Built to last?

Monday also marked renewed activity on the apartment block being built next to our home. It looks as if there had been a pause before moving on to the next storey.
This is the view from the other side. It is all quite shocking for we lily-livered risk-averse Northern Europeans!
Not a hard hat nor steel toecap in sight! The plot is completely open and kids play in there! Deep holes have no protection and the wooden planks are stacked with rusty nails sticky outwards.
So much for Health and Safety across the EU!

How many Builders does it take???

The main street saga continues! For the last couple of weeks there has been only the odd, short but very messy flurry of activity:- mostly of the bulldozing the street surface sort! And then it was Monday morning! We went out to pay the phone bill at the OTE office (conveniently located in the main street) and there it was - focussed manual labour by four or five men, and opinions from another fifty.

In the space of a day they laid concrete to form the new pavements down both sides of the 150m stretch. The businesses were all closed for the day (except fortunately the OTE - Bob crept over the mesh that was there in readiness) and the owners looked on anxiously - often using a hose pipe. It was very noisy and the traffic was chaotic with two mixer lorries coming and going, but by last night (Tuesday) it was starting to look worth it! More tables and chairs could be sensibly used outside the kafenions. We went to Yanni's for the first time this year. They seemed genuinely pleased to see us. Nikos told us the water feature and fancy tiles are postponed till next year, but the street would be Paradise next week! Hmmmmmm!

Spot the Difference

Or "Fangs aint what they used to be!"

Last Sunday night (or Monday morning) Ruth was sitting in front of the laptop (as you do!) and was so riveted by whatever she was doing/watching that she fell asleep and woke with a shock having knocked against something and broken a front tooth. (It is true to say that a little krassi might have been involved!) Anyway, this meant Monday was spent trying to find the dentist Dimitri and get him to do a bit of filing and fix an appointment. It was a windy day so not too bad a prospect! On Friday he fixed it for 50 Euros - a brilliant job!


So - on the theme - what changes from October have we seen so far?

• The Main Street!
  

This is a disaster. On March 3rd - with no notice apparently - they started digging it up from the top crossroads down to Stavros the Barber. There is still confusion as to whether the main motivation was "beautification" (ghastly rumours of water features and fancy pavement) or essential pipework. Certainly there has been EU money, late arrival of which may explain the stupidly late start. We had expected it to be done by te time we got here - but no - difficult to negotiate even on foot and sober - dust everywhere, and utterly depressing. At some point a number of the business owners objected formally and work stopped for a couple of weeks - making it worse of course! There is lively debate about this, and lots of other good local stuff on Calypso Barry's new website - well worth a visit!

• Outbreak of swimming pools!

The Finns are still here en masse and they are rumoured to have insisted on a pool at the Relax Studios (next door to Zygos) - so there is one! Meanwhile up in the old town Haris and Flora have almost finished building their 7-room extension, and it has in front of it - a pool! Chacun a son gout!

• What goes round...

It is perhaps no surprise that there is no great expansion in restaurants and tavernas this year - but there is one new addition. The Samaria which used to be up near the church has taken over the long-disused restaurant near the back of the Rea. This means the frozen fish shop has gone. The restaurant has all the ruined garden walls of the old one and includes the children's potentially lethal roundabout. We haven't been there yet, but those that have are enthusiastic.

Also Suzi has joined Tassos at the Seagull, taking us back to the early 90s. Her influence is clear in the menu which now has plenty that is vegetarian and somewhat exotic

• Still no Cantina - almost no sand!
  

There was a late start with sunbeds and umbrellas :- something to do with contracts now being organised from Athens, rather than through the Port Police! The Pebble Beach has only had them for a little over a week. Down on the Sandy Beach things are looking normal now at the town end - but they fizzle out after the Jetee. with just one small block into the naturist beach. The beach itself is in a mess. The sand has moved to expose a great deal of rock. It is still quite difficult to enter the sea, and there is no sign of any activity to move sand back. The single locked Porta-loo sits isolated at the end. All very sad!

• Our new outlook!

Fortunately Jenny had warned us about this when it started in March. She got the worst of it! With no notice the family Vlissidis from the supermarket has begun to build a block of apartments for sale to foreigners (as next to Yanni's Rooms past the old town). It nestles next to the building in our lane at the bottom of the path from the museum - so it is spitting distance from us (and spit one does feel like doing sometimes!) A makeshift access road has been driven through from the disused parking space above the museum. We retain views of sea, mountains and Venetian fortress, but we are also going to have a view of a lot of concrete when finished. Even our neighbour and respectable local matriarch Popi used a very rude word about it!

• Coconuts, Coronet and Club

The bar Coconuts is no more! It closed before we left in October and has re-opened with new trendy decor and a new name (something like "Little Corner"). Stelios is no longer working there (- he is cooking at Skala- ) but Panos is.

