Hitchcock could have done something rather unnerving with these vanishing perspectives of identical doors and diminishing vistas of ceiling lights. Out of curiosity, I time myself as I walk from one end to the other, and it takes me two-and-a-half minutes at a brisk walk. I can actually get to my local train station quicker than that.A throng of curious guests wander along these narrow passageways ­ assessing the minute but crucial differences in the various staterooms and taking in the object lesson they deliver in just how far you can compress prestige before the customer notices that they’re sleeping in a walk-in wardrobe. The biggest queue, naturally enough, is for the Grand Suite ­ which will set you back a minimum of £4,801 for a 10-night Mediterranean cruise, but which delivers the almost unimaginable luxury of a walk-in wardrobe which is not for sleeping in, along with a vast flatscreen television, private Jacuzzi and a Nelsonian stern balcony, from where you can watch the wake recede in expensive isolation.

There’s also a reception area so that you can share your good fortune with your fellow passengers, without whose admiration the suite might feel cramped by landlocked standards.Balconies used to be a signal badge of superiority for those interested in the shipboard pecking order, but Princess Lines has democratised this once exclusive perk, with long terraces of the things on both sides of the ship. As David Dingle explains, they have also tackled another stumbling block for cruise virgins ­ the rigidity of set dining hours and allocated tables. Passengers on Princess Lines can eat where they want, with whom they want (barring the captain, of course, whose presence at table remains an unexpandable commodity) and ­ most importantly of all ­ when they want. It’s as though the idea of an unappeased appetite is a kind of blasphemy and it is clear that, faced with this round-the-clock cornucopia, many passengers will bring a Herculean commitment to the question of value for money. Several decks up, in the Horizon Court 24-hour buffet, I have no trouble finding the cutlery and the trays, but cast around fruitlessly for plates until I realise that the tray is the plate.

Around me some early embarkers are already testing its load capacity to the limit.It’s no accident that Golden Princess is distinctively American in tone, with iced tea on tap in the restaurants, baseball memorabilia in the sports bar and a heavy preponderance of American thrillers in the library. Princess Lines is intended to offer an American feel as an alternative to P&O’s more traditional cruises, whose loyalists tend to like the ingrained whiff of empire you find on self-consciously British boats. P&O vessels serve a daily curry, a nod to their Imperial origins, but on the Princess the emphasis is on Italian-American, seafood and unending supplies of prime beef.There’s no keeping up appearances here, except in the vast onboard beauty salon, and a stiff upper lip would probably be regarded as an affront to the mission of whim-satisfaction which the ship serves. After two hours exploring this hedonist’s maze of casinos, boutiques, amusement arcades, theatres and lounge bars, I’m not entirely sure I would be up to the challenge, but there will be no shortage of takers. Today Golden Princess will be heading back to Southampton, its passengers temporarily glutted with self-indulgence. Who knows, some of the more attentive ones may even have noticed they’ve been at sea.sutcliff globalnet.co.uk
More from Thomas Sutcliffe. The osprey, the spectacular fish-eating bird of prey whose return to Scotland in the 1950s was one of the great wildlife success stories of the past century, has returned to breed in England after an absence of more than 200 years, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds announced last night.

The osprey, the spectacular fish-eating bird of prey whose return to Scotland in the 1950s was one of the great wildlife success stories of the past century, has returned to breed in England after an absence of more than 200 years, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds announced last night.
Two birds are incubating eggs at a nest in a secret location in the North of England, the RSPB said, in a brief and guarded statement that will nevertheless excite birdwatchers all over Britain.The birds have spilt over the border from the mushrooming Scottish population, which, from a single pair that returned to nest in Loch Garten on Speyside in 1954 (and became the most photographed birds in the world, has now reached more than 130 pairs.Birders have been expecting the “Sassenach ospreys” for a decade and it was thought that the first might nest at Rutland Water, a Midlands reservoir where young birds have been released for several years in the hope that they might return after their winter migration to Africa. But natural colonisation over the border got there first.”We are delighted that these wonderful fish-eating birds of prey are now breeding again in England,” Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB’s conservation director, said last night. The news was kept a closely guarded secret for several weeks while the birds built their nest, until it was clear they were sitting on eggs.The location of the nest is to remain undisclosed to protect the birds and their eggs from disturbance and egg-theft ­ those which returned to Scotland in the 1950s suffered at the hands of egg-collectors. The bird was persecuted for its feathers and eggs and became extinct in Scotland in 1916. Although there are no official records of ospreys breeding in England, it is thought that they did so in the late 18th century.Ospreys live on large fish such as trout, plunging talons-first into the surface of lakes in one of the natural world’s most spectacular sights. They can carry a 4lb trout long distances back to the nest, which is built of sticks in the very top of a tall tree and used year after year.In a clever “honeypot” strategy to protect the expanding population, the RSPB kept the spotlight on the Loch Garten nest, which thousands of visitors could see from a hide and later by closed-circuit television, as if the birds there were the only examples in Scotland. They gave little publicity to the fact that they were spreading across the country, reaching 100 pairs by the mid-1990s..

A split has developed between the Government’s GM crops advisers over plans to grow genetically modified maize near Europe’s biggest organic farming research centre on the outskirts of Coventry. A split has developed between the Government’s GM crops advisers over plans to grow genetically modified maize near Europe’s biggest organic farming research centre on the outskirts of Coventry.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, for two years a key ally of the Government in its programme of farm-scale trials of GM crops, is threatening to walk off the scientific steering committee overseeing the trials unless the maize site, close to the internationally renowned Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA) organic gardens at Ryton, is abandoned. The choice of the site has greatly angered the organic farming movement and green groups.The RSPB wants the steering committee to recommend immediately withdrawing the site from the trials programme. But other committee members, including English Nature, say the commitee has no power to do so. The committee chairman, Professor Christopher Pollock, is understood to agree.Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB’s director of conservation, said last night: “If we are isolated we will have to consider our position on the committee.”If the RSPB resigns, it will deal a damaging blow to the political and environmental credibility of the farm-scale trials, which are under fierce attack from more radical green groups.The trials are a three-year programme designed to test the effect on wildlife of the new and more powerful weedkillers that GM crops are genetically engineered to withstand. The Government argues the whole purpose of the trials is to gather information that might lead to the commercial growing of GM crops being banned as harmful to the environment.