P&O MV Arcadia; Saturday, 18 October, 2025

With a relatively early boarding time in Southampton, and the ever present possibility of Weekend Engineering Works we’d booked the night before the cruise in Southampton as soon as the hotel was bookable and it turned out that we were right to do so as there were works on the railway lines that could have caused some major disruption if we’d risked leaving it to Sunday morning to travel down.

As mum couldn’t really manage the climbs on and off trains at Clapham Junction we got a cab up to London Waterloo so that she could board the train more easily there.

It was a pretty short walk from the side entrance of the station to the hotel, which was good as the lifts from the overbridge to the station building to pick up a taxi round to the hotel were out of order, which would have made catching a taxi from a longer journey problematic.

After checking in we headed up to our rooms and later in the evening had an even shorter walk from the rooms down to the hotel restaurant for dinner before turning in for the night.