Cruise on a freight liner

Anybody who has endured the the check-in scrum, the shoe x-rays, the delays and the now almost obligatory 45-minute wait in a 'holding pattern' somewhere above the Home Counties has to agree; air travel is a tedious, frustrating experience only marginally more enjoyable or romantic than root canal work.

 Hugh Poynton

However, if you can take a few weeks off work and fancy a holiday that manages to be restful and adventurous at the same time, you could swap your cramped seat at the back of a 747 for an en-suite cabin aboard a cargo ship tramping across oceans, straits and bays with names redolent of adventure and romance.

Unlike air travel where the journey is to be endured rather than enjoyed, when travelling by ship the journey is as much the holiday as the destination - it has to be when travelling at such a sedate speed. A cargo ship will take ten days to cross the Atlantic whereas a jumbo will take just seven and a half hours, but that's missing the point. Travelling aboard a cargo ship you'll see scenery that millions may peer at between meals and movies from seven miles up, but that almost nobody sees from ground level.

"We are now passing Newfoundland and officially in the iceberg zone so there is a double lookout on the Bridge," enthuses one cargo ship traveller. "This evening there was a fleet of fishing boats...and we saw a big humpback whale swimming and jumping alongside us, together with several dolphins accompanying it. The birds were getting very excited and riding on its back. It was a great sight." When was the last time you saw that from Seat 34D?

The pace may be slow but there is plenty to do aboard. Many captains allow passengers to spend time on the bridge and the chief engineer may well show you around the engine room; passengers are also often invited to social occasions on board, so you may find yourself dancing into the early hours two thousand miles out into the Atlantic which is again, something that happens very rarely aboard British Airways flight 117 to JFK.

Comfort is also far superior than the measily leg-room offered aboard a jumbo. Despite their huge size, most cargo ships only carry about 20 crew and rarely more than 10 or 11 passengers, so accomodation is never cramped. As automation and computing power has reduced the need for a sizeable crew, well-appointed cabins originally designed for officers can now be occupied by paying passengers. Most have en suite bathrooms and mod cons such as DVD players and televisions and some actually comprise suites that include a bedroom and a spacious 'day room.' Many ships also have swimming pools and (importantly), a bar.

Indeed this curious combination of comfort, restfulness with adventure means that travelling by cargo ship could be seen as the perfect alternative to a cruise for independently-minded travellers who'd like to experience an ocean voyage but without the octagenarian Floridians and cringe-inducing cabaret acts.

While it's quite possible to arrange a voyage aboard a cargo ship simply by contacting the operators directly, it's can be a confusing business so it's probably worth arranging your trip via a specialist agent such as Strand Travel (http://www.strandtravel.co.uk/strand_voyages/) or The Cruise People (http://www.members.aol.com/CruiseAZ/freighters.htm).

Cargo ship cruises may not be everybody's cup of tea - at a cost of about 70 GBP a day, short trips might be affordable, but travelling to, say, Australia by ship will take seven weeks and cost the same price as a business or first class ticket aboard an airliner. But if you're in the enviable position of having both the time and the money travelling by ship can offer the adventurous traveller a relaxed, undeniably unusual and ecologically-friendly way in which to see the world and reacquaint themselves with the romance of travel.