Day two 14/6/2023

14/6/2023 Day two

Having left Southampton we set off for an overnight sail to Portland. Portland is only just an hours drive from Southampton so I wondered what would happen, would we go straight there and dock overnight or go round in circles. I woke during the night although it was light and was surprised we we were stilI sailing I was even more surprised to look at my phone to see a text from O2 stating “welcome to Jersey” so we obviously went the pretty way. I went back to sleep and when I awoke we had docked. After breakfast we went for a run ashore. A shuttle bus took us the 20 minute ride to Weymouth. A pretty little town with a wonderful beach. The bus dropped us on the edge of town and we walked in the rest of the way through the harbour where we witnessed the lift bridge work to allow a vessel through. We then took a trip on the Road Train around the town then dropped off at the front. Here was a Helter Skelter, the nearest thing to a white knuckle ride I had as a kid. I then enquired after the town’s war memorial and discovered it was just down the road. Sandra and I took a walk and discovered there. are actually five. One the generic war memorial then there is one to the ANZACs who were training here and died, one to Americans who trained here, one to those killed the Dieppe raid and finally one the the Merchant Navy. I photographed and catalogued them for the IWM. They’re not relevant to this blog so I shan’t publish them other than the ANZAC one for the benefit of my friends down-under. We walked back along the prom and I bumped into a couple of Weymouth’ finest. We got chatting one of them was a transferee from Thames Valley. The road train tickets were valid all day so we used them to our advantage and took it to the stop near to where our shuttle bus was waiting. We returned to the ship had a lovely lunch then relaxed on the lido deck in the glorious sunshine until it was time to dress for dinner.

We went to dinner and whilst there the ship departed port to a volley of cannon fire which is apparently is a Portland tradition.

A bit of trivia there are 3.353 passengers on board made up of 50 Australians, 320 Britons, 341 Canadians and 2,741 Americans.

The photos are the view I woke up to; a photo to illustrate the size of the ship; Weymouth’s lift  bridge, Weymouth beach; a helter skelter; ANZAC war memorial; 














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