Vlog 347: Fjord Fiesta

After enjoying my first cruise last December, I decided to go on another this year and the place that was on my ‘must go’ list was Norway. So I booked a week with P&O and this video is my review of the trip.

See my prior cruise review (P&O Canary Islands) by clicking here.

Sections:
00:00 Introduction
00:50 Cruise overview
03:35 Embarkation & my cabin
05:48 On Board
13:54 Food
16:53 The Ports (Stavanger first)
20:44 Olden
23:35 Alesund
26:37 Haugesund
30:16 Conclusion

Hello and welcome to my second cruise review. I said, last December, after I did my first one, that I had my eye on going to the Norwegian Fjords and that’s exactly what I’ve just done.

I also said last time that there was no danger of this turning into a cruise review channel, and that still holds true, but I asked my Patreon supporters if there was any interest in hearing about my cruise ship experience again and overwhelmingly, they said yes. Hence this video.

If cruising is not for you, then just skip this one and the channel will be back to the usual schedule of canals, narrowboats and inland waterways very soon.

The cruise then: it was with P&O, the same lot I went with last time. I did consider both Fred Olson cruises and the two Norwegian ferry lines that also offer a cruise experience but being a typical Brit when I go abroad, by which mean, I like British food and a cup of tea on hand at all times, it seemed safest for me to choose P&O again.

They have at least two ships that go to Norway, there’s Britannia which is the smaller one, and Iona which is collossal. And I chose Iona because a) it was £50 cheaper, and b) since you have to cross the North Sea, which is legendary for being a bit bumpy, I figured the bigger boat would handle any swell better. As it happens, we pretty much had flat calm seas both ways, which was extremely lucky. And, I’ll mention now, we also had the most unexpectedly fantastic weather, apart from a bit of drizzle one morning, every other day was warm and, as we went through the week, even gloriously sunny, as you will see in the footage and pictures that are coming up.

Southampton
Now unlike my last cruise, where I flew out to the Canary Islands and joined the ship there, this time I travelled down to Southampton to join it in its home port. Luckily, I went down by train the night before, because on the day of departure, not only had the Southampton Boat Show got underway but Manchester United were playing Southampton so the traffic heading that way was apparently horrific, and I heard from other travellers that they nearly didn’t make it because of road closures locally as well.

With my boarding time given as 3:45pm, I had most of the day to kill so went for a wander around the city, of which I’ll give you a quick taster before we go aboard.

Southampton, of course, is where the Titanic set off from and there’s plenty of memorials to it such as this one for the engineers. This is to be found in one of a cluster of rather pleasant parks in the centre of the city.

Southampton is also where the Mayflower departed from before it headed to Plymouth and then took the pilgrim fathers to America. That also gets commemorated in things like the Mayflower theatre here.

No doubt it was an expensive ship of its time but these days the money is to be found in luxury motor yachts down at Ocean Village, which I could not help have a browse over. If you like boats, a bit of browsing must be done.

And it was while walking away from there that I got my first glimpse of P&O’s giant of the seas, Iona. I mean, just look at the scale of that thing, it is enormous. How does it even float? It doesn’t seem feasible!

Boarding & my room
I arrived at the port about twenty minutes early, they were very strict in the instructions beforehand not to turn up before the stated time because with 5,000 guests to load up, they needed everybody arriving in a smooth flow throughout the day rather than all at once. However, I was let straight through into arrivals where I checked in very quickly and went straight onto the gangplank where again you have to pause in shock and awe the sheer bulk of this ship.

After a quick briefing at the muster station, which is where you have to go if there’s an emergency, I was on my way to my room which was on deck 4, which is the lowest deck. Look at how the corridor just vanishes into the distance! So many rooms: 5,000 passengers, this ship can take. My room was number 449. I chose that cabin because lower down means less wobbling in rough weather, and it’s the middle of the ship which also means less swaying about.

I couldn’t book a solo cabin so I had sole use of an inside double and this is what you get: a narrow corridor with a bed at the end, the bathroom on the left and wardrobes and a desk on the right. That desk also held the vital tea and coffee-making facilities which are crucial.

The toilet and shower room was fine, decent size, very clean, lots more places to put things, a shower cubicle with a proper door and lots of good towels.

On the wall were hooks for coats and air conditioning controls which worked but took time to take effect.

