Our shorter-than-intended visit ashore in Cobh was followed by a few hours just trying to feel a little bit better, and thankfully I was more myself by the time Regal Princess had to depart from this port that serves Cork in Ireland. The usual cocktail on the balcony for the sail away was replaced with a more sensible cup of tea on the balcony instead, and as it was overcast and a little chilly in the early evening this helped too.
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…