Travel and Embarkation

The day of travel soon arrived - Wednesday 11th July.  We were up with the larks and our neighbour took us to our local railway station for our journey into Edinburgh where we changed trains and headed to London Kings Cross.  We travelled down in the first class section of the train, which was well worth the extra supplement that we paid, and it allowed us to use the first class lounge at Edinburgh prior to travel where you could have coffee, tea, crisps, biscuits, juice, water etc.  It was better than flying with no baggage restrictions and a proper cooked breakfast with real cutlery!!

Proper cooked breakfast!!

Saga had arranged all our travel for us and we quickly found our coach and seats, which had all been booked for us.  The only worry we had was the weather - a yellow alert from the Met Office for mostly all over the east coast from Scotland down to England, so it was fingers crossed that there was no flooding or more landslides to disrupt the journey.  However, the journey was uneventful and very pleasant and we arrived in London on time.

We then made our way to St. Pancras Station, for our onward train journey to Dover Priory.  St. Pancras is only a very short walk from Kings Cross, so no need for taxis or other transport to get you there.  As we arrived though, there were alarms sounding and the Kings Cross Underground was being evacuated for some reason.  We were actually an hour early for our train to Dover but there was a Dover train sitting waiting in the station and we discovered that our tickets allowed us to travel on that train, so off we went!  We thought perhaps that it was better to wait the hour in Dover for our transport to pick us up just in case there was going to be a problem in London with all those alarms sounding.  I'm sure it's probably a daily event in London, but we weren't taking any chances!!

We arrived in Dover on the high speed train and we went to the cafe in the station to sit and wait for our transport to take us to the embarkation point for the Saga Sapphire.  When the taxi driver arrived to pick us up it was only a ten minute drive away and we left our luggage with the porters.  We were then shown up to the embarkation lounge where we were given an embarkation number.  When the numbers were called out, the corresponding groups of people were then led through the security point and onto the ship.  I must say that it was very well organised.

We knew what cabin we were in as it had all been pre-booked, and we were shown there by one of the staff - it was cabin 8508 with balcony, and it was very nice indeed with loads of space to hang clothes etc.

Cabin during daytime

Turn-down service at night

Once settled, we had a look about on board and watched the ship sailing out of Dover.  The weather was a bit mixed, but it kept fairly dry.  Here are a couple of photos of the same view with very different clouds!!

Dover Castle - black clouds

Dover Castle - blue skies and white fluffy clouds

We waved goodbye to the White Cliffs of Dover and headed out into open sea.  Lifeboat drill was then all explained and carried out so that we all knew what to do if there was any kind of emergency.

That night we went to the Verandah Grill for our dinner, which was just superb and, just as we were leaving after our meal, we noticed that there was a sunset!!

We then went into the Britannia lounge where we watched the first show of the cruise

It was then time to take our drinks back to the cabin where we could top them up with some of our own favourite tipple that we had sneakily brought on board!!