Tight squeeze! Minerva In The Corinth Canal

Here's a fab Photo of the Day - Swan Hellenic’s boutique little ship MV Minerva gave passengers a REAL close-up of the famous Corinth Canal in Greece this week as she squeezed carefully through on her Aegean Sea voyage.

With only 350 passengers, Minerva boasts a real country house ambience on board, and is renowned for her off-the-beaten-track itineraries and ability to go where other ships can’t. And there are certainly not many who can transit this Canal these days!

For more info, visit www.swanhellenic.com or the UK's leading cruise specialists of the Cruise Line Ltd.

New Brochure from Swan Hellenic

By guest blogger Steve Newman

The winter 2011-2012 season brochures are going on sale now and Swan Hellenic’s latest features cruises throughout northern Europe, the Mediterranean, Black Sea, North Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Following particularly successful sales for Far East cruises this year, the cruise line will return to the region in late 2011 with ports of call throughout India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Indonesia and the Philippines , including a return to Yangon in Myanmar.

New ports, all accessible only by smaller ships like Swan Hellenic's Minerva, featured in the brochure across Europe, Asia and Middle East include the wildlife conservation reserve of Sir Bani Yas island in the United Arab Emirates, the Vietnamese coastal city of Qui Nhon, and the French fishing town of Port Vendres close to the Spanish border. The 320-guest ship (above) is also small enough to transit the Corinth Canal in Greece, the Kiel Canal in Germany, the Yangon River in Myanmar and the Saigon River in Vietnam.

One of the highlights is an insight into the tribes, religions and cultures of Indonesia and South East Asia, with a 22-day ‘East of Java’ cruise from Singapore to Hong Kong and ports of call that Semarang in Java, Bali, Lombok, Komodo, Sandakan in Malaysia for a visit to an orangutan sanctuary, and Manila in the Philippines, before arriving in Hong Kong. Prices are from £3,345 per person for a 22-day fly-cruise in January 2012.

Brochures can also be viewed online at www.swanhellenic.com/2012brochure.

Swan Hellenic will be exhibiting at the Cruise Show in Birmingham on October 16-17. and at London's Olympia on March 26-27 2011.

Iceland, Dublin, Faroe Isles and St Kilda

By guest blogger Steve Newman

To many of us, a cruise is made by the amount of wildlife we see from the deck or on land when taking organised excursions. To this end, Swan Hellenic has partnered with Marinelife, the marine conservation research charity, to bring a daily wildlife image blog to cruise passengers and the public alike.

The Marinelife team has been recording all sightings and engaging with passengers on board the Minerva throughout her visit to Iceland with a programme of presentations and deck watches. Marinelife’s team is writing a daily blog on the Swan Hellenic website to keep the general public up to date with a range of spectacular encounters, which include many hundreds of dolphins of multiple species, a Humpback Whale mother-and-calf pair and sightings of the infamous Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

Minerva will be returning to Iceland sailing on a round trip from Portsmouth from 21 July - 05 August 2011. She will be visiting four ports on the “Land of Fire,” including the capital Reykjavik. Iceland is place renowned for its ice fields, volcanic springs and thundering waterfalls. The ship will also call at Dublin and Torshavn in the Faroe Isles.

Apart from elation at the coastal scenery and the wildlife, there is sadness on this trip, too. It rather depends on how it affects you, but I defy anyone not to be moved when you’re on St Kilda. Fifty miles out from the Western Isles, even as you start to approach you wonder how people could have lived here. This feeling is enhanced when you pass where the young men climbed the cliffs to collect seabird eggs in swells they would have regarded as nothing but have many visitors clinging to the rail.

Surviving until the 1930s, when they asked to be evacuated, you wander among their stone houses (above) now numbered and marked with the occupants' names, trying to imagine how they eked out a living here and marvelling at their dry-stone walling skills. The sadness comes when you discover that in just one egg collecting trip, almost half the young men of the island were lost in heavy seas.

Having visited both here and Iceland, I can assure you you’ll be left with memories that will stay with you for ever.

For those wishing to know more, Swan Hellenic will be exhibiting at the Cruise Show in Birmingham in October.

For more info in the meantime, go to http://www.swanhellenic.com