We had a nice breakfast. I had a fried egg with bacon which was a little like country ham. (This will be true of the bacon for the rest of this trip.) Clay had a fried egg with sausages. They were bigger than our breakfast sausages, Clay had a bowl of cereal with a banana to start and I had a cup of raspberry yogurt. We shared a tray of toasted brown bread. I had a little French press of coffee and Clay had hot tea. It was cold in the dining room. We could see people bundled up outside. It is supposed to be 32° F now and get up to 50- something °F this afternoon, but it is supposed to rain this afternoon too. I’ll keep you posted. I still have my fingers crossed for beautiful weather.
So, we got checked out of McDougal Clansman before 11am and
left our bags. We needed to kill time until at least 2pm. We need to catch the
Lord of the Glens included shuttle bus to Oban at 2:30pm (“in good time”, per
their instructions). We walked across the pedestrian footbridge and went in a
Tweed Shop (Highland House of Fraser) where I bought an apron and a couple of
bookmarks. We did some more shopping, like when I opened my newest collapsible
umbrella for the 2nd time today and found a hole burned in it! We
bought a tartan collapsible. We went in the mall next to the train station as a
place to warm up and dry off, went back out looking for a souvenir cross stitch
pattern. We had seen a few crafts stores on our wandering quest last night to
find dessert and we wanted to go to those stores when they were open. Success at a very high price! We paid £57.99
for a pattern than is a map of the Great Glen, our sailing route. We only paid
about £9 each for the bookmarks. I have no idea why the map was so expensive,
but I had to have it and it was one of a kind. I’ll give it to Mom to do and
then when she gives it back we’ll get a frame for it. I hope we will. It says
it is 7.5 x 23 inches. That seems like a difficult size, though I have looked
on line and 8X24 seems to be a standard size. Fingers crossed we’ll be able to
find one locally.
We went back to the mall for lunch at the
cafeteria in Debenham’s. I had a cheddar and ham toastie. It was white cheddar.
I liked it. Clay had battered fried haddock and chips and he didn’t care for
it. We didn’t see any dessert we liked, so we moved out to the food court. We
had some local ice cream at Mackie’s. We shared 2 cups with chocolate and
honeycomb and chocolate and butterscotch. The butterscotch was the best, the
chocolate was grainy or as Clay said like eating gritty dirt. The honey was
overwhelmed by the chocolate scoop next to it or it was just too subtle in the
first place. I did not get any photos from Clay between the pedestrian bridge
and the comfort stop in Spean Bridge about half way to Oban. Sorry! If I should find the photos later that I know he took, I'll come back and post some.
We walked back to the hotel early and used the restrooms and
waited for a while in their vestibule. The people at McDougal Clansman couldn’t
have been more helpful or friendly. I can recommend this hotel. It was an
excellent value for an ideal central location.
We walked to where there would have been a 7th
stand at the bus terminal if there had been a number, but there wasn’t. There
were already people there and a small bus. It was not our bus. Our bus came
quite a bit later and still 4 people had not arrived. We and our luggage were
all soaked through by now. We waited until the bus driver had consulted with
Brian our cruise director by cell phone about where to find these missing 4 who
had chosen to fly in the day of and had a flight delay. We drove to a shopping
center out by the airport and finally they walked through the Burger King
parking lot dragging their bags. (I’ll just go ahead and put a spoiler here
that these 2 couples from Sussex were very special and dysfunctional all week!)
So, then we drove back across Inverness
to head for Oban and the Lord of the Glens. It was over a 2 hour ride and
mostly zigzagging alongside the lochs and we are told there is no more scenic
drive anywhere. That may be true, but we couldn’t see much in the rain and low
clouds and mostly because the windows completely fogged up right after we
loaded. There were about 50 soggy people
on the bus and when the driver turned on the heat, we started releasing steam!
We drove across a bridge at the Neptune’s Staircase where we
will go through a series of locks later. We saw 3 deer by the side of the road
like the one I saw yesterday. I also saw a pair of pheasants startle out of the
bushes as the bus passed. About midway, we stopped at a scenic little place called
Spean Bridge by a river for toilets and shopping. Clay went nuts. When we set off
again, the bus driver let us know he’d talked to Brian again. Evidently, Lord
of the Glens was having a harder time than just bad weather and mislaid
couples. We were told that a larger ship called Ocean Nova was tied up at our
berth all day and that had put everybody off their footing. I’ll just say if
that’s case, they still haven’t gotten it back today and need to learn to shake
it off. They seem at loose ends and are not communicating well. Brian wouldn’t
say mud to us if he had a mouthful most of the time it seems. And it seems that
is how he does most of his announcements, by going table to table or group to
group and randomly repeating himself, or not. Not really the best way to
communicate with 52 or so people when you want them all to be on the same page.
