Cruising down the river...

I AM lying in my fold-down bunk of a bed, with the ship gently rocking to and fro in the wake of a passing barge, and with the sound of water outside our cabin window sighing gently.

All very soothing and restful.

The little cabin is warm and rather muggy, and a kind of delicious, heavy languor is upon me. My eyes just keep closing of their own accord.

My Good Lady, I know, is safely ensconced up on the sundeck with her puzzle book and her novel, while I attempt to catch up on a couple of very broken nights of sleep in a post-lunch snooze.

It’s still only about the third day of our holiday but already the pattern of shipboard life has established itself.

An early breakfast – thanks to the alarm clock that is Wi-Fi set to ring at seven-thirty every morning, heaven only knows why – maybe the most consistently good meal of the day.

Then, depending on day’s itinerary, we either set out for a morning’s sightseeing, or more likely, settle ourselves to down to watch the Rhineland scenery floating by.

Lunch is at 12 o’clock sharp and consists of soup, a small main course or a salad, and a dessert.

The afternoon now stretches ahead; My Good Lady and I often take a bit of zizz at this time, although, too, we sometimes disembark and have a potter round one of the ports we’ve come into: Remagen, Koblenz, Rüdesheim…

At 1900 hours dinner is announced and we brace ourselves for another assault on our stomachs – the food on this cruise is definitely sub-par to what we might have expected – and our table dining companions, Ray and Margaret, are as bemused as we are as to what is presented to us.

Evening in the salon is something of an ordeal, too, with a deafening performance of the man at the musical synthesiser, sometimes accompanied by a strangulated, ill-pronounced song, booming at us through giant loud speakers. No place for a quiet conversation, this, and now, as darkness has fallen, it’s a little too chilly to sit out on deck.

So we endure it for as long as we can, although it is mitigated by the conviviality of another couple we have met, Esther and Bernie. Bernie, indeed, has a sense of humour that rises above even this musical torture.

And so to bed.

But it is a good holiday break, despite the shortcomings of the food and the entertainment, and one to which we should not be too loath to do again. River cruising has some definite advantages over the ocean variety. So, maybe next year, who knows, a sail down the Mekong River perhaps, or a trip along the Amazon?