"Kalo Pascha!"

That's "Happy Easter"!


Today is Easter Sunday, which is the most significant day - for both religion and culture - in Greece! There is an excellent account of the reason why its date differs from that in Western Europe, and the various customs on


http://www.sfakia-crete.com/sfakia-crete/greekeaster.html


As "born-again atheists" we have a spot of bother with the Orthodox Church, but can handle "quaint community customs" so went out on the evening of Good Friday to see the procession!

We couldn't get a straight answer as to when it might happen, so we sat at Coconuts near the Church and waited. After some bells we saw a good crowd of locals (women in black!) come down from the church and thought we must have missed it. At about this time Judith turned up. She nannies in Athens for grandchildren of John Humphreys (Radio 4) and used to live and work here. Chatting to her took us through to the point when suddeny two police officers in smart winter uniform turned up to ensure appropriate respect for the procession which then arrived!
It must have gone out through the back exit, but was now ready to go up the main street to the church. The focus is the "epitaph" - the symbolic bier of Christ (as in this archive shot) - covered in petals - and a couple of hundred village people follow it on its journey round town. Plenty of chanting and incense..!
Women continue to wear black and the fasting continues until midnight on Saturday. At this point everyone goes to the Church again to await the arrival of the "holy fire". This really does involve the whole village - most in the street outside! We took down the little lantern found in the apartment so that we might have a chance of keeping a candle alight in the appalling cold and strong wind we have had for a couple of days! At the point when the priest knocks on the door and starts the fire thing there is a firework display from the fortezza, and "Judas" is burned on a bonfire as the bells ring out! Quite moving stuff - whatever you do or don't believe - and we received our fire from Stephanie - and got a wedding invitation from Katerina! The candle went out in the kafenion an hour later!
There is then a certain amount of "kafenion-life" including festive bread for those who have just broken their Lent fast and the infedils who have had a few already! As we went home we felt the first of the predicted rain.
We awoke to bad weather again!
Lamb is the thing everywhere on Easter Sunday. We marinated a modest leg that turned out to be exquisite, whilst families spit-roast a whole animal outside filling the air with a great smell; and Barry & Jenny serve lamb dishes for the waifs and strays. We had starters with them and saw the weather improve before returning to have our own roast.
Greek TV - which had done several days of biblical epics - delivers"Pirates of the Caribbean"- and all is well with the World!

Calypso - Collapso!

The sainted Mick conveyed a message that Barry & Jenny at the Calypso had their Friday out-of-season social that evening, so we went! The great and the good and some of the rest of Paleochora's anglophone residents were there and we got our first sighting of the brand new Calypso! - It is two doors away from the old one in the former Spanish restaurant and rather swish!

The old one has been being demolished since the next day!

We were invited to B&J's twins' 6th birthday party on the Monday at the end of the sandy beach.

Again- great company and some serious sun for the afternoon! Fun for the kids - no photos - and for the adults:- here is Mick doing his Gumby impression!

"It's... it's...."

Notes from a Pre-season Village

With Orthodox Easter not until April 27th we found the village very quiet!

Most of the kafenions are open but with only a few outside chairs and tables. Many tavernas and restaurants have been closed since October, but during our week here there has been at least one opening each day.

We have also seen some"beach furniture" progress each day - first repairs to the fixed parasols and then the placing of sunbeds. Last evening the first package tourists were spotted :- Finns who presumably find this chilly wind a pleasant change!

We had thought the atmosphere would be like that of October when we left; but it has a charm of its own:- locals have time to talk, plenty of space and never too hot!

Visually it very different too! The pollarded mulberry trees hav just a little foliage and you can see their shape, the sea shore has vast amounts of rock exposed where we have walked on sand for 20 summers, the sea gushes over onto the pebble beach occasionally, and one day we could see the island of Gavdos, which we have never done in summer!

Most striking though - are the flowers! This is the view of the bank of the fortezza from our back yard. Jenny - who with Mick had the apartment before us - is an expert on flora and her pictures on http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennyn... are a delight! - She also knows how to take photos!!

"Of all the nights in all the year....!"

As soon as we hit landside at Athens we were aware that the smoking laws so carefully introduced in UK, France & Italy (and so incompetently in Spain!) have not hit Greece! A foul fug hangs over all catering facilities!

We had a day to kill but four bags, and the Metro workers were on strike, so we hung around for while then took a bus to Piraeus. (85 minutes) As Ruth went to claim the tickets she saw a French-registered car - and it was Alain & Pascale - who were booked onto the same crossing! So we spent the afternoon with them and in a seedy local taverna before boarding early and finding our cabin. So far, so good!