The bed was a double, nice and comfortable, no complaints. But ten thousand pillows and cushions which I kept having to remove every day because the cabin steward kept putting them back.

On the back of the bathroom, opposite the bed, was a large telly, much better than the tiny and fuzzy one I had on the last ship, Azura. You could watch films and TV shows on this as well as checking your account balance and seeing where the ship was.

And then this is looking back at the door from the bed.

So much for the accommodation, what about the facilities on board?

On Board
With up to 5,000 customers on board, there have to be plenty of places for them to go and in a week I certainly didn’t try every one of them. Having got on board and found my room I then wandered around, a bit overwhelmed by the size of everything and I ended up at one of the bars on the open back deck looking over Southampton, which, as the weather was lovely, was perfectly fine for a bit of time to take stock and work out what next.

A lot of people in reviews I’ve seen pour acclaim on the central atrium of the ship, which is certainly impressive, being three stories high with a helical staircase and loads of seating as well as a cafe area and one of the additional-cost restaurants on the upper level. It certainly seemed popular with everyone else on board because it was always absolute chaos in there and I cannot fathom for the life of me why everyone liked it so much. The noise, the hubbub, was always overwhelming, the hard floors not helping the sound. Being in the centre of the ship on the main bar and restaurant decks, people were always walking through as well. It was mayhem, and it just felt like an airport departure lounge to me, so why anyone would choose to spend their time there I do not know. On the upside, it meant fewer people around the rest of the ship.

The atrium was also host to a few events such as the Stavanger Gospel choir, who were very good, I’m sure, but the amplication was turned up so loud for such a relatively small and echoey space, that it was painful to listen to, I mean physically painful, it was so loud, so I only watched for one song.

In fact, I’m going to have a little rant now about loudness because the first night I went to the onboard theatre, again they’d turned the volume up so loud that my ears were distorting. And I’m not someone with super-sensitive hearing, I normally like to turn the telly up a bit, but the theatre sound system was ear-ringingly loud so that the show was painful to hear. I took to sitting at the back for all future events.

And, to continue a theme, which daft person decided that having a so-called library with its own bar, needed constant elevator music playing, and to be open plan to the bloomin’ atrium so that all the chaotic sounds from there came straight in too. This was not a quiet, calm reading area as a library is supposed to be. Not least because it had its own bar, albeit behind a dividing wall. And, to add insult to injury, the shelves in the so-called library, only had about 20 books on them and half of those were reference books. I found ONE fiction thriller to read and then nothing else. To add insult to injury, there was a note sellotaped to the shelves that said “Book Swap”, in other words, they expected the passengers to provide the books!!

It was such a far cry from the very cosy, round, and mostly quiet library on the previous ship I went on, Azura, which is a smaller ship. And that one had actual books on the shelves too! You’d have expected Iona, being bigger, to be better. But it was not.

And, if I may, a final rant about loudness. There is, rather impressively, a four screen cinema on board. That’s pretty good. But I only tried it once because, you guessed it, someone had turned the amps up to 11 in really quite a small space. And the cherry on the cake there was that someone in charge had switched the audio description on for the film so every time there was no dialogue, a voiceover came on telling us what was happening on screen. Everyone in the cinema was looking at each other in bafflement and when I went out to find someone to sort it they didn’t understand the problem and gave me some waffle about having two systems that weren’t in sync, which clearly wasn’t the issue at all, they just needed to find the remote and press Audio Description off. But they didn’t or wouldn’t so I had to leave the film.

OK, I realise that all sounds a bit moany but honestly I think they’re valid grumbles. Audio in theatres shouldn’t be so loud as to hurt, and you should be able to have peaceful sanctuary in the area designated a library. Is that too much to ask?

Believe it or not, I did have a fantastic holiday, but I was honestly less impressed with Iona than I’d expected to be and after much consideration, I prefer the older, smaller Azura which I went on last time. It has fewer facilities yet somehow seemed to have more going on. Activities are given in the daily “Horizon” leaflet that gets put through your door every night but if you take out all the fluff like the sessions where the cruise company is trying to sell you stuff – watches, cosmetics, other holidays and so on – you’re actually left with a rather smaller selection of things to do and I just felt there wasn’t much there if you didn’t want to sit and listen to music. I’m not dissing the talent of the onboard musicians, it’s just that that’s all there was to do – sit with a drink and listen to a piano player or a busker or whatever. As a solo traveller without a companion, and as someone who hates small talk with strangers, the options were not great.

