Like as the Waves make toward the Pebbled Shore
By Brenda McLoughlin, Cruise Director
Guest Speakers add so much to the Noble Caledonia product – their detailed knowledge and an ability to put this across in a way that recognises our guests are on holiday, not a field trip, bring the back stories to life or might delve a little deeper into a particular aspect of a location to be visited. Some guests with a deeper interest can join the Speaker for Dinner to discuss their particular interest in a region, place or subject over the superb cuisine prepared by the talented brigade of Chefs and served by our long-serving and professional Filipino waiters who provide excellent yet unobtrusive service.
Whilst sailing aboard our Flagship, MS Island Sky, from Egypt to Greece recently we were lucky to have Guest Speaker Nigel McGilchrist on the team. He has lived and worked in the Mediterranean – Italy, Turkey and Greece – for nearly forty years. After graduating from Oxford with a starred First in English, he began teaching at the University of Rome and subsequently worked for the Italian Superintendence of Fine Arts. All his spare time was spent in exploring the lands, coasts and the cultures of the Mediterranean world. He has lectured for many years on the art and history of the area for museums and institutions in Europe and America – among them, the Getty Museum and the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. He has taken many specialist tours to Italy, Greece, Sicily and Malta. Nigel was formerly Dean of European Studies for a consortium of American universities. He is the author of a twenty-volume series of survey/guides of the archaeology, history and art of the sixty inhabited Aegean Islands, published as McGilchrist’s Greek Islands. What a privilege then to have him on board to explain more detail on the fascinating places we visited – from the pyramids of Egypt, to the Archaeological Museum of Alexandria, onwards to Ephesus in Turkey, to Patmos where we visited St John’s Cave where St John is said to have had his revelation and finally onto Epidaurus which was known throughout the ancient world for it’s healing treatments and medical facilities.
Towards the end of the tour Nigel recited a sonnet he had composed. Nigel explains : “I composed these few lines of doggerel about Island Sky, based on Shakespeare’s Sonnet number 60 (“Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore/ So do our minutes hasten to their end…”).
I hope you enjoy the composition as much as we did :