‘Life’s for living’... Vera, 90, goes on cruise with stranger she met in pub
Her odyssey began after she joined fellow pensioners on a five-day coach trip to Bournemouth.
On the way, they stopped at an 18th century inn in Winchester, Hampshire.
Vera, of Sudbury, Suffolk, said John came in to the pub, sat down and ordered his lunch, adding: “We got talking, like you do.”
She said he told her he had travelled the world several times and had enjoyed cruises with his late wife.
Vera, whose former policeman husband Jack died in 2005, said John then asked her “Have you ever had a cruise?” She said: “I told him I couldn’t afford it and my late husband would never have gone on a cruise.
“We finished our meal and came out of the pub together and on the other side of the road was a travel agent.
“Before I knew it, the worker there was asking his name and then she asked what my name was – and at that point John leaned over and asked, ‘What’s your name, my dear?’”
Vera – who hastwo daughters – returned chuckling to her shocked coach party friends.
When the group stopped in Winchester on the return leg five days later, Vera went to the travel agents “to make sure it wasn’t a joke”.
The trip went ahead despite John’s daughter cancelling the payment thinking he had been the victim of a scam after she saw how much had gone out of his bank account.
Vera said John told his daughter: “No, I am going on a cruise with a lady I met in the pub.”
She said that once on board the ground rules for the trip were quickly set out over a cup of tea.
John, from Southampton, was happy with the arrangement that they were sharing a cabin but not a bed. Vera said: “He was a gentleman. We were strangers but had quite a lot in common. It was an adventure.” She has declined his offer to cruise in the Caribbean next year. “John could afford it and I couldn’t and that was also one of the things in my mind, that I’d be taking advantage,” she said. Vera Burrell got more than she bargained for after she met John in a pub and ended up cruising to cities including Malaga in Spain and Lisbon, far right