Thank goodness then for a lady called Jane Davey who’d been invited aboard to give some talks about Norway. This is more my thing and she is very eccentric but very entertaining. A shame P&O didn’t put more of this kind of thing on but perhaps I’m just on the wrong cruise line. As I mentioned, I thought Azura was great.

Other venues on the ship include the 7/10 Club which had musicians each evening, the Limelight club which you had to book in advance and you got a meal and a singer, the Clubhouse which hosted one of Jane Davey’s talks as well as a magician and a couple of quizzes, now I will say here that I do like a nice quiz so it was good to have that as well as multiple daily quizzes in the ship’s pub called Brodie’s, I found myself spending a good amount of time there for the quizzes and also a couple of karaoke nights, though I did not sing myself. The problem with Brodie’s is that there’s no table service so again, as a solo, if I got up to get a drink, by the time I got back, my seat would have been taken.

There’s what should be a rather nice venue right at the bow up top called the Crow’s Nest where you get a splendid view ahead but inexplicably, this place had the aircon turned right down and it was positively arctic in there. I mean, I know were going to Norway but this was bizarrely chilly which was a shame because during the day it was one of the few places on the boat that was quiet but it was so damn cold, I ended up leaving.

I didn’t try the speciality eateries such as the well-regarded Sindhu Indian restaurant because I prefer the simple – and all inclusive – food from the main dining rooms but I know a lot of folk like to treat themselves to a bit of a feast, it’s just not for me.

The ship was so big though, that I was still finding places throughout the week such as the Beachcomber Bar which is adults only, hooray – there were not many children on board actually and they were mostly pre-school age because I travelled in term time but it’s nice to have an adults only area available.

And finally, a bit of applause for the Skydome on decks 16 and 17, this is an enclosed pool area during the day which became the venue for a rather good aerial acrobatics show in the evening, very spectacular – and loud – and hats off to the performers, dangling from ropes or hoops above either the pool or solid surface that rolled out over it, really impressive stuff.

Food
The food and service in the main dining rooms, which are included in your fare, was excellent. I am not a foodie so I just want good solid tasty simple stuff and that’s what they provide, things like a nice tomato soup to start, roasted chicken and veg for the main, and a stodgy pud with custard for dessert. I tended to eat in these restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner apart from a couple of occasions. My photos don’t really do justice to the tastiness of the food but hopefully they give you the gist of what was on offer.

There was also lots of hand sanitiser around outside the restaurants and the buffet though I didn’t see many people using it which is a shame as many people’s hygiene is, frankly, disgusting as I’m sure you know. And speaking of the buffet, it was always carnage in there with hoards of people criss-crossing each others paths while carrying plates of food as if it was their last day on earth and this was their only chance to eat a meal. One experience in there was quite enough and I never returned. Again, people had said the buffet on Azura was poorly laid out but honestly, give me that over the one on Iona any day. It was chaotic.

On a more positive note, I had heard very good things about the fish and chips in one of the other included restaurants, which is next to the buffet and called The Quays, and I can confirm the tales are true, it was very good. You could also get Asian fusion food, whatever that is, and burgers though sadly the burger they gave me was almost stone cold so that let the side down a tad.

Also just a note that at breakfast time, the Quays switched its output to American pancakes, omelettes, and a serve-yourself full English. I tried each of those over the holiday and as it was much more civilised than the buffet, would recommend that if you don’t want to sit in the main dining rooms.

I did have one mild experience that tarnished the eating slightly, though it was arguably my fault as well. On the first sea day, at lunch in the dining room, I was feeling greedy and ordered two puddings. One arrived but it was not what I ordered so I said “excuse me, I ordered something else”, meaning “something different” but the waiter I think heard that “I ordered another, where it is?” and he snapped back “yes, it’s coming, give me a chance” very grumpily. Perhaps I should have said “This is not what I ordered” rather than “I ordered something else” and I’m sure they do get miserable customers which must make them snappy but in this case, he had brought me the wrong pudding. Anyway, it’s hardly the end of the world.

