Another quiet Monday of routine tasks. With lots of time on my hands, getting going on preparing my next Sunday sermon seems to have become part of this. I haven't needed to contribute anything to preparing the Ascension Day Confirmation service this week, as others have taken charge of it. I can just be there, relax and enjoy the experience, a pleasant change.
My afternoon paseo revealed a 200 metre long super luxury cruise ship moored alongside Palmeria de las Sorpresas, the Bahamas registered Seabourn Odessy launched in 2009. It takes 450 passengers and 350 crew. with the largest spa on board of any cruise ship in the world. The high ratio of crew to passengers seems indicative of its elite status, whether it's a big ship or a relatively small one.
Next to it on the quay, and somewhat overshadowed by it, at 73 metres, was a Guardia Civil coastal patrol vessel, the Rio Segura, named after a river, which rises in the sierras in Jaen Province, flows across Murcia Province and reaches the sea in Alicante Province. At the turn of the century, the rio Segura was one of the most polluted in Spain. Public outcry about this evoked a response from the government of Murcia, which led to better water management and cleaned up the river, to the extent that the biosphere along its length now flourishes healthily once more. Regenerated, just like the river Taff back home, over the past twenty years.
Learning about this later took me back to my first visit to Murcia province last autumn and being shown the Sierra Espuña Parque Regional, reforested and transformed during a lifetime of labour by a 19th century by Ricardo Cordoniu 'El Apostol del Arbol'.
Learning about this later took me back to my first visit to Murcia province last autumn and being shown the Sierra Espuña Parque Regional, reforested and transformed during a lifetime of labour by a 19th century by Ricardo Cordoniu 'El Apostol del Arbol'.
Anyway, I noticed the ship's passenger bridge to the cruise terminal centre weren't attached, as if it was making ready to depart, so I hung around for twenty minutes to watch. At six, the ship's siren hooted three times, and vehicles belonging to port security officials and workers appeared on the quay, and one by one the half a dozen or so cables attaching ship to land were quietly loosened and hauled in by noiseless machines on board. The series of propellers embedded in the port side of the ship's full powered up and churned the water briefly, as the vessel moved away sideways, until it had sufficient clearance for the bows to take the lead. In fifteen minutes she was on her way out of port to Barcelona.
A man my age standing next to me asked if I spoke French, I don't know why, except that seemed to want to share his pleasure at this brief moment. We chatted for a while and he told me he was Swiss, from the Canton of Vaud, but his real passion was sailing ships. He said that the ships's docking, he'd seen earlier in the day, was assisted by a tug, perhaps for safety sake, perhaps to ensure avoiding a collisions with the smaller, lower profile Sio Segura moored further up the quay. i can't remember when I last saw so big a ship cast off and leave part. I thought of standing, watching with my father, on the quay in Cardiff Docks back in the fifties, and thought how much he'd enjoy seeing this.
A man my age standing next to me asked if I spoke French, I don't know why, except that seemed to want to share his pleasure at this brief moment. We chatted for a while and he told me he was Swiss, from the Canton of Vaud, but his real passion was sailing ships. He said that the ships's docking, he'd seen earlier in the day, was assisted by a tug, perhaps for safety sake, perhaps to ensure avoiding a collisions with the smaller, lower profile Sio Segura moored further up the quay. i can't remember when I last saw so big a ship cast off and leave part. I thought of standing, watching with my father, on the quay in Cardiff Docks back in the fifties, and thought how much he'd enjoy seeing this.
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