Holidays On The Water

Perhaps it’s because we are an island nation that we have a fascination with water, which almost always features in our glimpses of idyll & one which we often incorporate into our holidays.

To be sure, the prospects to some of a holiday hill-walking, cycling, or perhaps skiing, can carry more enjoyment than looking at a coast line, but as a nation at large, water is where we look to take our relaxations.

There are millions of us who seek a holiday spot close to the seaside, to visit, to walk, lay, play, paddle or swim, and as many more who are happy just to be able to see the sea at whatever distance.

Some take to the water, narrow boats on canals, some the calm of the Norfolk broads, some sail from inshore harbours of the coast. There is another breed of holidaymaker that takes the concept of holidays and water to another level, (no reference here to sub-aqua diving!), that of the cruise.

Cruises have to be the ultimate connection with water, not only the oceans, but some of the world’s majestic rivers host cruises and water-borne travels of exploration.

Cruising the Rhine, perhaps, or the Danube, maybe, for a sense of historical well-being, the solid foundations of the old world shaping the routes with millennia of civilisation.

To the east, fed by the waters of the Himalaya’s, and the Himalayan induced monsoons, the mighty Yangtze, and the vast Mekong beckon cruises of wonder and sights, sounds, and smells constantly changing and amazing the western eye.

To the west, the mightiest of them all, the Amazon, flowing from the foot hills of the Andes, around 4,000 miles away, can carry cruises to great lengths of the river, and offer exploration in some of the seven countries through which it flows.

The Nile, the longest river on the planet has hosted genteel sailing in smaller boats for years. A cruise through Egypt will show ancient landscapes that have changed little since the days of the Pharaohs. Children bathe donkeys and themselves in the river, farmers till their land with hoes, and families live along the banks in traditional mud-brick houses as they have done, virtually without change for 5,000 years.

In the warmer days of the Russian year, cruising the Volga and Svir rivers will take in the largest lakes in Europe, as well as the unmissable cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, on the waterways of the Czars.