.. and we have a very flash Internet centre - still involving Costas but with a British couple as partners. It is where the rather tacky one was last year (old Chinese.. estate agent etc)

.. and the Paleohora Club re-opened on Friday! We have no idea who is behind it this year - but their posters advertising the delights of the first two nights are some of the tackiest ever to grace the telegraph poles!

On the plus side in terms of live music the Skala now has good acts each Monday evening, and Swedish Mats is here - selling CDs and looking for venues. Last week he played with Rick from Anidri at the Seagull.

• The New Bridges of Selino County!

This year people have been arriving in the village a little less dazed, as the four new bridges between Kandanos and us are now finished - and mighty fine they are, too - with landscaping and planting! This is supposed to take 10 minutes of the trip - but as the construction has been going on so long it is difficult to know what that is compared to! Thank you, Brussels!

Three Ferry Stories & a Happy Ending

Getting from Barcelona to Paleochora involved three ferries and dealing with Italy. We decided to have a week or so there despite our relative lack of enthusiasm for the place. This is how it went:

Ferry 1: Barcelona to Livorno.

This was a very pleasant crossing of about 19 hours. In addition to a lot of freight there were about 20 private cars, some bikers and about 20 foot passengers, so the public space was deserted. We had a very comfortable cabin. When it came to disembarcation we were all kept waiting for the upper deck ramp to be lowered. It did take a while and there was some frustration. Suddenly one of the foot passengers was sitting on the floor! He got up and was seen lying on the floor. This happened several times and then we realised there was a scuffle going on between him and a waiting biker. Both parties were then restrained by various (slow to appear) ferry staff and passengers until the ramp came down. and they walked or rode off as if nothing had happened

Not knowing anything about Livorno and arriving in the evening we had booked into a real bargain of a hotel but typically there was terrible road signing at the port and we got badly lost, including sitting in a jam caused by a procession of some sort. With Italian coming in about No 5 in Ruth's languages we had some pretty interesting interchanges with locals to get us sorted.

It was worth it though:- brand new and sitting right next to a much less luxurious cafe where we bought pizza and watched an amazing TV programme. It was some sort of word quiz which featured a bimbo with little Italian language (!) walking backwards and forwards to turn over the letters. She was wearing a short flimsy dress and on each passage across the camera found an angle up or down said dress. Welcome to Berlusconis's Italy!

Tuscan Treat

The campsites we found near Livorno were not very appealing (certainly when compared to the best in France) so we drove a llittle further North to Torre del Lago near Viarregio, where we had camped in 1985. We couldn't find the actual site (failing memories?) but we found a reasonable one Camping Europa where by buying a 2009 European Site Guide we would qualify for a rate of 15 Euros per night including hot showers. Not bad! (We also had to buy swimming caps before using the pool.

No surprise: - very few Brits, and most of the Netherlands were there! We stayed four nights and for the second two we also had a very large party of badly behaved German students.

Our approach to Italy: Countryside, culture, food and drink - not beaches!

There is a lovely cycle ride under trees to Viarregio, but when you get there and past the opulent yachts at the port you find there is virtually no public beach - it is all bagnos like this one, where you pay an awful lot for things you don't want! We managed with nifty footwork to get a dip in the sea, but this brings on cravings for Greece!

.. so - no more beaches - we went on a daytrip to San Gimignano. The drives both there and back were very hairy! We have never bought a good scale map of Italy so did not pick up on the topography. By the end of the day we had averaged 23 mph over the driving time!

It is a tourist cliche but no less stunning for that! We stayed two hours - much of it tourist-watching in a very nice cafe with newly-found cheap beer - Morretti! When we got back to the car ( "free for two hours") we had a parking ticket! The attendant said we had not left anything to say when we arrived. We think she let us off, but maybe will not be able to return to Italy even if we want to, because we threw it away!

Across the thigh to Rimini

We used the new guide to help us find more 15 Euro a night camping over on the other side! We came up with a site at Gatteo del Mare. To get there we looked up a route on the Michelin site and it showed a very indirect one via Bologna. After the previous experinece we weren't going to argue! It was a long and difficult drive which took most of the day. It had been very warm, but as we reached the last part there was a sudden high wind and blackening of skies. We put up the tent with extra care and as the last ropes were being secured the rain started. We drove into the town (modern resort) and found a bar with internet. It kept raining! Fortunately despite it having looked closed earlier on we found the campsite restaurant open and very welcoming. We spent the whole evening there with two or three other happy camper couples as the thunder and lightning came and went. We nervously went back to the tent to find the benefits of good camping craft - very little inside was wet, and we survived the night!