We are the only Americans onboard and we can’t understand what anyone is saying
half the time anyways. Like the information Magna Carta sent us before we came
that specified a smart casual dress code with a jacket for dinner and an extra
effort for the Welcome and Farewell Dinners. Huh? I posted the question to a
British Disboard thread and got back no jeans, no shorts, no t-shirts, no
trainers. Well, there are plenty of old Brits aboard in jeans, and at dinner in
the evening. So, did we misunderstand?
Anyway, the whole schedule got pushed back. They hustled our
bags right to the cabins. They got here before we did. We are in cabin 201,
last cabin in the back of the boat on the port side. There is a door at the end
of the hall that says crew only. It is the crew mess. There is noise back there
and crew come and go slamming the door behind them from about 10 pm to 2 am. It
sounds like they have a blender against the wall by the head of my bed. The
floor is sloped. Otherwise, we like it. Yes it is small, but I guess we’ve been
in training and it is efficiently laid out. It is huge, spacious and
well-designed compared to the cabin we had on Cruise West. But there is one similarity with Cruise West. When docked, they put a board up on the Reception Desk. It has two sliding buttons by every cabin number and it is your responsibility to mark yourself onboard or off whenever it is up. We had no name badges and no one ever checked our key cards. No one was manning that board or the gangway or the door. They relied entirely on all of us being responsible enough to use that board to mark ourselves in or out.
So we should have gotten in about 4:30pm, but didn’t get in
until after 6:30pm. Emergency Drill was
in the bar at 7:45pm in our “extra efforts clothes” which was not specified on
the sheet left in our cabins describing our day. Welcome Party followed by
Dinner at 8pm. The small dining room has 3 rows of 3 tables with 6 seats at
each table. This is our smallest ship yet. I think it is very attractive, Clay
thinks it is ugly. I am trying to bring him around. I am typing this from my
bed at the window onboard Lord of the Glens with a view across Tobermory Bay. I
think I have seen a dolphin and an otter. But, for sure as I have been sitting
here the waterfall across the bay becomes more and more torrential! It is
really raining. The clouds roll over and briefly clear out and reappear.
Sometimes I can see green in the distance and mostly I see nothing. Anyway,
back to last night’s dinner.
We had a welcome drink of champagne or orange juice in the
bar on the top deck. They passed around some small canapés with mostly caviar,
black or green! Then off to dinner down 2 decks. We had to go by the dining
room earlier and place a tick mark by half or full portion of chicken, salmon
or bean cassoulet. I had a ½ portion of chicken and got one of those little 4
bite breasts with the little wing joint still attached. It was in some kind of gravy
with roasted root vegetables. It was tasty. Clay had salmon. He didn’t say how it was, but I think he
liked the mashed potatoes under it. You got soup up front or nothing. And after
you got some kind of bread pudding. It was all ok. Clay had a Cairngorms Gold
beer that was priceless. (Looking at our bill, it was £4.15.) It
was served warm. The server told Clay they had a big variety of Scottish beers
that he could work his way through, but he says that seems unappetizing now.
We left before coffee and tea and went to bed early.
Here is some information about booking Lord of the Glens.
This ship was owned by Magna Carta Steamship Co. Ltd. of London. We booked
directly with them. It looks like the summer season is chartered by National Geographic. It was actually in a NG brochure that I first learned about the
cruise and this boat. I requested a brochure from Magna Carta back then and it sat on the living room table from September 2010 until 2013 when Clay asked me what else was on my bucket list. Cruising the across the Scottish Highlands! But there is an enormous markup when NG takes over the
ship. I realize they bring on experts in photography and nature and guides,
more activities, etc. but I just couldn’t see paying that much extra for the
same cruise on the same ship with the same food and crew, etc. So, we paid £860 pp
which equals about $1343 in USD. I mean our cruise had a per diem of $268.60
plus recommended tips and drinks. To compare identical itineraries between Magna
Carta and National Geographic; NG is charging $7790 for 9 days on 7/29 to 8/6,
but they are calling it 9 days while you actually only have 7 nights aboard,
they’re charging $865 per diem the way they are selling it and $1113 per diem
if you call it 7 nights. This for the same cabin we were in. Magna Carta sells
this same cruise as 7 nights and for the same cabin on 7/16 to 7/ 23. MC charges
£1771
which is $2764
and $395 per diem. I just can’t imagine NG is adding that a $5026 value to
the same vacation.
