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Displaying items by tag: All Leisure Group

#BackForMore - All Leisure Group (ALH), the UK cruise group, has signed a three-year agreement with Portsmouth International Port that will extend a relationship that begin in 2010 to 2018.

The group owns three well-known companies; Swan Hellenic, Voyages of Discovery and Hebridean Island Cruises. During the last five years ships from each company have visited Portsmouth, a decision based on transport connections, location and investment in new facilities.

The new three-year agreement with ALH starts this month and is a vote of confidence for the Hampshire port that celebrates its 40th anniversary this year having begun operating as a ferryport.

The cruise team at Portsmouth offers a wide range of services to visiting cruiseships, with an ever-growing reputation for handling luxury smaller-sized ships.

For the last five years Swan Hellenic’s Minerva has been based at Portsmouth International Port for cruises in Northern Europe, the Baltic and Scandinavia. That relationship will continue for at least another three years, with Minerva starting Portsmouth 2016 cruise season on 15 April.

The first cruise of next year from the famous ‘Waterfront City’ will see passengers taken on a two-week holiday to explore three fascinating French rivers – the Loire, the Seine and the Garonne.

Throughout the summer the 350 passenger Minerva with ‘country house hotel’ facilities offers a varied and distinctive series of nine cruises from Portsmouth, including visits to the glorious gardens of Europe.

Afloat has identified a cruise by Minerva with a call to Dublin Port in late summer as part of a 14-day ‘Celtic Traditions & Edinburgh Tatoo’ cruise.

Other destinations include the Baltic, an Icelandic quest, the Norwegian fjords, the Scottish Highlands and Islands and a chance to discover the treasures of Portugal and Spain.

Published in Cruise Liners

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.