As for drinks, I am not much of a drinker, I think I had three gin and tonics over the course of the whole week, along with some Pepsi with my meals so it certainly wasn’t worth getting a drinks package and they are very expensive. I just paid as I went. After deducting £30 of onboard credit that I was given before we started, I ended up owing just £26 for extras like drinks.

Locations:
And so we come to the star attraction of course which is the fjords themselves. The cruise was 7 nights which translates to six actual days, but two of those are at sea so you really only get four days in the fjords and on those days we were scheduled to visit Stavanger, Olden, Alesund and Haugesend, with apologies for my pronounciation.

Wanting not to miss a moment, and with sunrise at 7am, I got up with the lark on the Monday to see the shadowy shapes of the fjords of Stavanger looming ahead and to the side.

After snapping a few shots, I popped back inside for one of the rare occasions when I didn’t use the main dining rooms, having instead a full English breakfast from The Quays.

Being a boat nerd, it was interesting to watch the ship manoeuvre ever so gently using its bow thruster and steerable azipod drives, in other words propellers at the back that they can turn around to push the boat where they want to go. Also amusing is the colossal size of the fenders which are about as big as my entire boat.

Once docked, I just went for a walk, which was largely how I spent my time in all the ports bar one, which I’ll come to. I’m going to mention again here the sheer vastness of the ship which becomes apparent when you’re standing next to it on the dock, it is HUGE.

Thankfully, the Norwegians make things very easy for tourists with easy to read signs, in English and very soon, I was pottering around the harbour, looking back at the giant ship that brought me here. A swan made me feel right at home, just as if I was on the canal again. We were just missing a heron, really.

The town is very pretty and I don’t know if the architecture style is typical of the country or is designed for tourists but it felt like a film set somehow. There was a considerable amount of art on display such as sculptures and statues of: a man with a goat; a boy on a horse; some sheep; and a bloke with a pointy stick.

Graffiti is big here for sure, whether it’s murals or whole areas set aside for graffiti expression. The town has a rather nice lake in the middle, and a historic church. Famously it also has a particular street where all the shops and houses are very colourfully painted. I don’t know why.

Inevitably and somewhat depressingly, there’s a Burger King. Rather more unexpectedly was a branch of Specsavers. One thing’s for sure, you can always see the ship, it towers over everything!

I took a bus to the most famous local exhibit, the Three Swords. That was exciting not least because I only discovered as the bus arrived that it doesn’t take credit cards and I needed to download an app, create an account, register a credit card and then buy a ticket, all of which I tried to do while in the short queue to get on board. Amazingly, the driver just saw me panicking and waved me on board while I faffed around before eventually showing him the ticket barcode which he wasn’t interested in seeing anyway. Perhaps I have an honest face.

Anyway, I reached the Three Swords which is exactly as its name implies, three huge swords stuck in the ground. The location is apparently where Harald Fairhair gathered Norway into one kingdom in 872 and the swords symbolise peace, unity and freedom. It was unveiled by King Olav in 1983, so I read.

It was rather pleasant, as was the fjord it sits on.

Returning to the ship for a late lunch, I noticed a market at which any number of troll-themed items could be purchased as well as woolly hats and socks. Because Norway is cold, or at least it’s supposed to be. On my holiday, every day except one was glorious sunshine.

That day was the very next one after the ship had moved overnight to Olden. Getting up early again, we approached through quite the drizzle yet even so it seemed rather magical and wasn’t at all cold. The very low clouds cutting through the hills were rather splendid, giving the landscape a very mystical air.

Look how calm the water was! That was a relief as it was this day I’d picked to go kayaking. As the sun rose and the drizzle stopped, I got some rather splendid pictures if I say so myself, which, by the way, I posted to my Instagram feed. Do follow me there!

Boat nerd alert again, I’d been wondering how they got the bow and stern lines from the ship to the bollards ashore and it turns out a little boat comes to pick them up and drop them securely into place.

My kayaking was scheduled for 9:30am so after squeezing myself into a dry suit and a lifejacket, the group were shown the kayaks and the paddles and reassuringly told the fjords are up to 4,000 feet deep. Everyone except me in our group had done kayaking before though the chap I was teamed with had only done it once. Yes these were twin kayaks which was fine and we didn’t tip over though things did get a little wobbly if one of us moved too far but I think we got on OK.

