The weather in Newcastle yesterday was thoroughly miserable, even worse at the port thanks to the wind, but my day was briefly brightened by a visit to Voyages of Discovery’s MV Voyager.

She is quite a pretty little ship, even in the pouring rain she had a charm about her, and I braved the elements to the other end of the dock to board her.

At the top of the gangway I found myself walking directly into Scott’s Lounge, it felt a little odd, but to be honest, if I had been a passenger coming back from a day ashore in that weather yesterday, I couldn’t think of a better place to step off the gangway and directly in to – service please, make it a large one!

From Scott’s Lounge (on Discovery Deck), I went to the Livingstone Deck and had a quick look in an outside cabin. It was pretty much standard in size, and there was a double wardrobe just as you entered the room. This was only the cabin I managed to have a look at, Voyager is currently sailing a British Isles itinerary and her cabins were occupied. One thing I did notice, again maybe because of her age and size, were the extra wide corridors on the cabin decks. You could walk side by side without bumping into each other or the walls.

From Livingstone Deck I went to the top, Sun Deck, and worked my way back down. Thanks to the awful weather I wasn’t able to get outside and have a good look at her open decks. Sorry! I had already been drenched once, I didn’t want to be drenched a second, and then a third time. I can tell you, however, that the Jacuzzi on the Bridge Deck was full of bubbling warm water, it looked very tempting, and the Veranda Restaurant, Voyager’s buffet, was a lovely feature. It felt very café like and offered tasteful decoration – green spotty curtains and brown wicker chairs. I really liked this space because even though it was the buffet and would clearly get quite busy, it still felt cosy and private. Behind the main food service area was another seating area, I think there were only 9 or 10 tables – it was perfect! The variation in colour changed slightly from the other section, but it still worked well. There was also a small seating section on the aft deck where guests can dine al-fresco.

Next, I stopped at the Promenade Deck and had a peek through the door in the hair salon, it was small, as was the spa area, but on a ship Voyager’s size, it was enough.

My last stop was where I started, on the Discovery Deck. I passed back through Scott’s Lounge and found myself in the Discovery Restaurant. This too was a nice dining area, but with a lot of mirrors – it actually reminded me of the main restaurant on her former fleet mate, MV Discovery (God Bless her). A small space, perfect in size for the ship, but with mirrors everywhere to make it feel twice as big. I think I preferred the space on Voyager though, it felt kind of strange of Discovery – like I was in one of those weird attractions at a fairground!

The Library was packed when I walked through – many passengers obviously opting to stay onboard due to the weather – as was the Observation Lounge. The Darwin Lounge in-between was quite quiet, this is the ships main show lounge and has recently had a side corridor added to stop the flow of traffic going directly through the Lounge. Very good idea! I can imagine some guests would probably get quite upset having people passing in front of them all the time when they are trying to watch a show.

MV Voyager is a small ship and she was made even smaller for me thanks to Mother Nature, but she definitely a had a certain charm about her. One small feature that I liked very much was the Guest Information Board, a dedicated area in Scott’s Lounge where passengers can leave notes relating to various different things like card game meetings or sharing transportation to different places in port. There was one note on the board asking if anyone fancied sharing a taxi to Beamish, and then the cabin number to call to arrange the trip was noted at the bottom. I hope for their sake they didn’t go! They would have been soaked! It’s little things like this that you can only get on a small ship, but more often than not it’s those little, personal things that mean the most.

Hopefully (fingers crossed) I will get to actually cruise on MV Voyager in 2016. Watch this space………….

P.S. Apologies for the variation in image size in this post, because of the weather I didn’t take my camera (only my phone), and due to the amount of passengers still onboard it was difficult to photograph some areas, so I had to borrow a few shots from the VOD blog. 😉