Here is the town end of the beach at peak beach-time on Friday 8th August! On dear!!
Note the demise of half the semi-permanent straw parasols, the "white horses"in the sea and the complete absence of sunbathers!
Our records show (how sad - retired - nothing better to do!) that for the lunar month since the last (red) full moon we have had 16 out of 28 days that most people thought unbeachable.
Eight days or so have been lovely and four debatable. This is not how it should be!
Particularly cheesed off will be the Brits who had Tuesdays 22/7 to 5/8 as their time here. You needed to be very philosophical and into unbeachy things to keep your karma!
We heard that other places - even on the South coast - were having a better time, but how to get there?
This is the Samaria having a rough time docking one evening, and you would not have wanted to be on that boat!
Almost every day Meteo Greece has forecast 5 or 6 Beaufort and the "realtime" weather station just above our apartment (http://www.meteo.gr/stations/paleochora/) has told of gusts around 60 km/hr (which we now know to be high 7/ low 8). It has felt worse!! No structural damage (to anything permanent) but a lot of minor casualties - from wine glasses via lilos (off to Libya) to lethal sharp-pointed parasols and flying metal sunbeds! Tempers are fraying!! Climate change - what climate change? .. and today is the dreaded 15th - about the only reliably profitable weekend for many business-people here. Doom and gloom prevail!