Regal Princess was docked at Cobh itself, meaning we could simply get off and walk into the town, but that’s not always the case if you’re on a cruise ship that claims this as the port on the itinerary. From our balcony in the morning we could see across the water to the island of Haulbowline and beyond that to the right of it was Ringaskiddy where some ships dock instead. As there’s stuff all to see in Ringaskiddy you’re at the mercy of shuttle buses and tour trips to get you to anything interesting if that’s your port, so we were very pleased with our docking location.

Cobh is listed as the port for Cork and the ship was offering excursions to it although you could simply hop on the train right by the ship if you wanted to. The issue we had with excursions on this cruise as a whole was that they were extremely overpriced – we suspect that the captive audience of largely American cruisers visiting quaint old Europe played a role here – so we took a lot fewer of them than we otherwise might have given that we were visiting new ports. There was also the sense that with these cruise ports being technically not that far from us in England we could always return to any that appealed and see them in more detail and for less money. I mean, we won’t because we spend all our free time cruising, but we could, and that’s the important thing. All this is to say that for this, our first time cruising to Ireland and our first time in the port of Cobh, we decided to explore the town rather than head anywhere else.

As it would turn out, our time ashore would end up being a lot shorter than we’d planned because I started to feel unwell during our walk around so this post will contain a lot less than we were hoping to do. We’d intended to visit a museum and possibly find a pub but the combination of putting off both of those until later in the day, only finding one pub open and that claiming that their card machine wasn’t working at the moment and that everyone needed to pay cash (the sign looked like it had been written a long time ago and suggested something dodgy to us), me not feeling well, and this being a Sunday so feck all else was open anyway meant we had to adjust accordingly.

We headed off along the coastline, heading past Kennedy Park, and getting our first look at some of the colourful buildings that Cobh has become famous for.

It was interesting to see a statue in honour of Cobh-born athlete Sonia O’Sullivan simply because on the last cruise we’d been on before this we’d also happened upon another statue of a local athlete, that being Fanny Blankers-Koen in Rotterdam. Perhaps we’ll have to try to find statues of athletes everywhere we travel from now on.

Cobh has a natural harbour that was the reason for it becoming an important port for both naval vessels and, later, for commercial interests, including tourism and emigration. Cobh was the final port of call before the Titanic made her ill-fated trip in 1912, and Cobh was where those rescued from the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 were brought, and you can find numerous plaques, memorials, statues, or references to this sad history associated with the town wherever you walk.

Cobh, in fact, turned out to be very keen to commemorate any person, group, or event, and it was almost impossible to go a couple of minutes without some artwork, sculpture, or marker stone. If you like reading then come to Cobh and walk the streets.

I’ve mentioned already that Cobh is well-known for its colourful houses but when people think of them they’re most likely thinking of the “Deck of Cards” houses which we would see a bit later on. However, along the shoreline part of Cobh to the east of the main part of town we passed Father Corbett Terrace, the owners of which have clearly decided to invest in a job lot of vibrant exterior house paint too. Against the greenery of the hilly backdrop and the blue patches of sky above this looked absolutely beautiful during our time there.

Our destination on this slow walk was the Titanic Memorial Garden and it was a peaceful, pleasant space, but perhaps shouldn’t be the only thing you go to visit if you’re in Cobh because there’s not a whole lot to see there. The garden and views out to the water were nice enough, of course. For us, though, it was nearly the only thing we saw because I was feeling pretty awful at this point and had already decided that plans involving pubs or museums were now thoroughly shelved.

Continuing with the theme of the people of Cobh really invested in having you read things while you’re in their town it was lovely to see a little library near the garden entrance.

I think my wife would have been happy enough to just head back to the ship on the same route we’d come but I tried to eke out a little more from our day in Cobh by heading up the steeper-than-expected road past St Colman’s Cathedral on a slightly more circular route to the port. This is a twentieth century church in the French Gothic style and I would have liked to have popped in for a nose and some photographs but this was a Sunday and Ireland is a religious country so that was never going to happen.

