July 26, 2016
"You're a passenger?!": A trans-Atlantic voyage aboard a luxury liner
I sensed from the start that my voyage home aboard the Queen Mary II was not going to be like all my other cruises. For one thing it was a ferry, of course, but aside from that it was a luxury liner following in the great trans-Atlantic traditions of the Queen Mary, The Queen Elizabeth, and the QE2. People aboard this vessel were expecting a certain level of decadence and decency. Like always there were formal and informal nights onboard, but the standards were a little higher, with even the informal nights described as ‘Jacket required, tie optional’ and I had a feeling my bright red rain-jacket wasn’t going to be up to scratch.
With such policies I was not 100% confident that I was going to be allowed onboard, even after contributing so much of my facial hair to Mike’s compost bin. My concerns grew during a long period of waiting, albeit along with a few other passengers that had also decided to board in Halifax rather than New York, on some plastic seating of the cruise terminal. Our passports had all been taken from us and we had been told by a nice lady to wait here until we could be checked in. I sat impatiently next to my panniers and my bike, now neatly boxed up, worried that something might still go wrong. I knew that it wasn’t until I was actually on board this ship that I was safe.
We waited for an hour or so, me growing more and more anxious, until finally another female member of staff, an older, official-looking woman, approached me and spoke in a harsh, irritated tone:
“I’m sorry, but this is the main embarkation area. We’ve got passengers coming back and forth through here all day. I’m going to have to ask you to go somewhere else!”
“But… but…” I stammered, hoping my worst fears weren’t coming true now, “Isn’t this where I’m supposed to board the ship?”
Now it was her turn to look alarmed, and then apologetic. “You’re a passenger! I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t realise. I do apologise.”
Eventually another staff member returned with our passports, and, with great relief on my part, I was welcomed on board. It felt so good to be on my boat home. I had made it! Arriving in my stateroom I wasted no time at all in popping open the complimentary sparkling wine and swigging straight from the bottle - I felt like the decision Dea and I had made to not immediately drink ours on the Pacific cruise had been unlucky, and besides, I had surely earned myself the right to a little celebrating. In that moment I felt triumphant, quite euphoric. All that effort cycling across Canada was vindicated as I drank the bubbly and considered how awesome it was going to be to spend the next six days doing absolutely nothing.
The next six days were hideously boring. The strict dress code meant that I could not eat in any restaurants. I could not go to any shows. I was not even really supposed to leave my stateroom after six in the evening for fear of ruining the other passengers’ experience. I shuffled only between my room, the buffet and the outside walkway on deck seven. At least the television set in my room played some good movies, and I soon discovered the relative joy of room service (come on folks, it was the QE2! (sort of)). But the lack of any company made the whole thing monumentally boring. I wished I had Dea with me, I really did. In my very darkest moments I even found myself longing for Tom.
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We had departed from Halifax in thick fog, Canada disappearing from view almost as soon as we’d moved away from the docks, and this stuck with us for several days. The heavy fog meant we had to blow the loud foghorn every few minutes just in case, and I use the word ‘we’ quite wrongly, I had nothing to do with it. Still I spent much of my time sitting outside, listening to music, reading, and staring at the sea, waiting for the fog to clear. On the afternoon of our third day at sea it finally did budge, and I was glad that I’d been patient. The sea was eerily calm and I caught glimpses of dolphins leaping about around the boat. I walked around the circular walkway, occasionally seeing small pods of them jumping from the water. Around and around the great ship I walked, taking in the feeling of being in the middle of the Atlantic and enjoying the sight of these amazing creatures. Inside I could see men in tuxedoes and women in evening dresses sitting down to dinner. I smiled. I was much happier outside.
The days slipped by and I grew increasingly desperate to reach our destination. There was only one vegetarian main meal on the room service menu, and I was beginning to pine for a peanut butter sandwich. On the very last full day at sea I was once again sitting outside when, at around two in the afternoon, I spotted land. It was just a thin sliver of an island, but it was clearly visible to our port side. Another island soon appeared next to it. It soon occurred to me that I was looking at the Isles of Scilly, better known to me in my youth as the silly isles, a small cluster of islands off the southwestern tip of Cornwall. These were British Isles. For the first time in over three years, I could see England. I did not know how to feel.
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Later on we passed Land’s End, though in this case it would have been more appropriately titled as Land’s Start. This was, from my point of view, the beginning of the British mainland. I stared at it from the boat, just feint grey hills on the horizon that had so much meaning for me, and I listened to music and I felt sad. I don’t know why I felt sad. Maybe it was because I hadn’t had a conversation for five days that hadn’t involved me saying the phrases ‘vegetarian quesadilla’ or ‘two double chocolate fudge cakes’. I felt like an outsider on this ship. I felt like I did not belong. And I think I was nervous, in a sense, that that was also how it would be for me in England now. It had been my home for the first 25 years of my life, and yet, after so long away, now I did not know if it would still feel like home. And if it did not feel like home, where could feel like home for me now?! Did I belong anywhere anymore, or was I, as I had been on this ship, little more than a lost, wandering soul. I reflected on this, and the irony that I was probably more nervous about returning to my homeland than I had been about entering almost any other country I’d been to in the last three years.
I packed my bags so that I would be ready to disembark in the morning, then I went back outside and watched a last, beautiful sunset. More land was visible now, some part of Devon, as we inched our way east towards Southampton. The blue distant hills, at least from this distance, could easily have been in any part of the world. They reminded me of similar hills I’d gazed at from boats when I’d been staring at Malaysia, Australia, Fiji. Realising this, I was suddenly struck by just how far I had come. I was on the verge of making it back home after traveling all the way around the world without flying. When I tried to think back on all the places I had been, all the things I had seen, all the people I had met, my head nearly exploded there was so much good and amazing stuff in there. And then the T.S. Elliot quote came to me – ‘We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time’ - and I felt much better than I had earlier. I was still nervous. Arriving back in England still scared me. But that was good. If I approached it right, this was, I realised, just an opportunity for one more adventure.
Today's ride: 5 km (3 miles)
Total: 55,699 km (34,589 miles)
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