day which meant a load more talks and trying to read my book, which I was struggling to get into.

Copenhagen

Day 5 saw us arrive in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. A city of many architectural delights and more palaces than you can shake a stick at. Unfortunately the weather didn’t want to play ball, and whilst it started off dry, by lunchtime it was a deluge akin to a British summer. I took a few more soggy photographs of Christianborg Palace before giving the day up as a bad job, with my coat wet inside and out!

But come the afternoon and the sun came out. As did the running shoes which enabled me to return to the aforementioned palace to get some photographs that weren’t shrouded in mist before covering the west side of the city where I hadn’t managed to get to in the morning due to the weather.

We were back at sea on Day 6 and I ended up taking a bit of a break in the afternoon. Who knew going to talks all day and/or walking/running lots of miles could be so tiring!!!

Visby

Day 7 saw us visit Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland. A small medieval town with more church ruins per capita than much of the rest of mainland Europe!! A very pretty place and, unlike the first two ports, the town was within easy walking distance from the ship, so no shuttle bus was required.

It was also a warm sunny day (at last!!). I had a great wander about before returning a little later to have a run around the town. With narrow busy streets this wasn’t the easiest place for a run, but I took up the pace up a notch just to get that out of my system.

This marked the end of the first week so here’s the running stats. 23 miles at an easy pace over 4 runs. And surprisingly a gentle nudge up of my VO2 max to its highest level since the pandemic. I’m not sure exactly how this translates; I’m comfortable up to about a distance of 10km but aside from the occasional longer run, that’s about it.

 

Tallinn

Visby was the first of four consecutive days of port visits. On Day 8 we were further into the Baltic stopping at the Estonian capital of Tallinn. There was a shuttle bus again to get into the city although I somehow didn’t realise and wandered in on foot, wondering how on earth everyone else was going to manage!!!

Tallinn is a city of two halves, with a large old medieval town alongside a modern district as well. Similar to Copenhagen , the weather lured us into a false sense of security being dry but overcast initially until I was at the opposite end of the City near the Orthodox Church where it proceeded to hurl it down! Having not taken my coat with me this time (still trying to get it dry!) I spent 30 minutes sheltering in a large doorway until I got bored and dashed to find a different dry spot to wait out the downpour.

Eventually it did stop and I managed to do a bit more sightseeing before I headed in for lunch whereupon I saw the shuttle bus going in the opposite direction!

As in Copenhagen, the weather improved in the afternoon enabling another dry and sunny run, plus the opportunity to re-take some photos without the morning’s mist and rain!

Helsinki

Day 9 saw the fifth and final new country to visit as we arrived in Helsinki, Finland. The port was a little way out of town so I jumped on the shuttle bus to get into the city centre. And what a city Helsinki is! The port was a bustle of market stalls and a food market with the presidential palace nearby too. As with many of the other cities we had already visited there were countless bridges over different waterways making the city very beautiful.

Indeed the further I walked, the more I stopped to grab photographs. Every time i stopped to photograph an interesting building I immediately saw another 2 that I wanted to visit next. With a mixture of the ultra-modern contrasting with art deco / art nouveau styles, plus a few more-soviet style (I’m not sure if they class as Brutalist or not) there was no end of surprises.

I had decided to find my way to the Sibelius monument which is a decent walk out of the main city, yet the greenery, the waterways and the buildings made it a very pleasurable walk.

I seemed to be plagued by a coach of Japanese tourists. Whenever I stopped to take a photo, it appeared almost on cue that this coach would immediately park in front of where I was and everyone bailed out. This must have happened about half a dozen times! Indeed, upon arrival at the Sibelius monument they were already there. Having spent all this time walking to the monument I left them to take a plethora of selfies with the monument before eventually piling back onto the coach and leaving me to actually be able to get close enough to get a picture!

On the shuttle bus back I was already planning my running route and decided that if I came back in on the bus it would give me a chance to run around the nice harbour area and then run back to the ship without the route being too much further than my plans entailed (most of the Garmin workouts were 30-40 minutes in duration so I was looking for roughly 4.5 miles as everywhere was pretty flat, something rather important given my recent quad pull before I went away).

Stockholm

Day 10 was the start of the steady return home and our fourth consecutive port, the Swedish capital of Stockholm. With a similar echo to some of the previous ports we were treated to a harbour-side city (unsurprising given this is a cruise!) with many bridges, interesting buildings, royal palaces and a lot of green space. Indeed the whole trip felt like a lesson in how to plan a pleasant city, especially when one contrasts it with many of the UK cities which are no more than concrete jungles.

Stockholm was busy. Very busy! I think this was because the palace and the parliament buildings were all rather close together in the centre, meaning that all the main attractions (at least those that weren’t ABBA) were all in the same place.

I did the touristy bit before heading over the river to explore more of the town where things were a little less busy. Not that it wasn’t not busy, just less so. There’s a huge amount of regeneration of the bridge area which, once finished will make it as spectacular as the rest of the city.

What I did notice was that in fact the ship’s berth wasn’t as far away as I thought, based upon the shuttle bus trip into the town. I considered walking back that way but instead decided to use the shuttle just so I could confirm the route before using that as the basis of my run a little later, not least because I wasn’t entirely sure whether the roadworks and improvements prevented what appeared to be an obvious route.