We spotted the “Deck of Cards” houses from here and I figured I could soldier on for just a little longer and head around for some views from different angles. As we started to walk up the road there came the sound of bagpipes playing so we waited while a piper followed by a column of older men with military decorations marched down the road and towards the church. Interesting to experience this sort of thing but when I think of men marching to the sounds of bagpipes in the British Isles I can’t help but get a little twitchy as we’ve a history of groups doing this mainly to wave their dicks around a bit and piss off other groups with differing political views. Admittedly, that’s more a Northern Irish or Scottish thing so likely wasn’t the reason for this display but it’s still a thing I’d like to see stopped altogether. My wife’s views are similar but she’d also like to see bagpipes banned internationally.

The “Deck of Cards” houses were exactly as expected. On a sloping road each building is raised above its neighbour slightly and coloured brightly and differently from those adjoining, and certain views of this were better than others. The cars along the fronts of the houses didn’t help from a tourist photo perspective, but I imagine the owners of the houses consider that secondary to being able to park outside their homes. Although it then makes you wonder why they bothered painting their houses in such a way as to attract people there in the first place then.

Our very truncated visit ashore in Cobh came to an end with a walk past the Cobh Museum (not open on Sundays, naturally, otherwise we’d have stretched our time out a little longer) then a quick look around the Cobh Heritage Centre for some souvenirs before getting back on Regal Princess.

I had a few hours to try to start feeling better before sail away and, thankfully, by the time that came around I was a lot perkier.

The day of arrival in any port can be very important as to your experience there. I’m glad we’d already decided to forego trips further inland given my crappy health on the day but Sunday is definitely not the day to be visiting a country that is still highly religious and largely closed. However, we enjoyed what we saw of Cobh and would love to give it another visit at some point. Cork would be of interest too, but large cities sometimes feel a bit ubiquitous compared to these smaller places with their individual charm.

In the next post in this series it’s time to sail away from Cobh and take a look at the evening’s meal aboard the ship ahead of the second of our Irish ports, its capital, Dublin.

There wasn’t a whole lot to see on the cruise out to the open sea and the general scenery took on a grey tone with splashes of muted colours. Before we moved away from the town, though, we were entranced by the single crewman taking a lot of time to pull in the warning sign that had been hung from the side of the cruise ship while Regal Princess had been docked. The sign indicated that for security reasons other vessels must remain fifty metres away from the ship, although quite what the ship could really do about it in the absence of (obvious) weaponry or a fifty metre prodding pole is another thing entirely.

The photo below doesn’t quite encompass the entirety of our walk along the front of Cobh so despite my unwell state earlier in the day I don’t think we did too bad in at least getting a decent amount of gentle exercise. Although the walk up to the cathedral was perhaps not as gentle as either my wife or I would have liked.

Much of what we could see from our starboard side balcony was off in the distance and often difficult to make out with the weak evening sun in our eyes even from behind thin veils of cloud. However, we did get close enough to Camden Fort Meagher as we passed Ram’s Head to like what we saw. Fortifications of some form or another have existed at this point since the middle of the sixteenth century. The fear of Napoleon led to a large upgrade towards the end of the eighteenth century and in the late nineteenth century the fort had some slipways added to test an early guided torpedo system. By the 1980s the fort was no longer needed militarily and was handed over to the county council who left it to rot, but in 2010 locals started to restore the place for tourism. It certainly looked and sounded interesting enough to warrant a visit should we ever find ourselves back this way in the future.

The main interest on our sail out from Cobh proved to be spotting a group of dolphins not far from the pilot boat that had been shadowing our transit out of the port and waiting to pick up its pilot from the ship. No photos of the dolphins as they were quite some way off, but we enjoyed watching them for several minutes until they seemingly lost interest with all the activity in the harbour.

Some quizzing took place but it was a quiet and fairly early night for us aboard Regal Princess. All that remains in this short post is to show off the dinner in the main dining room on this evening because traditions must be upheld.

I was feeling well enough to try a cocktail or two before bed.

In the next post we arrive at Ireland’s capital, Dublin, where we had an organised tour and some free time arranged and where we were hoping for a more successful day ashore with more to do and see as it wouldn’t be a Sunday. However…