Do you like boats?

I don’t like flying.

In fact I hate it. I hate feeling my ears pop and to me a plane being in the air is not right. Its too heavy to fly.

I know there is all sorts of science and stuff that makes it happen but I just cant get over how big planes are. However when you go and look at small propeller planes they are not any better.

Ten years ago I lived in Shetland, it was a lovely place full of wildlife. The problem was it was so far away from the main land. To visit family I had two options a quick seamlessly harmless flight on a propeller plane on a ridiculously short runway or an overnight ferry trip.

When I first went up there the ferries were run by p and o. They were awful skanky things but they floated and didn’t fly. You could pay a reasonable £40-£50 for a ticket and sleep in the bar or in a chair or pay over £150 to sleep in a cabin. By the time I left Northlink had taken over the service and the new boats were amazing and a pleasure to sail on.

The boats had lots of shiny gold and sparkling glass everywhere. You felt like you were on a cruise ship.

I have some fabulous memories of those boats and remember standing on deck watching dolphins swim with the boat whilst a whale was off in the distance. Some things will stay with me forever and I would love to give the girls the same amazing experiences.

We visited Hull the other day and Hubby mentioned that you can get a boat to Amsterdam from there and it got me thinking about how much I would love to go on a cruise. The problem is because I don’t like flying I would rather get a cruise from a port in the UK.

What I didn’t know until I was paid to blog about it is that there are some fantastic cruises that are available from all sorts of ports in the UK. The main one seems to be Southampton and those ones can take you to sunny climates but you can also head over to Ireland and even the Netherlands.

I was looking at Cruise1st.co.uk at no fly cruises and there are some amazing cruises to the canary islands which is where we had our honeymoon. We said at the time we would love to explore the other islands as well and maybe a cruise would be a great way to do that. Either that or to head up through Norway and to the Artic circle where the sea wildlife will be amazing and hopefully I could show the girls the northern lights.

What would you prefer a relaxing cruise or a package holiday?