In Uncle Kenwyn's tracks: Overland to Dover.

We set off at dawn (well, early anyway) on Tuesday 7th August 2012 laden with our heavy bags (fortunately mostly with wheels on) for a bus stop in Cirencester, courtesy of Ray who volunteered (didn't step back smartly enough) to take us in at some unearthly hour for the National Express coach to London. Here we are at the bus stop in front of the public toilets!

The bus arrived almost exactly on time (well done National Express) and with most of our heavy bags in the luggage compartments, we were off. Thanks to a helpful young lady who moved seats for us, we were able to sit together so that Barbara could complain to me while I updated the blog thanks to National Express's free WiFi:

Here we are, off down the M4 heading for London:

At Victoria Coach Station we had a rather boring 2 hr 15 min wait for our bus direct to the ship, but at least there was a good choice of catering options for a light lunch & coffee. We were expecting that our bus would be a standard National Express vehicle, but after a while it became obvious that the two rather superior looking coaches at Gate-1 were sub-contracted to deliver us and our fellow passengers to Dover Cruise Terminal. Eventually they allowed us to drag our baggages various to the waiting vehicles and we found that, thanks to not rushing to the front of the queue, there was only room in the second coach, with the driver who reckoned that not only was he the most handsome of the two, but also the safest - pointing out the damage to the rear of the other coach which had apparently happened en-route to pick us up. So, only about half-a-dozen of us boarded the second bus and set off behind the dodgy driver.

Our driver then proceeded to regale us with tales of his crash in a lorry for which he was prosecuted! Driving out through south-east London, we passed the Olympic Equestrian Venue with its massed ranks of seriously posh horse boxes.

And not long before we got to Dover, he managed to overtake the other bus - just... both buses were limited on top speed, but by virtue of having a much lighter load, a gentle gradient gave us an advantage.

Coming down into the outskirts of the Port of Dover we got our first glimpse of the 'Black Watch', and the sea state!!!!!

Pulling into the relatively small cruise terminal, all we had to do was take our hand baggage and ourselves into the check-in area, while our cases were taken off separately to be searched for bombs!

The formalities were concluded commendably quickly and we were welcomed aboard with liberal quantities of quick-drying hand-cleanser. The one thing that wasn't possible during boarding was an opportunity to photograph the ship, so Charlie jumped ship and thanks to a helpful stevedore, was allowed out amongst the fork-lift trucks and other vehicles that were busy stocking us up with everything the 800 passengers and 300 crew would need for the next four days at sea. It still wasn't the perfect place to photograph the ship, but was probably a better view than any of the other passengers had got:

Back on board, it wasn't long before we were advised of our emergency drill, so checked out our life-jackets and prepared for the alarm call to assemble at our muster station. Despite plenty of warnings over the PA, a few passengers somehow didn't seem to have made it to our muster station, so we left them to drown and set off in a crocodile holding on to the person in front for our lifeboat station, pretending it was dark or smoky or both! Having assembled by our respective craft that would hopefully save our lives if it came to the crunch, we were dismissed and allowed to start finding out what was where. And then, without any fuss, we realised we'd actually untied from the quayside and a set of green traffic lights at the harbour entrance were allowing our passage out into the Channel amongst a confusion of cross-channel ferries.

Like us, most passengers congregated on the port side of the Black Watch to wave goodbye to the White Cliffs of Dover:

Then the pilot cutter nosed alongside despite the choppy seas, to take the harbour pilot off, who calmly climbed down a rope ladder from one large gently swaying ship, to a smaller, positively bouncing, boat that had been glued to our side horizontally, if not vertically, while the brave pilot transferred. A high speed RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) was also hovering alongside, just in case it should be necessary to pluck anyone out of the water.