They didn’t! So the Stockholm run route was a straight out and back along the river from the ship and past the very busy ferry terminal. Nice and straightforward, and flat. And with many other runners doing something similar!

Table 662

One of the pleasures of the cruise was the food and entertainment. As a solo traveller, cruising is a great way to meet people, especially during the mealtimes as the option is always there to share a table. The evening meals were a set time and table companions and we hit it off as a group. After a couple of hours of entertaining conversation and great food, we usually headed off to see the main theatre show before either retiring to the Commodore Club, a piano bar at the top of the ship, or to the on-board pub where we took part in various quizzes and games which were always a lot of fun. We even won a prize in one of the trivia quizzes, not that we were competitive or anything…….!

Day 11 was our penultimate sea day and a chance to listen to more talks and find out about our two remaining ports. It’s really rather useful to have a presentation about what sort of things are to be seen on the shore days, especially if you’re not doing an organised trip, something I elected not to do on this cruise. It was interesting to hear how people had got on with the tours which, anecdotally seemed to be tight for time in the places visited. And whilst I didn’t do any museums this time around, I felt walking off and doing my own thing worked for me this time around (this wasn’t the case in the Caribbean where many of the port-towns offered little to walk around and see).

Kiel

Day 12 saw us return to Germany in Kiel. This was another busy day for the ship’s crew with about a third of the passengers changing over (many of the German guests embarked in Hamburg and left in Kiel, and thus an equal number got on to join on the next cruise). Of all the ports, I think that Kiel offered the least interest for me. A busy ferry terminal and working port meant the place was a hive of activity. And whilst there was an old-town which was quite pretty, it was small and dominated by the main town which was something of an identikit high-street town. Nothing bad, but equally nothing very interesting either. Perhaps one of the places where a tour would have made sense as the interesting museums were beyond walking distance.

So it was a short walk around in the morning before lunch, after which it was time for another run, where I headed out of time in search of the Kiel Canal, an important waterway in Germany providing a cross-country shortcut between the Baltic and North Sea. It turns out the canal was further than I thought which ultimately led to the longest run I’d done in some time, albeit only being 8 miles. Interestingly it took in some of the athlete’s village where the sailing component had taken place in a previous Olympics Games. But it was nice to take it steady and try to rediscover some low heart-rate fitness.

As we departed Kiel the pilot boat led us out with jets of water into the sky making something of a spectacle.

On the transit out of Kiel we were treated to the passage under the Great Belt Fixed Link suspension bridge linking the Danish mainland with Zealand. I’d spotted it on the horizon a few hours previous, but questioned my sighting as it seemed too large to be a suspension bridge. It turned out to be a very large (and impressive) structure that even something as large as Queen Anne could pass under without scraping the paint off the top of her iconic funnel.

Skagen

Our final port visit, on Day 13, was in Skagen, at the very north of Denmark. Skagen is a small fishing town which was drawn into the cruising itinerary after the Russian invasion of Ukraine meant that the previous Baltic circuit could no longer include St Petersburg.

From the port presentation, I had written off Skagen as not being of much interest to me as a town. However upon visiting it was clearly a very beautiful village with a lot of artisan shops which had no doubt sprung into life because of the cruise industry.

There were a couple of specific destinations that I wanted to see. As they were all out of town I decided that my final port would be entirely done as a run. Not in the Garmin training vein as I was combining it with sightseeing and, no doubt, a fair bit of getting lost, so there would be plenty of stopping and starting. Not everything has to be a training run!

The northern most tip of Denmark is only about 5km from the cruise port, and the point where the Baltic and North Sea meet. This is sold as a place where one can observe the two bodies of water visibly meeting. However as the distinction between the two Seas is entirely man-made, of course there is nothing to actually see, the sea-water doesn’t know any different! But it was a nice trip out, very easy underfoot, save for a kilometre or so of soft sand.

The soft sand is the interesting thing about the top of Denmark. The area has been significantly impacted by sand dunes that move on average about 15m per year. The result is that some of the buildings have been lost to the dunes. I ran back through Skagen to visit the old church which is buried up to mid-way up the church tower with the main body of the church completely buried. Further away there is a lighthouse which has suffered a similar fate, although as it would have required an additional 28km round trip upon the 17km I had done that day, I elected not to visit that! I simply don’t have that level of fitness at this time. So instead I returned to the ship and had a quiet afternoon, although during this time the weather improved from being overcast to becoming a cloudless sunny afternoon. And while it might have been nice to have clear blue skies in my visiting photos, I’d have probably half-cooked myself running around during the afternoon!

I did participate in this final sailaway from Skagen in the afternoon (at least until I had to dash off to dinner!) A brass band turned up on the quayside to play us out and as Queen Anne sounded her foghorn to say goodbye as the band waved us off, it was bizarrely emotional, especially after one of the other vessels in port sounded their horn in reply.

Heading home

So I’m writing all of this up whilst we are on our final sea day through the North Sea back to Southampton. The glorious weather we left in Denmark has been replaced with mist and rain as we head back to Southampton.

It was a slightly bigger running week this week, not least due to the unexpectedly longer run in Kiel plus the expected expedition in Skagen, leading to a total of 30 miles over 4 runs.