I normally spend a great deal of time meticulously planning each cruise and to date this attention to detail has never let me down; however this year fate stepped in and lobbed a few curved balls to knock my well-oiled procedure off balance.

We were travelling to Miami at the end of March to board the Celebrity Reflection for a 7 day Eastern Caribbean cruise. The day before we were due to travel our 12 year old diabetic Labrador collapsed and an emergency visit to the Vet revealed that the prognosis wasn’t good and after a night in the veterinary hospital for Harry and a sleepless one for us, we made the heart-breaking decision to put him to sleep.

3 hours later we were traveling up the M4 motorway to Heathrow. Normally our journey would have been one of excitement and expectation, but this time it was full of recriminations and ‘what ifs?. We had reserved parking and an overnight room at The Holiday Inn as we had done the year previously but this time we were allocated a room with the most uninspiring view over a very rainy and grey M4 motorway just to add to our depressed mood. Read more