P&O MV Arcadia; Monday, 20 October, 2025

The day was scheduled as a sea day with the entire day being spent crossing the Bay of Biscay in rapidly deteriorating conditions. The captain had done his best to hold back in the English Chanel and start the transit late so we were behind the centre of the weather system that was blowing through, but it still meant we were in for a pretty rough crossing.

It was noticeable throughout the day that the number of people moving round the ship was less than there had been the previous day and at meals throughout the day it was clear there were many people not leaving their beds, which given the movement onboard the ship was pretty understandable. Despite really decent stabilizers the boat was still moving around a lot, particularly at the restaurants located at the rear of the ship, with movement made difficult by rapidly changing from walking uphill to downhill in a moments notice.

As it was a sea day, and most of the open decks were closed, and even if they’d been open there was nothing other than sea to see, there wasn’t much to do other than eat and so the day progressed in a pretty linear fashion from Breakfast and back to the Cabin then down to Lunch then back to the Cabin, up to the buffet for Afternoon Tea, back to the cabin and then prepare for dinner.

Sea Days on P&O are usually Black Tie events, and this was no different, despite the weather and sea conditions, so before heading down for drinks it was time to dress-up like a penguin.

As it was formal night, and we though the main restaurant might have been very busy we’d pre-booked a table in the speciality dining restaurant Sindhu, located, probably not best on a night like tonight, on the 11th deck of the ship.

Either because most people wanted to be down in the main restaurant for formal night, or possibly because so many people were just hunkering down in their cabins, the restaurant was very quiet and despite arriving 15 minutes early for our reservation we were seated straight away and had probably the best meal on the cruise overall.

After dinner it was back to the cabins and to turn in for the night, as the worst of the weather was due to hit around midnight, before calming down during the early hours.