This simply had to be the mother of all passenger cruiseliner upgrades, and it came completely out of the blue and was set in motion after just three telephone calls.
The first call to my news PR office in the small North Somerset village of Wrington late on an October afternoon back in 2002 was from a long-time travelling companion.
She had seen this amazing offer namely a six-night pre-Christmas cruise from Southampton to New York on the world’s then most famous passenger liner the QE2, two nights in Lower Manhattan and British Airways flights home and all for £1,100 per person!
“But you’ve got to come because this offer is only available as a package for two,” she insisted.
Now just the day before I had booked to go on a small group tour following in the footsteps of the Spanish Conquistadors along the old King’s Highway through the jungles of Panama in early January.
I wavered but no this was too good an opportunity to miss so I called up Eric, Cunard’s Head of PR at the time, and explained that I had just booked this offer but would happily write a one-thousand-word feature with pictures in exchange for an upgrade.
The truth was that I would have written a piece anyway because once I set off on a travel trip, I simply can’t resist writing about it!
Eric said he would make enquiries but would not be calling me back until a few days before the cruise because Cunard would wait to see how many cabins were left unoccupied.
Again, it was a late afternoon this time at the end of November when Eric called me back: “Hi Nigel you’ve been upgraded to Q so have a good trip” and with no further explanation he rang off.
I had previously ordered a brochure which I thumbed open immediately to discover to my great surprise that Q was the Queen’s Grill deck with the services of a butler and two female colleagues and that the total cost of our cruise would have been circa £15,000!
So, a wet early December morning found us being dropped off at the terminal in my companion son’s car which had seen better days and suitcases in hand we joined the end of a long check-in queue.
When we eventually reached one of a line of desks, we presented our tickets and explained that we had been given an upgrade. The woman quickly looked up our details.
“That’s a nice upgrade,” she replied signalling to a colleague and moments later we found ourselves following him along a red carpet as he carried our suitcases past all our fellow passengers now queuing to board.
Once onboard we were whisked into a lift which opened a couple of minutes later onto a wide and plush corridor with staterooms on either side and followed him halfway along to a door on the left.
I will pause here to admit that this was to be my very first experience of ocean cruising because all my previous trans-Atlantic voyages had been on passenger carrying container ships or during my shipping correspondent days as a supernumerary on giant car carriers or short sea container vessels.
So, talking about going from the sublime to the ridiculous, this was certainly it!
Our guide opened the heavy wooden door, which was surprisingly unlocked, and we stepped into our huge and beautifully furnished state room where our attention was immediately drawn to a black-suited butler caught in the act of replenishing our drinks cabin.
“Ah just in time so what spirits shall I include?” he enquired not turning a hair. The question caught us off guard because neither of us ever went anywhere near spirits and what we replied has long since been forgotten.
“I will leave you to get settled in and my colleagues will call by to introduce themselves later,” he said quietly closing the door behind him.
We stood there in a stunned silence slowly taking in our luxury surroundings starting with the two huge double beds separated by a table and lamp casting a subtle glow and beyond to open curtains leading out onto our sundeck which seeing it was bitterly cold outside was unlikely to have more than a cursory use.
On further inspection we discovered a sparkling bathroom with his and her separate sinks and of course a large bath together with a walk-in dressing room just across the way.
Having unpacked we were rudely taken back into the grips of reality with a broadcast instructing us to locate and don our bright orange life jackets and proceed to our appointed muster station, an order I had obeyed on many previous occasions while joining officers and mainly Filipino crew on the open deck of a container ship already way out at sea.
That evening we thoroughly enjoyed our Queen’s Grill dining experience on a table for two having consciously deciding not to opt for a shared table with far more wealthier guests!
But one surprise highlight of our voyage arrived early the following morning when the day’s packed activities programme was slipped under our door because having never “cruised” before I had no idea that this would include a whole series of lectures.
Imagined my surprise on discovering that first person to appear in the lecture theatre that morning was to be writer Celia Sandys talking about the early life of her grandfather Winston Churchill and this was to be followed by Captain Fred Mclaren talking about the first manned dives on The German battleship Bismark.
Our most memorable six-day voyage sailed past in a flash and before we knew it, we were standing on the open deck at six am as we sailed slowly up The Hudson River with the whole of Manhattan ablaze of lights towering ahead of us.
We and a crowd of fellow passengers gazed up at QE2s funnel with baited-breath as it cleared the famous Verrazano Bridge with just a few feet to spare!
