Cooking, cleansing, procuring, making beds. All of it goes out the window, leaving world cruisers free to do as a lot or as little as they need. They fall right into a rhythm of waking, consuming, dozing and consuming once more, interrupted from time to time by port calls, line-dancing courses, choir follow or a high-brow lecture or two by historians, artwork and structure specialists, geopolitical commentators and a few well-known faces: Lord Digby Jones, Lord Jeffrey Archer, Steve Wozniak and former Royal butler Grant Harrold on Seabourn; and, previously, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Holland America Line and, on Cunard’s QE2, the late Alan Whicker who described the ship as “an area capsule drifting around the globe in a pleasant approach”.

Fred Olsen Cruise Strains’ world cruises and lengthy voyages even have a chaplain on board, ministering to those that wish to be ministered to (bear in mind the 2013 TV sequence The Cruise: A Life at Sea, which adopted the Rev Colin Nonetheless on a 112-night international odyssey with the road?). “There are extra functions from chaplains than we’ve cruises,” says Tim Spicer, a former Fred Olsen cruise director who now has a land-based position with the corporate. Caring for a floating flock whereas seeing the world? What’s to not like?

I added washing and ironing to my checklist of stuff you don’t should do on a world cruise, however different passengers have been laundry-room regulars as a result of it was the perfect place to meet up with the “village” gossip. It felt like St Mary Mead meets Midsomer Murders with out the physique rely – however we have been fortunate. World cruisers are a mature lot – an age group with the money and time for a protracted journey – so shedding one from time to time just isn’t remarkable. Cruise strains don’t discuss it, nevertheless it occupied the ideas of a number of of these cruising with Rev Nonetheless.

Mine was a Phileas Fogg-style whizz around the globe in 80 days, which is a drop within the ocean in contrast with most circumnavigations. Silversea’s 2025 controtempo world cruise (so-called as a result of it begins in Tokyo) lasts 136 days. Pah! That’s nothing. Regent Seven Seas Cruises’ 2025 circumnavigators can be at sea for 150 nights, throughout which era they are going to imbibe round 11,000 bottles of champagne and eat some 200,000 eggs. 

To not be overwhelmed (pun unintended), Oceania Cruises and Viking supply 180-day world cruises, whereas Royal Caribbean Worldwide has an epic 274-night voyage. It was 70 per cent bought per week after occurring sale, with half of those that booked doing the entire thing (world cruises are additionally accessible in sections). All that, and also you solely unpack as soon as.

It’s time sufficient for friendships to kind (a bunch on my cruise advised me they met up every year on a round-the-world crusing) and romances and eccentricities to blossom. One instance is the Fred Olsen passenger who thought it will be a great wheeze to return to an Indian-themed social gathering dressed because the elephant god Ganesha. “We needed to clarify that it wasn’t applicable, particularly as a number of our crew are Indian,” Spicer says. Cunard had a retired surgeon who wished to play golf in each port. The crew pulled it off, even when one time it was only a gap in a discipline.

Viking has initiation ceremonies that contain ice-filled swimming pools and glugs of the Norwegian firewater aquavit. On its 2019 world cruise, a bunch of knitters obtained collectively and made greater than 100 hats for infants in Madagascar, which a month previous to the ship’s name had been devastated by Cyclone Idai.

QE2’s first world cruise, in 1975, price from $4,800 per particular person for an inside cabin (equal to £3,994 at present trade charges), which was costly again then however a snip in contrast with at the moment. Not {that a} world cruise has to interrupt the financial institution. Accept an inside cabin and you may have 120 nights on Ambassador Cruise Line’s 2024 world cruise from £7,999 per particular person, or 99 nights on P&O Cruises from £9,629.