Tuesday 7th October, 2025 – Stavanger to Southampton

Tuesday was our last full day on board and so much of it was dedicated to attempting to repack. Why do dirty clothes take up so much more space than clean ones do? Even if you fold them exactly the same? Of course having to pack a couple of blocks of cheese, two jigsaws and a mass of fridge magnets meant we were leaving with more than we’d arrived with. And there was also the 6 bottles of wine we were taking home because we hadn’t managed to drink our way through the full three wine packages. Luckily, the lovely Harry, our sommelier, had managed to pack them really well in a proper wine box, which just fitted in the smallest of my suitcases with enough space to pack round it with lots of pairs of socks and other small, soft items for extra protection. I was still planning on wheeling that one off the ship myself in the morning, unlike the other big cases which we would place outside before going to dinner, so that someone else could figure out how to get them to the quayside!

First though I had a final run on the Promenade Deck and then there was a good breakfast followed by my second massage of the trip which really did sort out a few more kinks in my shoulders and neck (just in time for me to mess it all up the following morning when I would have to load everything into the car). Shortly after that we dipped into two final Insight sessions with Matthew Towler up first talking about spying during the Cold War, and then one of the Clarendon Fine Art gallery directors, Sam Cox talking about controversial art works. We’d already sat in on one of his talks, earlier on which was all about Dali, and while there are elements of sales pitch about these talks, they are nonetheless interesting and he’s an engaging speaker. After that, lunch followed as night follows day!

In the afternoon we dropped in to the Bright Lights Society where the three main speakers, Shena Lewington, Howard Parkin and Matthew were doing a Q&A session which proved interesting. We also established that Shena had corrected her presentation where she traced Rollo’s line through to King Charles III to show the correct Richard III (Richard III, Duke of Normandy (997/1001 – 6 August 1027) and NOT Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) the Plantagenet king of England who has been blamed for quite enough already but who was born several centuries later). The illustration might have only been there for a split second but it was long enough for both of us to go “hang on just a minute… wrong Richard!” and to tell Shena afterwards. She was happy to be able to correct the error. I note that Copilot makes exactly the same error, which absolutely compounds my beliefs about AI (which I won’t go into here except to say that I think it’s going to cause at least as many problems as it solves, and we’re one massive lawsuit away from a rethink).

From the talk we made for the Queen’s Room, for a performance of “The Haunting of the Tenth Deck”, another “radio play” which was a lot of fun, especially with one of the audience having to step in and play the part of the assistant security guard on the pretext that a cast member was “missing”, and the rest of us having to chip in with all the sound effects! After that it was back to our room to label our suitcases, put them outside for collection, and change for dinner.

For our pre-dinner drinks we paid one last visit to the Commodore Lounge, walking past the sad sight of hundreds of suitcases outside staterooms. We managed to get a window table in the bar for the first time, and I simply had to have another Great Scot cocktail (because of the cheese as well as how good the drink tasted), and was delighted when the waiter brought me an extra piece of cheese! We also tried a Tiramisu Martini, which is rather more dessert than drink but delicious, and a Ginger Cosmo!

And so to our final dinner on board, and one last chance to enjoy the service from Harry who had more than earned the tip we gave him, as had Kudza and Anthony. It had been a pleasure to deal with them, and especially with Harry, even more so because he was apparently supposed to move up to the Queen’s Grill restaurant on October 1st, but had persuaded those in charge that he wanted to stay where he was till the voyage ended. He claimed it was because he wanted to stay with us!

And so the evening ended and we were off to bed where our steward had provided one last flourish of nightwear origami! Who would do all that for us at home!