I admit it. I am as bad as everyone else. Always cruising abroad and ignoring the many attractions on our doorstep. At least I was - until I sailed around the UK and discovered what a brilliant way it is to enjoy this great country of ours.
For a start, there’s the practical stuff. No splashing out on expensive hotels and meals as food and accommodation are included on cruises. No wasted time in traffic jams or worries about who is driving after a night out.
And then there are all the things waiting to be discovered. From centuries of history to spectacular scenery. You can go on boats in search of puffins, seals and seabirds in the Isles of Scilly, eat pasties in the county that invented them, enjoy a wee dram in a Scottish distillery and go Roman visiting Hadrian’s Wall from Newcastle.
I did just that last year on a great tour with Miachel, a fan of all things Roman, from their ruthless battle tactics to their building prowess. We saw parts of the 73-mile wall and learned how ditches, turrets, mile castles and forests were used to secure the boundary, keeping barbarians in the north out and those south of the wall within the Roman province (and easy to tax if they wanted to cross the border).
As British Isles cruises are, well, only in the British Isles, you might think there are only one or two itineraries. You would be wrong. Saga Ocean Cruises will have seven different sailings in 2025, while this year and next Ambassador Cruise Line will have almost ten. Voyages range from four to sixteen nights and depart from Dover, Tilbury and Portsmouth, as well as regional ports including Liverpool and Newcastle.
Between them, these cruise lines, both British through and through, offer a wealth of experiences in the UK, Ireland and the many islands that dot our coast, often with expert dolphin and whale-watchers from the charity ORCA onboard to help spot passing cetaceans.
You might be hiking along the cliffs to Pendennis Castle in Falmouth one day and exploring museums in Guernsey that tell of life on the island under the Nazi occupation the next. Another day still, you could be watching feeding time at Abbotsbury Swannery outside Portland, or learning to tell your Panther from your Pershing at Bovington Tank Museum.
The Orkney Islands have the Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae and Ring of Brodgar (think Stonehenge but smaller and you can get up close to the stones). In Tobermory, boat trips go in search of dolphins and otters.
As befits an island nation, many of the cities visited on British Isles cruises have something of a nautical theme. Liverpool’s Merseyside Maritime Museum remembers the days, in the early 1800s, when 40% of the world’s trade passed through the city’s docks and, of course, this was also where Cunard started back in 1840 (oh, and you might also hear about the Beatles on a tour around the town).
Plymouth has Sir Francis Drake, the Spanish Armada and the Pilgrim Fathers, who sailed from the city on the Mayflower in 1620 in search of a better life in the New World. Edinburgh has the Royal Yacht Britannia, which was built on the Clyde and sailed a million nautical miles during its forty-four years in service. Now docked in Leith, it is one of the city’s top attractions (another is the historic Royal Mile leading from the castle to Holyroodhouse).
Finally to Belfast, where the world’s most famous (for all the wrong reasons) ship was built. The Titanic exhibition is well worth a visit, but so too is the Giant’s Causeway, about 60 miles out of town. Made up of 60,000 hexagonal lava columns, it was either built by the giant Finn McCool to go and fight his enemy in Scotland or the result of some geographical event millions of years ago. Take your pick! 
