The first port of call and day of touring was Athens.
Temple Of Athena
Dad’s pictures and cine suggest that we basically spent the day at The Acropolis looking at the various temples and The Parthenon.
Mum and Me at the AcropolisView of Athens from The Acropolis
This was my first ever day of serious sightseeing tourism away from home. I remember feeling hot during it and very tired at the end of it. In truth I don’t remember all that much about it.
Thank goodness, then, for the pictures and 140 seconds of film, between 2’30” and 4’50” in the cine.
After boarding The Delphi at Rimini, we spent, I think, three nights (including two whole days) at sea.
Dad took a fair bit of cine during that period, mostly showing an insanely crowded swimming pool area – most of the first two-and-a-half minutes of the filum:
He hardly took any photographs at that stage, though. Mum would normally want to avoid being photographed until she/we had acquired “some colour”.
There were lots of activities for kids. It looks from the filum that I did some swimming but was edged out by the bigger, bolder boys. The pool is tiny and, to my older, wiser, possibly now more timorous, eyes it looks more like an open sewer than a swimming pool.
Anyway…
…there were activities galore for youngsters and I remember making several friends on the ship. There was more than one costume party but I am pretty sure those were later in the voyage – I’ll post some pictures from those come the appropriate time.
The following picture, from a talent competition, looks suitably pale-faced and sandals-from-home-ish to have been on one of those first couple of nights.
What was I singing? – I hear all readers cry. Haven’t a clue. I think I had one or two music hall songs up my sleeve by then – Any Old Iron or I’m ‘Enery The Eighth I Am perhaps.
I’m sure I did very well. I’m sure everyone did very well.
The above picture is labelled Port Of Piraeus, Athens by mum. It must have been taken the morning we arrived in Athens, ahead of our touring, unless mum got the transparencies numbers mixed up.
Fifty years later, writing in August 2023, I can state with conviction that sea cruises are extremely fashionable amongst the travelling classes, while Janie and I are both relentlessly keen to avoid such holidays.
But in 1973, ahead of my eleventh birthday, my parents took me on this Mediterranean cruise ahead of me starting at Alleyn’s School for my secondary education.
Context
I suspect that dad bought our holiday at a bucket shop price in a travel agent on or near St John’s Hill Battersea (near his shop) and I suspect that it was sold to dad as a “holiday of a lifetime”.
In truth, we were probably lucky that it didn’t lead to an extreme shortening of all our lifetimes. Our ship, the Delphi, was part of a cobbled together fleet of ships owned by Costas Efthymiades, one of whose crowded tubs, the Heleanna, had caught fire and led to dozens of fatalities on my birthday two year’s earlier. “Hold the front page!” news even in the Evening Sentinel, although the typesetter, in their rush, seems to have jumbled the headline!
While word of the above tragedy and the negligence cases that arose from it almost certainly evaded my father, I don’t suppose it had a positive impact on the market for that particular family of passenger ships. Hence, I’m just guessing here, the bucket shop price that I imagine would have attracted dad at that time.
Hold on…wait a minute…SW11 5RG – Lavender Hill – dad must have known some of those Clarkson’s people. I bet dad didn’t pay £73 per head.
Our tub, The Delphi, was probably not quite such a death trap as the ill-fated Heleanna. It had started its life primarily as a passenger ship, Ferdinand de Lesseps, rather than a cargo ship, so its conversion to a cruise ship was probably more appropriate and safer.
I do remember the days at sea feeling very crowded, albeit fun-packed for kids like me. The first two-and-a-half minutes of the cine film (see links below) looks even more crowded than the following photo.
Still, I have very happy memories of this holiday. We even cruised again as a family, one last time, a couple of year’s later. By that time, I think I was able to express my opinion: I loved seeing lots of different places on a holiday, but I did not love being on a cruise ship.
Itinerary
I didn’t start keeping a diary until 1974, so I have had to try and reconstruct the itinerary from the photographic/cinematographic materials (see links), from memory and from a vague sense of routing, geography and timings. There might be some inaccuracies:
18 August – Day Zero: Streatham -> Luton Airport -> Porto di Rimini;
Historians might note that, within a year, all of the countries we visited, with the exception of Yugoslavia, had been involved in a war. Within a few weeks of our trip, Clarkson’s Cruise-Jet holidays were avoiding the Lebanon and Israel stops as a result of the Yom Kippur war, which made the term “Holy Land Cruise” somewhat of a misnomer.
Links
There is a movie of this holiday. Not one of dad’s best; he/we never got around to adding a commentary so the soundtrack is just music. Also there was some film spoilage which destroyed most of the film from Lebanon and all of the Israel/Crete footage is lost.
Dad’s main shtick for this holiday was Stereo (3D) still photography. Here is a link to the digitised stereos I have painstakingly made from the stereo transparencies.
Stereo images in stereo – click the above picture link
You either need a viewing gadget or extremely strong eyes trained to be able to see stereo images in stereo.
The following link shows the stereo images in mono, as it were:
Stereo images in mono – all the left ones followed by all the right ones – click the above picture link
There are also a few prints from the single roll of film dad put into his ordinary camera. They are mostly pictures taken with flash in the evenings. Dad clearly forgot about this roll for some time – there is one picture from December of 1973 in the little batch of prints and they are all dated May 1974. Fifty years later, can you imagine anyone waiting nine months between snapping and seeing the results.
Print scans – just a few – click the above picture link
The expression “cobblers children” comes to mind. I expect dad took the camera with the half-finished roll to the shop with a view to doing something or other with it and then “rediscovered it” months later – possibly on more than one procrastinating occasion.
Day Zero: Streatham To Porto di Rimini via Luton Airport
Nowhere in the materials we have retained does it mention Rimini – I just firmly remember that we embarked and disembarked there. In my mind for much of my childhood that place was a major port from whence the Mediterranean opened up. Most likely it was a place where Clarkson’s and/or Efthymiades had done a good deal, because it doesn’t otherwise make sense to start and end a Greek islands/Holy Land cruise at Rimini.
I remember that Dad was very excited that we would be flying on a Lockheed TriStar, which was a relatively new plane at that time.
This holiday was my first, and to date only, experience of flying from and to Luton Airport. For much of the remainder of my childhood, I took pleasure in having been there, whenever the then ubiquitous Campari advert was shown:
I remember little about my journeys to and from Luton Airport, but paradise it wasn’t.