One final point on
finances, Magna Carta and Lord of the Glens do not want to take credit cards.
We were able to make a deposit by credit card over the phone with Magna Carta
because it was the last cabin available on that sailing, so they made an
exception but it was like pulling teeth. They assured us verbally and in
writing that credit cards would be accepted onboard for tips and other charges,
but onboard Brian said no, it was cash only. MC
recommended £7 per person per day in tips. Fortunately we had it in cash on
the last morning and our bill for extras was only £7. We are still a little
concerned about a cruise company, no matter how small, that doesn’t accept
credit cards! We had to wire our final payment overseas to their bank. It was a big headache. Plus, if they just shut down with your money you have no recourse as you would with a credit card. It just
still seems strange, but it all worked out ok. That is the only reason I could
imagine for sailing on a NG charter of Lord of the Glens, because I am sure
they accept credit cards. It still wasn’t worth the huge markup for us though.
But, here is some more Lord of the Glens information. She entered service in July 2000 with a 7-day
itinerary between Inverness & Oban. She was built in Greece in 1985 and was
rebuilt at Oliver Designs Shipyard in Bilbao, Spain. She is 41 meters in length
and 10.5 meters wide. She has a 2.7 meter draft. She is 729 gross tons. She has
a 510 ton displacement and a speed of 10 knots with 2 Cummings 800HP engines
that are the only original to the ship. She has a 54 passenger capacity in 27
cabins and a crew of 18.
Our cruise director is Brian Copland. I think I understood
him to say that is the first and only cruise director on Lord of the Glens.
That is pretty impressive. He certainly always seemed to be rushing around
trying to handle all aspects of the management of the ship as a
hotel/restaurant as well as handling the passengers. He was working hard and putting in some long
days during the cruising season. Head
Chef is Ian Beaton. Our steward is Victor.
Our first day letter told us that for 13 years Lord of the
Glens had relied on its own power generator, but they had complaints from
locals where the ship docked about noise. So, this season they were trying out
having a truck tow a generator following the ship to meet at all the docks
except Tobermory. They were still
working out the kinks, I think. We had some trouble with outages.
The climate control system in the ship was a mess. It was
freezing in the halls, which was fine with us, but it was broiling inside the
cabin, the bar, the lounge, and usually in the restaurant, but especially hot
in our cabin. Our steward saw us the first couple of hours aboard with our door
propped open trying to cool it off. He said that the ship’s system can only run
heat or AC and it was on heat for this cruise, but he’d get us a fan if it
would help. We thought it would help so he brought a small oscillating fan and
set it on the desk. We were happy to have it. It was better than nothing, but
it was hot in there and then very cold outside. Nothing in between. People
congregated on the top desk in the bar and lounge during sailing times and then
the windows would fog up. So between the blowing rain, low clouds and fog and the steamed up windows, we saw very little
scenery though we should have been in sight of land the entire cruise.
Hot tea and coffee with biscuits were available all day and
complimentary. They usually had an ice bucket and a pitcher of ice water out on
the bar all day.
Lord of the Glens has no elevator. There are three flights
of stairs in the center of the ship with 11 steep and narrow (one way traffic) steps
each on each all with handrails. Lord of the Glens discourages children under
the age of 11. (We didn’t have any children on our sailing!) There is no wifi onboard. There is a
complimentary computer at Reception for email/Internet/printing. The kitchen is
good about working to satisfy every passenger’s dietary requests. Voltage
onboard is 220v with British sockets, both at the desk. I believe I saw 2
2-prong 110v plugs on the bathroom ceiling, but it looked like they were part of
the light fixture so they probably only work when the lights are turned on. We
never tried them, so I don’t know for sure. The toiletries are from Sea Kelp Scottish Fine Soaps. There is a hairdryer and a mirror
in the top of the desk. There is no laundry onboard, but there is a small clothesline in the shower if you want to handwash. Meals are served in a
single seating. It is open seating. Mealtime guidelines are 7:30 to 9:30am for
a buffet breakfast with a small cook-to-order menu. Lunch is 12:30pm. Dinner is
7:30pm. You have to check off on a list in the morning what you will order for
your main course for lunch and dinner and then remember to tell the waiter or
waitress when they come around taking orders. The TVs in the cabins are
supposed to have a limited number of satellite channels and show a forward view
from the Bridge as well as “live GPS” plotting. But we never found anything on
except the shows Brian announced he was airing. I think once I found the
forward view, but the window was covered with water and I couldn’t really see
anything and I never tried it again. The ship is non-smoking in all interior
spaces. There is a safe in every closet.
Photos
Photos
