The Clipper Adventurer
visits 

Abbey Gardens, Tresco Island
Isles of Scilly, England

I sit shrouded in pearly mists on a gunmetal gray sea. For a moment, the fog parts and I glimpse mounds of jagged rock. Then, dreamlike, the mists close and the island sinks into the obscure—the mist? the sea? I can’t tell. Perhaps these are the mists of Avalon, and I’ve just seen King Arthur’s island paradise. The next breach, however, reveals Tresco Island. It’s one of five inhabited islands of the 140 Isles of Scilly—say silly.

The Scillies are 28 miles west-south-west of England’s big toe. The Atlantic gales blast unimpeded all the way from America to slam these bits of English rock. The Gulf Stream flows over and up from the Gulf of Mexico to warm them. I, on the other hand, have come from Wales on the small cruise ship, the Clipper Adventurer. We’re on a voyage of discovery, in pursuit of the fine castles and gardens in the Celtic fringe of Ireland, Wales, England and Brittany.

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Clipper Adventurer

Dining at Sea 

I dive into the Oyster’s Rockefeller—tonight’s cocktail hour offering—after all, I haven’t had a thing since lunch. Spartan-like I’d abstained from the warm-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies which materialize in the lounge every afternoon. Okay, so I was napping.

Dinner commences as the sun descends behind the Channel Islands. Shafts of its golden light stream through the Adventurer’s dining room setting the silver and crystal glimmering and the teak paneling and peacock-blue carpeting glowing.

Shipboard friends wave me over—everyone eats at the same time but sits where they want—and we immediately start gabbing about today’s adventures on this voyage of castles and gardens. We’d tread cobbled streets in St. Peter’s Port and drifted about nineteenth-century Guernsey gardens. Just before cocktails, our on-board Brit historian gave us the low-down on the Bayeux Tapestry—an embroidery, not a tapestry, depicting the 1066 Norman invasion of England. He wants to make sure we won’t be duped by tomorrow’s French guide.                                 

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