Not only did we paddle around the fjord but the instructors also got us to huddle up as a group occasionally when they would tell us interesting facts about Norway plus some legends such as this mark in the rock apparently being made by Odin’s horse’s hoof jumping over the mountains.

And while we were out, the entire crew of Iona did a lifeboat drill which had them lowering the lifeboats and pretending that the ship was sinking.

After a bit of lunch, I went for another wander around. Just up the road and back, there didn’t seem to be a main town as such though I did find a small group of shops. But it’s oh so incredibly pretty, it’s just absurdly scenic, mountains into the distance as far as you can see.

One of the famous aspects of Olden with respect to the cruise ships is that the locals next to the dock come out with flags and torches and hold a bit of a ceremony as the ship departs. They blast music out of loudspeakers from the cafe and everyone on the ship stands on that side and waves back at the Norwegians, it really is rather fun and I heard several people the next day saying they’d found it rather moving and were welling up with tears as we left. I was rather lucky to grab the last prime position on the viewing platform that sticks out of the side of the ship although I had to wait an hour or so until we actually moved away from the dock, once again using those bow thrusters and azipods to push the ship sideways as the locals drove their rib past, bedecked with a Union Jack.

That night, I went to another show in the Headliners Theatre, followed by karaoke in Brodie’s. Meanwhile the ship went on to Alesund the next day, where there were plenty of trip boats waiting to take your money for tours of the fjords.

But if you’re staying in town you have a couple of options: one is a road train that winds around the local roads with a commentary pointing out the sights; and the other is a walk up 418 steps to the top of the hill where there is a viewpoint with spectacular views all around. Yep, there it is, up there.

I chose the latter but first went for a walk around at ground level and oh my, again this was such a beautiful place. You know, the entire trip I think I spotted one – just one – piece of litter.

And so I wandered towards the base of the steps, which is in a nice park. It looked like people were queuing to get up but really it was just a long moving line, there was no waiting involved.

You need to be reasonably fit and able to get up this way though, it’s a bit steep in places and I was huffing and puffing and sweating quite unpleasantly as I went along, though I am terrifically unfit. Luckily, whoever put the steps in also put loads of viewing platforms along the way as well, including benches to rest on. And they number some of the steps so you know how well you’re doing.

Here’s Iona seen from just half way up the hill… and again from the top. It really is a fantastic location up there with views for miles around.

Not wanting to just come straight back down, I then discovered there’s a whole set of gravel pathways along the top of the hill, with lights every few yards and again loads of viewing points with picnic tables. I found a cave, and a watchtower which gave even better views, I mean look at this!! And I got a good look back the way I’d come, plus it had a toposcope to let you know which way is which.

Eventually you find another path down from which you get a super view of the harbour and the town . Regular viewers will be pleased to hear I found a cheese shop though I didn’t eat a single cheese sandwich the entire time I was away.

A further wander around more of the town followed with some lovely waterside property.

I had a nap that afternoon, tired from the walking but was out on deck for our sailaway again, the whole place was stunning especially as the sun started to go down.

We’d been warned that the Northern Lights might be visible overnight and that if they did show up, the bridge would make a tannoy announcement into the corridors but not the rooms as they didn’t want to wake people up if they wanted to sleep.

As luck would have it, the lights did, very, very faintly come out and I woke up from the announcement in the corridors. So at 3am, I joined a handful of other passengers on deck, struggling to see the aurora because of the lights on the ship’s deck but eventually got this rather poor photo; both my old iphone and my little camera just weren’t up to the job though one chap was up there with a tripod, big camera and all the gear.

Day four meant our final port of call and this was Haugesund which has the most uninspiring and industrial dock as the cruise port is about a kilometre away from the town centre. It’s an easy and well-signed walk though, past this rather splendid speedboat and over this bridge which leads you to the town.

Some reading beforehand had alerted me to the possibility of getting a bus from the town centre up to the Rising Tide sculpture but after picking up a free map at the dock, I reckoned it would be perfectly feasible to walk it so I did, firstly along the main street, where I encounted this British telephone box which is now part of a bookshop.

There was a lovely park … then a church … and I before I knew it I was heading towards the sea. Well, fjord. As you can see, it was an utterly gorgeous day and I was already regretting bringing even a light jacket.

There was a marker showing where the boundary of the town used to be in 1910 and from there on it was just stunning, stunning view after stunning stunning view. The air was crisp and clean, the path was busy but not too much, and there were sheep grazing to keep the grass down.

