P&O MV Arcadia; Thursday, 23 October, 2025

It did turn out to be a rough night with the ship pitching and rolling on the journey out of the bay and round into the Atlantic, though possibly not as bad as everyone may have feared as the difference between sailing directly into a Hurricane force 12 wind and having a Severe Gail force 9 wind hitting you sideways on is substantial and head or tail winds are very much the better way to go.

We had breakfast whilst the ship took the route between the Cíes Islands and into the mouth of the Ría de Vigo, or Vigo River just as the first light of dawn was creeping into the sky.

After breakfast, and with the sun fully up, we had a quick look at the city from the deck before heading to join the hastily put together Leisurely Vigo tour that the shore excursions team had managed to arrange to replace the events that should have been taking place in Santander.

The tour followed a similar pattern to the previous days tour in Gijón with a 30 or so minute scenic drive around the old town and then through the wider city centre before heading up into the hills above the city to visit the Castro Castle, located at the highest point in the city centre from where there are excellent views down over the city, river and towards the Cíes Islands.

From there it was a 20 or so minute drive to the Pazo Quiñones de León, once the home of part of the Vigo wealthy elite, it passed into the ownership of the state on the death of the last owner and is today a museum and gardens which are both free to look around.

From the Pazo it was back on the bus and down to one of the historic hotels that serve the Portuguese way of the Camino de Santiago – the pilgrimage walk from, in this case Portugal, to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostella. Today the hotel was acting as a coffee and tapas stop, with a similar spread to the previous day, albeit with the Asturian cheese replaced with Galician meat pie and the cider replaced by wine.

The bus then took us back to the ship and after helping mum back on board I headed back out into town to have a bit more of an explore of the city, wandering up through the narrow lanes of the city until I reached the city’s other castle – the Castelo de San Sebastián – which today is little more than the outer walls as the rest of the site is home to the council offices, but from here there were good views over the city and the harbour.

I took a slightly different route back down from the castle, and at this point discovered the escalators which take you all the way up from the harbour side to the castle, which would have been a significantly less strenuous way of making it up to the castle. I wandered back through town down to the harbour and was back on board the ship in time to meet mum for afternoon tea before we headed back to her cabin to watch the sail away from the city.

I then headed up onto the upper decks to watch our sail past the Cíes Islands and then later in the evening the usual routine of Drinks, Virtual Dining Queue and after dinner, bed.

Tonight we would start our crossing back over the Bay of Biscay, but with the worst of the weather now blown through it was expected to be a significantly smoother transit and certainly as we headed to bed the ship was barely rocking.