This was the Thursday night before Greek schools' last day of term. School trips are common at this time. The ship was completely crammed - and mostly with adolescents! The stated capacity for the Lissos was almost certainly exceeded, and the ratio of responsible adults to youngsters was as low as it could be! We were berthed in a corridor full of kids screaming, banging, throwing and calling cabin phones. Hell! and we had spent the previous night in the lounge at Gatwick! We thought they were a school party and had some fruitless interchanges with (elusive) teachers, but it transpired they were some sort of sports team. (Best guess - kick boxing!)

With the aid of an additional bottle of wine we got some sleep nonetheless, only to see ANEK lines at their glorious best for disembarkation! It took over an hour for foot passengers to get off at Chania, as they were funnelled down a narrow corridor to the escalator. This was not only not working but blocked off, so everyone and all their baggage had to go down one narrow staircase!

Joyfully this meant less time at Chania bus station - with its infamous Ladies' toilet! We took the first bus for a rather windy journey and then in Paleohora we were unexpectedly met by Mick - what a star!

City to city

We stayed for three nights at the Travelodge in Croydon, giving access to Central London, Balham house, Croydon shopping, and train to Hampshire. Again - a sensible, considered choice for those on pensioners' budgets!


The sun shone for our day out at Ruth's parents, and in the pub in Balham we bumped into our builder friend Barry - staying far too long! All was well at the rented house and the collected post contained only a few surprises! Bob did GP tests and dentist.


On Wednesday 16th we went by train up to Victoria and used the exhorbitant Left Luggage there.


Oxford Street, cinema in Leicester Square, a curry and a late night train to Gatwick, where we dozed until our early morning Easyjet flight to Athens.

(A little incident at the Wetherpoons pub inside (this is important!) Victoria station around midnight: A rather merry drinker says he is popping out for a smoke. He had to be told that the entire station is legally "indoors" and therefore he would have to walk downstairs and out to the forecourt. He disappeared with a pint glass and was not seen again!)

Morris Oxford!

At Carfax on the Saturday morning there were several morris sides in action. It had been so long since Ruth was here in her home town that we thought this might happen every week as part of the very evident improvements to environment and quality of life; but it was - we later discovered - the Oxford Folk Festival. Many and varied singers, dancers and players strolled round with or without dogs and tankards! A very English phenomenon - which we would suddenly encounter as we went to three building societies, Primark, Bhs, Nandos, Sainsburys etc etc.

On Sunday we took Chloe and Chris for a roast dinner and then the Oxford Tube to London - (just 6 sterling single for Bob as a Senior! ) These were Good Times!

Mission in search of the holy Gr-ale!

Five months without real ale! After landing we headed for the airport pub! There isn't one landside - just O'Neills with Guinness!

So we took the coach to Oxford (4 hours through most of the Home Counties... but interesting and comfortable!)

We stayed 8 miles east of the city at the Travelodge:- a clever wheeze to avoid Oxford hotel prices and with two cheap buses per hour!

We went next door to the Harvester - two pumps - including Old Speckled Hen - but both - frustratingly off!

Never fear - next day we met up with Chloe. She is working at The Mission - Oxford's first and only Burrito Bar, where she rolls a mean one. Before her shift we took her for breakfast in the Covered Market and showed her where Ruth worked on Saturdays in the Sixties. In return she pointed us towards the Three Goats Heads opposite The Mission and we were later able to enjoy a pint or two over full-sized Guardian & Independent!

Marseille Day

We drove along the coast in very overcast weather, and got very lost trying to find the hotel near the airport. Next day we took the airport shuttle into the city and had a great day in bright sunshine.

It's a very noisy, vibrant place - well-cared for and with excellent public transport. We'll go again!

One innovation is the collection of publicly owned bicycles. Bob wanted to use one!

Marseille airport is big, airy and modern - but Ryanair fly from the annexe mp2 - which could not be more basic! Still - it was cheap and we arrived at Stansted on Friday 11th April.

"I wouldn't start from here!"

Four weeks to get from Girona to Marseille - this how it is done!

I, Bobulus!

Narbonne is inland but there are some delightful seaside towns nearby , which were just-about functioning at this time of year. The coast has a series of lagoons and sand spits. All very interesting, but cold winds and plenty of rain :- no cycling!!!

Both Narbonne Plage and Valras Plage have great value restaurants, and the latter has a "Theatre de Mer". We had spent chilly evenings in the gite watching the entire "I Claudius" series on DVD, and this must have rubbed off onto Bob!


