When anyone mentioned cruise holidays I used to think “not in a million years mate”.

The thought of being locked up in a tin can and taken to places that I had no choice about filled me with dread. But life moves on and I did become inquisitive about what wonders existed inside those towering pleasure palaces that trundled into places we were staying.

They are Behemoths of the sea, 20 stories high and with roller coasters hanging out the side of the ship was honestly beyond my imagination. I’d been to enough theme parks but really, on a ship!

Watching them head into ports and spew out thousands of people into one small area of a town, which was normally inhibited by hawkers of dodgy goods and trips, or expensive jewellery shops for the well healed cruisers was more convincing that these would not be my kind of people, and certainly not 5000 of them at one time within the giant tin can.

Over the years we’ve moving along from a little from beach side bars playing dance music in a tropical paradise, but not far, we might now include the odd sunset cocktail bar in Tenerife but basically, we are still beach bums at heart.

This, however, presented one problem, I quite fancied seeing the Norwegian fjords. With stunning coastal scenery and high living costs, I was never going to head there in my old camper van, so I explored the other options, and the obvious one was doing it on a cruise.

So, after some soul searching, and recognising that life moves on and that we should try other things, we decided that if we were ever going to do a cruise, Norway would be a good place to test the water.

We could see the format working for a tour of the Caribbean Island as well, so we booked up with P&O to head for the Fjords in Springtime aboard the good ship IONA. A few people had done this trip and waxed lyrical about the wonders of Norway so we went with high hopes that it would be fun, and not feel like 1 of 5000 people locked in a tin can, with huge queues to get around and spending our time being shepherded.

First impressions were great, a huge ship and boarding at Southampton was very efficient. We had an inside cabin (advised by friends as they said we wouldn’t be in it much) which was very comfortable and well designed. We were on very early so had chance to explore.

The first tour of the ship confirmed it was monstrous, rather like a tour of a large glitzy shopping mall. Shops along one deck, restaurants everywhere, a really good gym and spa and plenty of bars and entertainment areas so we were very optimistic about the experience.