Although I was heading towards the famous Rising Tide sculpture, the first stop was the Kvalen lighthouse, which I am sure is not how it’s said in Norwegian. It was built in 1890 and electrified in 1970. Until 1977 it had a foghorn too but a tourist information note said it was no longer needed because of modern navigational aids.

You can see the Rising Tide from the lighthouse and it’s a short walk around; this is a big tourist attraction with four sculptures of horses in the water, which get covered up when the tide comes in. According to the Visit Norway website, the work “alludes to the retired work horses while drawing attention to our continuous dependence on fossil fuels and the apocalyptic climate change they potentially represent”. I am quoting the website there.

But the trouble with tourist attractions is that they attract tourists and it’s very hard to get a decent picture of the horses because so is everybody else. It could do with a ticketing system where you can step up, take your photo with everyone else out of the way, and then clear off.

Being such a beautiful day, I decided to walk further but this time back into town where I found a quite substantial lake surrounded by trees.

Back at the boat for lunch of a turkey sandwich with chips and an absolutely lovely chocolate tart with ice cream, I idled away the afternoon before we left Haugesund and, alas, began to return home.

The sailaway party was a riotous affair at the back of the boat which resulted in one of the crew doing a forfeit of having to jump in the pool, though the rest of the staff soon joined her.

Haugesund looked wonderful as we went, though we almost immediately hit thick, low-lying sea fog and though that lighthouse may no longer have a foghorn, our ship certainly did and made good use of it.

The return trip across the North Sea was sunny, warm and not even bumpy, thank goodness, though it was certainly rougher than when we came over but the good ship Iona just soaked it all up and you’d never have known there were any waves outside, by and large.

Finally then, came the tricky business of departure back in Southampton. Just imagine, if you will, 5,000 people all trying to leave a ship at once. To say there were long queues is an understatement but I held back and had breakfast before leaving and the queue, though long, kept moving without any problems and I was off by 8:30am

Conclusion
To conclude then – “finally”, I hear you shriek in relief – I had an excellent time. Yes, I know I moaned about the noise and loudness of the ship and I couldn’t find a quiet spot anywhere but that aside, it was a very good trip indeed. The room was fine, perfectly decent for sleeping in; the food and service were 99% excellent, cold burger and grumpy waiter aside, Norway was lovely – quiet, clean, friendly, spectacular views, just a nice place to be. The weather was amazing and I met some lovely people on board, fellow solo travellers and couples alike.

In fact the solo lot got into a bit of a group, meeting for breakfasts and evening meals but one of the unexpected joys of cruising, for me – a complete introvert – was wandering up to the dining rooms and being allocated a random table with random people because without fail, these were delightful encounters even though, and perhaps because, you’d never see those people again. The mere transience of it made it a relaxing and fun meeting. Anyway, it also meant I didn’t join in so much with solos group dining precisely because I enjoyed meeting random people at dinner. If any of the solos group are watching, hello again, it was lovely to meet you but I was always going to do my own thing, it’s just the way I am.

The big problem with being solo is the cost: you have to pay almost the double-occupancy rate. So if the cruise is advertised as £800 for example, that’s per person and you’ll pay about £1500 as a solo. Now it might be you manage to get an early discount or a very late bargain but by and large you are severely stuffed when travelling alone and that of course means, well for me at least, almost no money left for the excursions, which is why I mostly walked about and only did the kayaking. It’s rather frustrating and even if you manage to get a solo room, they still sting you for much more than the couples rate. I need a travel buddy but it also needs to be someone I can bear to be in a room with all night, so they mustn’t snore, fart or even breathe too loudly. I think I’ll just have to keep saving to go alone.

On just day 2 of the cruise, I felt as though I’d been aboard for weeks, and it was thoroughly relaxing and yes, I will certainly do another cruise at some undetermined point in the future. A friend of mine in Australia recently regaled me with tales of a fjords cruise to New Zealand and as my New Zealand trip was cut so abruptly short in 2020, for obvious reasons, maybe I should save up for a few years and go back there on a ship.

Anyway, that about wraps it up; thank you so much for watching. I doubt anyone will have watched all the way through because I do rabbit on but whichever bits of the video you saw, I hope they were enjoyable and maybe useful.