Over decades of travelling to Europe in search of culture, ambience and novelty, I admit I’ve softened a bit. One does, as one gets older. From cheerfully roughing it with a backpack to more indulgent city breaks, I’ve accustomed myself to a certain level of. . . not extravagance, exactly, but ease.
But now I’ve been on a river cruise, and I think I may be spoiled for life.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. My impression of a cruise holiday was that of a giant resort afloat on the ocean. Noise, booziness, overindulgence – all jolly enough, if you fancy it, but liable to be intense and exhausting.
Listening to my fellow passengers on the Avalon Visionary, a low-slung craft with about as many passengers as metres in its length – a little over 100 – it seemed this was about right. Experienced cruise-goers, many of them, they enthused over the contrast between your average cruise and what Avalon offers, luxuriating in the placid, leisurely, small-scale nature of the venture, where one is always in sight of land. The Avalon Visionary is more of a gently mobile boutique hotel.
It took a little while to adjust to its unanticipated pleasures; it must have been a good four or five minutes before I completely sank back into the blissful realisation that for the next few days I had not a single thing to plan or worry about other than choices of menus and excursions.
I sank back, too, upon the double bed in my stateroom, which might sound a grand term for a berth on so compact a craft, but in this case it is certainly appropriate. The ship is a Tardis-like marvel of design, its sense of space ingeniously expanded by what is justly branded the Panorama Suite. The outer wall of one’s cabin is fully taken up by its window, which in fine weather (or indeed any weather, if you’re so minded) slides open to transform the entire room into a private open-air balcony.
It’s great fun to go up on the Sky Deck when the sun’s out, and watch the Rhine or the Mosel slide by in the laid-back, convivial company of the other guests, every so often instinctively ducking as the vessel clears another low bridge. But if it rains, or a chill settles, or you simply fancy a spell of seclusion, then settling down into your own personal viewing station (protected from the elements, if preferred, by double-glazing), with north-western Europe stretching before, behind and above you, a widescreen vision of the Old World, is quite extraordinarily relaxing.
Time itself seems to become fluid, passing in soft, lapping ripples like the river below.
The ship is replete with comforts – the cooking is modern and inventive, the menus extensive; there’s a lounge bar fore and a coffee lounge aft, and nowhere is ever overcrowded. But it’s over the course of the whole cruise that the single most luxurious aspect becomes apparent: the combination of variety and languor.
Sailing on the Avalon Visionary, I saw some fascinating places I had never before heard of, and saw new sides of others I had visited often. Yet not once on the cruise itself does one need to repack a case, nor catch a train or a flight to the next destination. It all simply swims up before you, serenely – sometimes it’s already there when you open your eyes in the morning.
To find out more about Avalon river cruises, call one of their travel experts on 0330 058 8285, visit avaloncruises.co.uk or speak to your travel agent.