If it's Thursday, This Must be Dartmouth

We woke up this morning as the ship was easing into the beautiful port of Dartmouth, in southern England. Yesterday we were in Falmouth, in the county of Cornwall; now we're in Dartmouth, which is in Devon. This is by far the best view out my cabin window of the trip to date. In Belfast and Dublin we were anchored at the city docks, which looked very industrial and grimy -- here we're surrounded on all sides by beautiful wooded hillsides dotted with colorful houses and, in the foreground, yachts and smaller pleasure boats on the water. I think I'll just quit my job at The Penn Stater, stay right here, and pursue a career in jigsaw-puzzle photography.

We actually are anchored / moored / whatever the term is (clearly I don't know my seafaring lingo well enough) in the River Dart. So we won't be able to just walk down a gangway and be on dry land; instead, they'll have to "tender" us in to shore in small boats. There are more than 600 passengers on the cruise ship, so this ought to be interesting. Actually, people go off the ship in dribs and drabs -- right now a bunch of passengers are disembarking for an excursion up the Rivert Dart and back by steam train; later, another bunch will disembark to go on an excursion to the Berry Pomeroy Castle; at some point another bunch head off on a visit to the Royal Naval College; and so on. I'm booked on an afternoon hike across a moor at Dartmoor National Park.

I'll let you know what a moor is just as soon as I find out.

As we arrive in any given port, you can turn the TV in your cabin to channel 34 and (1) see a closed-circuit camera view off the bow of the ship and (2) hear some guy talk about the town in which we're arriving. This morning I learned, for example, that Dartmouth is the port from which many of the Crusaders sailed ... and it also was the port from which the Pilgrims set off in 1692. (I *think* it was 1692 -- I sure hope you aren't holding me to all these facts!)

We're at about 50 degrees north latitude here; by contrast, Pennsylvania is around 40 degrees or so. One of the nice advantages of this is that the days here are *very* long. Sunrise today was at 5:18 a.m. and sunset isn't until 9:22 p.m. In Edinburgh we were, of course, even farther north, and on the first morning in the hotel in Edinburgh I woke up thinking I must have overslept, because the sky was incredibly bright outside. Then I looked at my alarm clock and saw that it was 4:40 a.m.

I'll report more later today.