We stayed four nights in Narbonne. The hotel chains are all located slightly out of town on the same industrial estate - devoid of atmosphere - you could be anywhere in France! - but very convenient, and very cheap. We stayed at one of the two B&B outlets - which we now prefer to Premiere Classe. 31 euros per night with free Wifi and serious discounts on dinner at the Courtepaille next door. Vive la France!

Even if the sign here does tell us about Sarko's politics!

Meteo leads us to the Med

The weather prospects for France up to our planned departure were a bit grim.. with some sun showing in the Perpignan area, so we headed for Narbonne.

This lies at the end of the wonderful Canal du Midi, so one of the trips out was to nearby Beziers where there is a seven-lock flight with beautiful views back to the city! We saw a pair of boats ascend it (in pouring rain, of course!)

Narbonne itself is an impressive place. It claims to be the most eco-friendly city in France, and is proud of its history - particularly as the centre of protests by the suffering wine workers early in the 20th century. These days things are not so bad in the wine business and we were struck by how much more in bloom the vines were here in contrast with the Bordeaux region we had left.





An impressive indoor market is open every morning

The Odyssey begins!

OK - it's been a while! We are now into our Crete apartment with broadband so it's update time!

The journey towards Crete began on Saturday April 5th with a gentle pootle down the autoroutes. It was a beautiful day... and the start or finish of the school holidays for some zone or zone of France! This meant mass jollity at the service stations at lunchtime. Spot how we went native with the coolbox, baguette, saucisson and cornichons!

Cycling for Softies!

A bar in Villandraut where we found ourselves on two consecutive afternoons. On the first we were joined by a jolly group of grey French hikers.
On the second it was a jolly group of French grey cyclists - four of whom had superb recumbant machines! They had seen our car with bike rack and had a conversation amongst themselves about our Greece-Italy ferry sticker. Not sure who was more impressed!


And here is a view from a hill we had somehow climbed on another ride! (great fun going back down to sea level!)

It is the point in Castets where the Canal Littoral leaves the Garonne, and the point where - on the outward leg - Bob's bike refused to go onto the bottom gear wheel. This persists and so we have spent a lot of time looking on the web for "bicycle repair man" ahead of us in the itinerary. It's not just getting an address - it's getting a street map with names on it - and then dealing with "ferme le lundi!" (An amazing number of businesses seem to close on Mondays - is this the 35 hour week?)

Pigs!

Our nearest town was Langon - rather quiet and with plenty of services for the local farmers and growers. When we arrived it was the National Pig Festival, which included (if we translated correctly) the National Honking Competition! We gave that a miss and all we saw was the fragrant remains on the Monday outside the covered market!

Talking of pigs, we can report that the smoking ban seems to be holding, leading to sights such as the above outside many bars and restaurants!

Langon also has a Fiat dealer who was happy to service Yvette for what seemed a fair price, and a huge brand new Leclerc hypermarket with a Chinese buffet no more than 2.5 times the price of those in the Canaries. (to be fair it was a little better in quality, and included deep-fried frog legs!)

Cold Comfort Gite!

This was home for a week! A cheap Gite de France in Pujols sur Ciron in the South Gironde. The owner is a retired teacher with a glint in the eye! The village is deserted, but the gite is comfortable. We were terrified of the heating bill at the end as it was desperately cold until the last full day. In fact it did cost an additional 45 Euros in gas, and that was being super-cautious!

We didn't get much cycling in as the rain and wind were as bad as predicted; but as it improved we managed a great ride on a disused railway track - (the department has 600 km of cycle paths!) - a meander through the local vineyards, and a canal - and river-side ride based on Langon.

Here comes the sun!

As foretold on TV and the net the day of Saturday 29th was glorious! It was also our moving-on day, so benefits to us were limited!

We were returning to Gironde and its chateaux and vineyards - but this time to the South of the region and the home of Graves and Sauternes. Here is Yvette beside the Garonne at Barsac where we went for a delightful - if short - ride before checking in to the gite.

A little of Lot & a lot of Garonne

In fact we continued to roam aimlessly through Dordogne-shire down to Perigueux with its indefensible foie gras and beyond - ending up in Agen just after the rain started.

We have a soft spot for this home of the prune! (there is a prune museum!) - mostly because it is on the Canal Littoral of the Garonne and has great towpath cycling. The weather was unremittingly foul - so rather than move on we twice re-booked our cell at the Premiere Classe Hotel and stayed until the Saturday, taking trips out in the car to see more waterways known and new to us. Despite being very, very cheap there was free Wifi available, so we also did a lot of stuff with that, and eventually had a day when we could cycle. We re-visited the superb canal aqueduct - at 580 metres the second longest in France - and whilst halfway across the rain started! Another dash back in cagoules to sit in a hypermarket brasserie. It's a good job this isn't a holiday!