This tour necessitated another early morning and we had to meet in the main room at 0830 and so we had a quick and small breakfast so that Noel is not affected by having the wrong thing.
We had to use the tender from the ship to Portreath and it was about a fifteen minute crossing where you arrive just on the outskirts of the town in a small harbour. On the hill overlooking the harbour was a Hotel where Jennifer stayed with her father some years ago on a private tour of Scotland. We were met by the tour guide who was a nice guy with a good sense of humour and he introduced himself as our tour guide for the day, this we discovered whilst waiting for the coach to arrive..
So we all got onboard and off we went and then out of nowhere a lady of Asian Origin introduced herself as the tour guide and what a complete and utter disaster she was to. Whether she was reading from a script but she was unable to pronounce the correct names of the Scottish Towns and names of important people and then kept duplicating what she was saying and then halfway though talk about something else. Not only that she kept this non stop talking for about 100 minutes on our route around the Island and it was driving me crazy. I suppose its not her fault she was given this job but when you are supposed to be a tour of Scotland surely there should be someone is Scottish and can speak and and can pronounce the names correctly. Eventually the driver kept interrupting her to put her on the straight and narrow and she mostly ignored his advised and suggestions. She talked about the people who spoke in GARLIC , not Gaelic and the said a closed mine produced DYNAMITE and not DIATOMITE. For those who are interested Diatomite comprises fossilised remains of diatoms; single-celled aquatic algae. It is a sedimentary deposit consisting almost entirely of silica. It is of low density and high porosity meaning it has high insulating and absorption properties. Whilst Dynamite blows things to pieces.
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We also learnt a lot about new car parks and toilets that we cannot use??? really interesting stuff . T her German Gentleman a and another chap in the coach in front of us each time she started speaking put their fingers in their ears to reduce the amount of rubbish she was spurting
I am sure that the many American are now confused with the Scottish language after this debacle. When we arrived at the first stop I was so cross and waited to be the last person of the bus and and approached the driver and said does the courier work for your company which was NO and I said this was worst commentary on any bus tour I have ever taken and he agreed and looked up to heaven. Immediately afterwards the lady approached me and told her the same that really with all the Scottish words, quite frankly a Scottish tour guide would be better due to the reasons I mentioned earlier. I said to her it was not her fault that she had an ASIAN or Chinese background and of course it would be difficult to say the works correctly, me as a Brit would have the same problem. I said I likened it to an Irishman leading a tour to China and unable to pronounce the words.
She became very upset and said he was BRITISH and I had been rude to her and that I was a racist, what I said I spent 15 years in Asia working the locals and no way was I anywhere near a racist. I said I would report this discussion which I did to once retuning the ship. The good news was once we re-joined the bus she stopped talking altogether, my German friends in front were delighted.
We finally returned to Portreath at 1245 and the town was packed with tourists with lots of local junk for sale at extortionate prices I suspect. At this point they announced that the coach could not return to the port due to the traffic and parking problems so we could either walk downhill to the ship or wait for a shuttle which we did and then via the tender return to the ship.
We went straight to lunch as we were both hungry after a small and early breakfast and immediately after discussed the mornings events with the Guest relations officer who would pursue the matter further.
After lunch Noel watched some football on the TV and then up came a repeat of the Kings Coronation Concert at Windsor and then we went for dinner and met a nice Californian couple who now live in Hawaii , he was an ex nurse who works in surgery units. Clearly we are building a medical team here what with a Pathologist and now a Nurse, wow.
We decided not to see the show and went to the Observatory bar which is at the front of the ship and at 2140 it was still quite daylight, of course being lot further north than Byfleet makes a difference. And so to bed. Noel will stay on the ship tomorrow whilst Jennifer is off on a tour to the ex Queen Mothers castle.
