For weeks we have reported on the cruise ship that has been stuck in Northern Ireland for months.
(This column was first published in the Saturday September 21 print edition. Click here to read Ben Lowry’s main column about the legacy ruling worsening the imbalance and click here to read his analysis of the exceptional weather last week)
The Villa Vie Odyssey was supposed to have embarked on a more than three-year journey in May but is best with problems and has been in getting repair work done at Harland and Wolff in Belfast.
Now tensions are showing.
Some travellers seem to be relaxed about the whole saga: they have booked-out the next few years of their life and perhaps being grounded in one location adds to the adventure. But as we report on page 15, Jenny Phenix from Miami has fallen out spectacularly with the company that runs the cruise.
The Daily Mail reported that the setbacks “have left people who spent upwards of $300,000 to purchase a cabin in limbo – questioning how their summer abroad turned into endless nights shivering through Northern Ireland's famously gray and rainy weather”. Ouch! Well, at least this last week has been fine.
I see the appeal of such a journey, even to people who are not wealthy. Imagine, say, someone aged 68 in good health, with either no children or grown-up kids, selling a house worth £300,000 to fund such a three-year trip, with a plan to use anything left over to move into sheltered housing for the elderly when they return in their early 70s. The thinking being: you only live once.
• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor
by BelfastTelegraph
1 comment
Can we book Ben to go away for 3 years?