This one is for Old Bat who likes a good cruise ship (there were so many ways that sentence could have gone wrong!).

The ship, the Color Magic, sails from Oslo to Kiel. If she left on time, it took her an hour and 10 minutes to get to this narrow channel between the island of Oscarsborg and the town of Drøbak.

On Oscarsborg is a large fortress with immense quantities of heavy artillery (now a museum) because it is the main defence against a sea-borne invasion of Oslo. As you can see from this photo, the channel goes very close to the island, so if the guns have not been disabled, there is no chance of getting past, as the German cruiser Blücher discovered in April 1940. In fact, the Blücher is 90m below Color Magic in this photo.

So much for military history (I will resist the temptation to digress on General Blücher's late arrival at Waterloo and whether this was a good thing - or not). It was a lovely warm, sunny day and we spent most of it wandering round the island, watching boats and people, eating picnics etc. The water, the warmth and scenery all had a very mediterranean feel.