FORGET Murder on the Orient Express - one West Somerset woman has landed a starring part in a tale of truth that is definitely stranger than fiction.

Lizzie Mayes and her husband Dick reluctantly left their home in Yarde, near Williton, for a six-week cruise up the Amazon and the Orinoco in January.

And their experiences - captured by novice writer Lizzie - are the mainstay of a new book just published by one of their fellow passengers.

'Murder on the Marco Polo: Well, not quite', edited by Clive Leatherdale, is a collection of diary entries of some of the 800 "cantankerous pensioners" who set sail from Tilbury on the ageing ship.

Clive, a sports and travel writer who runs Desert Island Books Ltd, was determined to publish his experiences of the trip.

But once on board he had a better idea - he would widen the net and recruit a fleet of geriatric scribblers to record their take on cruise ship life.

Lizzie, 67, a retired school manager and more recently B&B owner, and 70-year-old Dick, a former engineer in the Royal Navy, hated going on holiday but were persuaded to undertake the journey of a lifetime by their grown-up children.

"We hadn't been away for about three years because it's just too difficult to sort out the animals and everything else," said Lizzie.

"In any case, we like it in West Somerset and we didn't really want to go on holiday.

"But we decided to do the cruise to placate the children.

"They showered me with notebooks and journals and made me promise to write about our daily adventures.

"I'd never written anything before but the children said they wanted to know everything we had done and thought we'd forget by the time we got home."

As the Marco Polo began creaking and groaning its way across the Atlantic, Lizzie duly opened the first of her notebooks and started scribbling.

But on the fifth day she was approached by a "lean bespectacled gentleman" - Clive - who told her about his plans and asked if she would be interested in submitting extracts from her diary.

"Somewhat taken aback, I told him it was for me and my family but that if he really wanted, I would send him a copy on my return to England."

Within days of receiving Lizzie's scribblings, Clive had contacted her to say that he would be using 39 of her 42 diary entries.

"He said he hadn't stopped laughing while he was reading them," she said.

And first time cruiser Lizzie admitted that she found the trip a writer's dream.

With the average age of those on board around 67, the passenger list included a multi-millionaire stately home owner and rock concert impresario and an ex-MP, as well as a host of professors.

Rather than write about the whistle-stop visits to the tourist spots, Lizzie decided to concentrate on the more mundane and everyday highlights of the trip.

These included the fights over sunbeds and the man who insisted on eating his way through the entire menu - all three starters, mains and desserts of a meal.

Even Lizzie and Dick's own escapades featured, such as their furtive attempts to breach the cruise rules and bring their own alcohol on board after a stop in Tenerife.

"We decided we couldn't afford to keep paying the ship prices so we bought a bottle of gin ashore and spent ages decanting it into plastic water bottles in a bus station," said Lizzie.

"It seems ridiculous now."

With an itinerary that took in the West Indies and the Azores, Lizzie admitted that the passenger list was a mixed bag of humankind.

And her diary extracts reflect her "warts and all" observations.

"I'm really thrilled to have them published as I have never thought of myself as a writer," she said.

"The children and Dick are tickled pink by my success - they are really chuffed.

"I've never had anything published before but although I'm not sure if we'll ever go on another cruise, I might just keep on writing."

'Murder on the Marco Polo: Well, not quite' is published in paperback by Desert Island Books Ltd, priced £14.99.

Photo: Steve Guscott