This was a first 'taster' cruise with P&O to help me decide whether to book a longer cruise with them next year and also to find out how they compared with the likes of Celebrity, Fred Olsen and Holland America.

I'm sorry to say that I found the P&O Oriana a very poor experience and certainly won't be rushing to book another cruise with them. Travelling solo meant that I'd paid a 100% single supplement for school dinner quality food, unsmiling service (if you could get any at all) and a general feeling that the passengers were incidental to the cruise rather than the reason for it. A 45min wait for a coffee (after the order had been taken), a main course in the Peninsular restaurant so bad (cold, shrivelled up and with a decidely 'off' taste) that I left all but a couple of mouthfuls with no alternative forthcoming, unappetising and sparse buffet food in the Conservatory (eg., biscuits with no accompanying cheese available), blocked or flooded public toilets and an utterly shambolic attempt at afternoon tea in the Peninsular restaurant on the afternoon we should have been in Amsterdam but were still anchored in the channel waiting for the wind to drop.

Most people i spoke to had comnplaints about some aspect of the cruise and some intimated that P&O might not have thought that passengers on such a short cruise were worth bothering about. If so, they need to think again.