There are some truly beautiful places in this world. There are also some truly awful ones too as we see constantly in news reports, but for the purposes of this holiday chat, we are interested in just the beautiful ones. On a recent family cruise, we had the joy of seeing the fjords in bright sunlight and also in damp and misty conditions. Strangely as the rest of Europe was being baked solid in exceptional heat waves, we had the constant joy of drizzly rain and overcast skies – it was fabulous putting on a rain mac! Being able to walk out onto the promenade deck was deep joy. Even when there is just open see with no other vessel within sight, it is still fantastic to get that supremely fresh air.

We have sailed to Norway several times and never get fed up of the natural beauty and the way the Norwegians are so proud of how they have managed to maintain and flourish their oil and gas industries whilst keeping diesel and petrol driven cars reduced to the absolute minimum. When we went ashore it was for purely pleasure – the chance to look around the pretty villages, partake of a cinnamon bun or two. The price for food and drink seems exorbitant but they enjoy a very strong national economy and they have a completely different pay and conditions ethos to the UK.

The mountains are truly breathtaking – lush and green from the rather precipitous climate. No one minds the rain there. They recognise that their part of the world is beautiful and they work together to keep it that way. There has been some animosity towards the huge cruise ships that the younger climate warriors want to keep out, but the economics of their visits does often mean the ships are not often hindered. There have been group protests over the diesel particulates floating around because you can imagine, a very large ship is going to produce a lot more per journey than a smaller one. There have been protests by younger nationals to stop all cruising as they feel it is environmentally harmful but it is nowhere near as bad now that battery powered cruise ships have come on stream.

]