Warm and snug among the icebergs

When the parkas, the snow boots and the 'Arctic explorer' thermals began arriving at home, day after day, by special delivery it slowly dawned upon me that I hadn't explained things as carefully as I might have done.

So I sat her down and began again. 'When I said we were going to Alaska,' I said, 'I didn't actually mean we were going to Alaska!'

My wife, long accustomed to my eccentricities, sighed and began doing up the parcels again so they could be returned to the suppliers.

She sighed heavily. 'Is this some obscure philosophical word game?'

'No,' I replied, desperately seeking to put off the moment when the truth would have to be told.

'We will experience Alaska - have a taste of Alaska but arguably will not actually be in Alaska.'

'Oh, I see,' she said. 'We're going to see a film about Alaska.'

'Not a film,' I replied, knowing that the moment had come.

There were three things my wife has always said she'd never do. She'd never go to a cricket match. She'd never eat a crustacean. And she would never, ever, under any circumstances, go on a cruise.

'I've booked a cruise,' I said. Forty-eight hours later life had returned pretty much to normal. The broken china had been replaced, I was back sleeping in our bedroom and the cat, which had sought political asylum with the neighbours, was back in front of the fire. 'But what possessed you?' said my wife. 'We'll hate it.'

'We,' I said, 'have both always wanted to see Alaska. But there's only one sensible way to do it - by ship. Alaska is difficult . . . It's too, how can I put this, Alaskan, wild, untamed, even ferocious.'

'So unlike you,' she sourly observed. 'And to think,' I heard her say dismissively to a girlfriend on the phone, 'when we were first engaged I had to talk him out of joining a group proposing to climb the north face of the Eiger.'

A few days later she left on my desk a book, published in 1907, called With The Flag On The Seven Seas: Fifty Years A Seafarer by the wonderfully named Admiral Sir Bulwark Bloode. The following passage was marked: 'The Pacific Station had its ups and downs.

My first mission when I took command of the Myrmidon was to track down some Solomon Islanders who had eaten a Quaker missionary. By all accounts he was a strange fellow who did not drink nor eat meat and walked around barefoot. It seems he stuck his nose into some native war and got eaten for his troubles. The poor devil was wrapped in palm leaves, parboiledin salt water and then lightly grilled.'

'Alaska,' I said with some acerbity, 'is some distance from the Solomon Islands, our ship is not called the Myrmidon and I don't think we'll be involving ourselves in native wars.'

'That, Admiral Bloode, may be so,' she said, 'but the sea is the sea, and the Pacific upon which you have booked up with such insouciance is the goddam Pacific, North or South. I expect a large number of downs and, short of seeing you parboiled and eaten, very, very few ups.'

We didn't exactly set out with the highest of expectations, even though I had taken every precaution. I asked around to make sure we went on the best of the best. Everyone seemed to agree that this meant Crystal Cruises.

We had booked a cabin (I do wish cruise lines would stop talking about 'state rooms') high on the decks of the Crystal Harmony with a balcony. It was pricey, certainly, but as we sat sipping our G & Ts while our boat sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco en route for Alaska, we agreed it was probably worth the money.

And so it proved. Most people who have never done it say it's the 'holiday camp' aspect of cruising that puts them off. I have to report it's not like that at all - certainly not on Crystal Harmony.

There were plenty of on-board events but if one wanted to enjoy, alone and uninterrupted, the serene tranquillity of cruising the Pacific, one's private balcony made that possible too. There was no pressure to do anything other than follow one's inclinations.

So what does one get for the money? Really quite outstanding service - as professional and considerate as I have experienced anywhere. Our wine steward, Ms Brigitta Furedor, for example, a young lady from Austria, was the most charming, knowledgeable and efficient sommelier I've ever known.

I'd been told that the food on cruises tended to be plentiful but mechanically prepared and unimaginative. This was simply not true of Crystal Harmony. Meals ranged from the very good to the outstanding with some dishes as carefully prepared as those available in any Michelin star restaurant.

The cabins were comfortable. Apart from the ludicrous video of the cruise, which I bought for £50 and when I brought home discovered was devoted almost entirely to passengers waving to the camera, there was nothing I could fault.

But, of course, the true star was Alaska itself. We visited places that previously had a mythic status in our imagination - Skagway, Juneau, Sitka and Ketchikan. We explored the Inside Passage down to Vancouver. We took float planes and helicopters. We took a train along the old Gold Rush route. We took boat rides where we saw sea otters and seals and dolphin and whales and orca, better known as killer whales.

I don't know what it is about these creatures which creates in us such a sense of awe. One afternoon in the waters around Juneau, 20 or 30 of us sat in small boats just watching whales. All of us of various ages sat mesmerised. Tell me why? Maybe the answer is simple. Cetaceans are utterly alien in a way land animals are not, and yet somehow almost human.

We know whales are warm-blooded, air-breathing, have strong social connections and are extremely intelligent. But what we don't know about whales far exceeds what we do know. Quite simply they are both the most awesome and the most mysterious of God's creatures.

But the memory which will forever live with us was not the whales, but one wholly unexpected, utterly breathtaking wonder of nature, the Hubbard Glacier just north of Skagway.

We sat on our balcony as the captain took the Crystal Harmony into the bay. I had heard people speak of the way glaciers grumble. Well, they don't. They roar, shout, scream and thunder. The noise is extraordinary and eerie too because much of it appears to come from deep within the great mountain of ice. But however incredible that seems it is like nothing to the very first surprise, the colour.

The Hubbard is one of the greatest pieces of jewellery in the world. The predominant colour is a sparkling aquamarine blue - so rich that it would be hard to find an aquamarine stone so deep in colour and so translucent. Little pieces of aquamarine cover the sea from bits of ice that have 'come off' the Hubbard, a phrase which hardly does justice to the reality.

Glaciers, I now know, are living things. Some are retreating. Some, like the Hubbard, are expanding. So the whole thing is constantly shifting. It is that which makes the noise as great walls of ice deep within rub up against vast plates of ice formed thousands of years ago. It's also that which provides one of the most spectacular sights of all - something known as calving. Calving is the word to describe the great lumps - often the size of a large two-storey house - which the glacier constantly sheds, creating huge, fantastic but also frightening splashes as they carpet the sea for miles around.

The ship remained in the bay for the best part of four hours - slowly turning all the while so that wherever one was one got a grandstand view of this thing before us - so beautiful and so immense in its power that to me even being there was akin to a religious experience. I could have remained there for days. I have seen a lot of the world and many of its wonders. With no hesitation whatever, I now put the Hubbard Glacier at the top of that list.

On the plane out of San Francisco, on our way back to England, my wife asked to see the cruise line's brochure for next year. 'I think we've got to make

up our mind pretty quickly where we want to go,' she said, flicking through the pages. 'Someone was telling me that the better cabins book up quickly.'

'Maybe the Solomon Islands,' I said. 'I think they've stopped eating people there and I've heard the crustaceans are pretty good.'

She looked up, took measured aim and threw the brochure at my head. I took it in good part. I'd noticed she had taken care to remove the booking form first.

Getting there

Crystal Cruises (020 7287 9040) offers a 14-night cruise aboard the Crystal Harmony from £3,000.This includes return flights from London, Manchester or Glasgow to San Francisco, transfers, hotel overnight stays, full-board accommodation, taxes and gratuities.