Cruises will depart from South Wales for the first time in 2017, with the announcement of four departures from Newport and Cardiff docks. These are much closer for anyone in the Ross area planning a cruise to depart from.

Managing director of Cruises from South Wales, Miles Morgan told the Ross Gazette:?“We have campaigned for a long time for local cruise departures for holiday makers in South Wales and this news is excellent.

“The port in Bristol was getting regular cruises and with so many of those bookings coming from South Wales it made sense to have some more local to us here in Wales.”

The cruises will be operated by Cruise and Maritime Voyages with sailings from Newport onboard the 1250 passenger ship, Magellan. The itinerary from Newport takes in the Fjords of Norway with a stop in Dublin on route.

Cardiff will see a different ship sailing, the 800 passenger Marco Polo with two departures. The first voyage will take in Spain, Portugal and France, and the second is a Summertime Gardens and River Seine cruise. All the cruises will operate in June next year.

The cruises have excellent prices with a lead in deal of £825 and have an early booking offer with all cruises from South Wales qualifying for a buy-one-get-one-free deal, so this works out as £412 per person.

Mr Morgan said:?“With the support of the whole of Wales, we would hope to see more departures again for 2018.

“Our Cruises from South Wales website was set up especially with this in mind and we hope the travelling public will seize this opportunity which will be good for both holiday makers and the Welsh economy as a whole.”