Seabourn doesn’t offer teleportation tours (yet) but today Captain Othello manages to take us directly to rural France. Literally! One of the Guadeloupe islands, Isle les Saints is a tiny, extremely hilly, and totally charming little island of just three thousand souls.
No matter which way one walks, it’s uphill or downhill. Flat doesn’t exist save a small section of the town along the beach. The primary mode of transport is electric, be it golf buggy, scooter or assisted pedal power. Our boy delivering breakfast tells us it is essential we hire something, of course the staff only get a few hours of shoreleave at best, we have more time to wander.
Being France, everything closes at midday so we’re heading upwards towards the fort first, apparently lots of people turn up after 12:30 then complain it wasn’t kept it open for the cruise ship, despite being told numerous times!
As you’d expect, we Brits didn’t like the idea of Jonny Foreigner owning stuff, probably doubled because they were French Foreigners, so King Louis XIV ordered several forts built to protect the island, one was unsurprisingly named Fort Louis, and that’s where we’re heading first, although it’s now know as Fort Napoleon. I can’t find clear evidence old Bony Parts was ever here, as there’s only French wording it’s hard to be certain, but the displayed love letters from him to Christine, a Creole lady, don’t make it clear to me that he was here, maybe just in the area or not at all? The fort is a museum and excellent plant collection, both very interesting but a bit weird too - why a collection of Gendarmerie apparel right up to modern day riot gear? It’s all delightfully French!
Heading back to town we turn east and round the bay a bit, before climbing again to the site of Fort Mathilde, this one long gone, but the views are excellent, through the occasional rain. Elevenses under the protection of a broad tree provide a short break from another deluge. Then dropping down to another beach, this one a bit smelly as it’s almost covered in rotting seaweed, but pretty if one holds one’s nose!
Back to town we head South, after a quick look in our first church this holiday - days 5, churches 1, pretty unheard of - and we head towards Happy Wood which is a lovely walk up 89m, down 89m turn around and do it again as we return to our tender. We’ve still managed to do ten miles on this tiny island. A final wander through town and we’re heading back home in time to order our first Napa Burgers of the cruise.
We spend the afternoon on five aft as pretty much usual, Singapore Slings are our cocktail of choice. We end up jacuzziing with the ship’s current lecturers, a doctor of archeology and a professor of geology, and we while away the afternoon with this lovey couple dealing with various eclectic matters (such as dress sense and cabin layout, as well as more serious items!)
It’s Seabourn club before dinner, the loyalty scheme of choice, quite similar to Co-op stamps or Tesco points really. One lovely couple made it to 444 days this week - amazing, we’re only approaching our first hundred. Afterwards we head up to the Patio to see if we can dine at Earth and Ocean, and luckily we get the last table, which is set for five - oddly they don’t remove the unused places, so as each staff approaches they ask if we’re being joined.
I get double sashimi - our waitress thinks I look like I need double portion, Hubby has trofie pasta, with beef ragu, which is huge. We both have Peking duck, which tastes excellent but the delivery is uncomfortable and could do with some fine-tuning, such as making three or four small pancake rolls rather than one big one that falls apart. Our pudding is baked apple, but it’s not cooked properly, only the calvados ice-cream and caramel sauce save the day!
The show tonight is Tim Rice’s production - we were lucky enough to be onboard Quest with him when he was staging it this time last year. Now it’s slightly different, a new song, some rearranging and a better projection of his bits, and the singers and dancers are all excellent.
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