Despite health issues we did manage to get off on holiday at the end of June, again cruising with Fred Olsen on the cruise ship Balmoral , from Rosyth which was very handy. This was the same ship we traveled on last year to the Baltic States, so it was nice to meet a few familiar faces on board. Just unfortunate that I was not fit enough to really enjoy the trip / holiday fully. One of the bits I do remember was during one of the talks on Iceland was that when the Island was first discovered the explorer returned to Norway and told the king of his discovery and described it as being green, so when he later went off on his travels and discovered the large mass covered in ice and called it Greenland, no wonder the King was displeased.
But we went there, originally with the intention of visiting the air base where my father served with Coastal Command, but that turned out to be impracticable at this time.
Shame the weather was so iffy, we had days when it was teeming down, other days were beautiful, and we found beautiful botanical gardens at one of our overnight stops.
A sort of old memory comes to mind, Many years ago one of the best carpet manufacturers in the country was based at Bonnyrigg, Henry Widnell and Stewart, who made superb pure wool carpets. One of their carpets was named "Tundra" and was produced after one of the designers had flown over Greenland on his way to North America, and on looking out the aircraft window saw the barren terrain below. Turned out to be one of their most popular products.
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