The next two days were a lot better and we rode both North and South through the succession of near-identical resorts with the dreaded bagnos, the autostrada, the railway line and some disgraceful beer prices!

We did see some interesting things:

• Gatteo is at the mouth of the Rubicon, so we crossed it - as old JC had!



• A group of about 100 primary children being taken out for a bike ride



• Communal dance-exercise on the beach - probably the grey roubel!



• Five Swiss-registered Austin Healeys travelling in convoy

We also discovered the lovely local flatbread - Piadina!

We stayed three nights, and each day more people arrived. This was coming up to the Pentecost weekend and they were jamming the tents and vans in as close as possible. When on the third evening we had a re-run with the rain, and the family next door grew exponentially we decided we were glad to be leaving next morning. As we dried out and de-camped the vans were queuing for any empty space!

We were heading for Ancona and decided to take the coastal road rather than the autostrada given that it was a Bank Holiday. Wrong choice! Bad roads, bridge hold-ups, speed limits, pedestrian crossings. We arrived to check-in one minute before it theoretically closed - unfed and desperate for the loo! 100 km and nearly four hours without a break!

Ferry 2: Ancona to Patras (officially!)

This ferry must have been nearly full! This year it has "camping on board" where one deck is open and campers and caravan owners can plug into the electricity and sleep there. We were also put on this deck, but had a very, very expensive cabin. 95% of passengers were German and with kids. There were some novel other approaches to spending the night.

Just after we left Ancona at 4pm there was a call for any medical doctors to identify themselves. We thought no more about it! A nice Greek dinner and some episodes of the Sopranos followed as we watched the Italian coast and the sunset. We were due at Igonoumitsa (opposite Corfu) at 8am, so there was no surprise when there was an announcement in Greek at 7.30 - except that it mentioned Brindisi (firmly on Italian soil!) There was then a translation into English saying that owing to a passenger's heart condition we had come into Brindisi but were not being allowed to leave. (Nothing was said then, or for another eight hours in German or Italian) We fantasised about manslaughter allegations and the British Consul; but in fact got a very good account from the receptionist who wanted to talk in English. He said that there had been many incidents on the ship over the years: several deaths, men overboard like the drunken Polish lorry driver, overdoses etc, but that the Italians had always ended up being co-operative. This time they would not even send a helicopter, and this was now probably about money.

Anyway! We were to be ten hours late - so we would miss the evening ferry and would be arriving in Patras late at night. We emailed to a hotel used before and got a good price, arriving around midnight after some terrible navigational errors. (There is a new flyover near the hotel - and we also went the wrong way down the main highway as we left the port!)

So - a luxurious room with free WiFi and a great breakfast! We then drove steadily over to Athens outskirts on the toll-roads and stopped for lunch near the little beach used last year. Some cheap fish, but windy! We reached Piraeus almost perfectly and got new tickets so that we boarded very early.

Ferry 3: Piraeus to Chania

This should have been very straightforward! We had booked only reclining seats for this relatively short crossing. When we went to claim them we were asked if there was any particular reason why we wanted to be in the prison! Somewhere along the line in swapping tickets for the two different ships we had been allocated seats in an annexe used sometimes (and this was one such time) for prisoners in transit and their guards. We declined - but to get to the loo you went past the open door of this smoke-filled room with its burly police occupants and swarthy charges. The night started well in the lounge, with even the TV volume being turned off this time - but suddenly a distinctly swarthy Cretan stumbled into the lounge and started demanding that a (random?) man hand over something. then he started to molest the woman next to him. Passengers started waking up and protesting. The man (not an escaped prisoner - but in a bad way!) then moved on to someone else less compliant and the punches started. Bob called out for the police from the "brig" to do something and got the reply in English: "We can't do anything - we are only the police!" Eventually an ANEK employee appeared and bundled the man out. The slumber was less peaceful until the 5.30 docking after that!

It appears that the accused may have been involved in a nasty case where a whole Creatn village turned on the police (deaths??) when they intervened over their cannabis growing enterprise. The trial is ongoing in Athens.

We were off fairly promptly and killed time until LIDL opened! Then it was round there and two more supermarkets to stock up on what Paleohora has trouble supplying:- potting compost, French wine, exotic sauces etc. We had a pleasant drive on the tunnel route, visted the baker in Topolia and arrived at about noon on Tuesday 2nd June.

Ups and Downs in France (7th to 21st May)

Pity the poor public servant who pulled us over for a car search as we left Dover! Bob not at all amused. Both surprised at checking for people leaving UK!
















We sped back to Rouen for a night at the Premier Class by the Cows Roundabout - very useful place! Then on the Armistice Bank Holiday we retraced steps back to Abzac, pausing at a nearby auberge where the veterans were having an interesting looking meal. The weather for the next two days was disgusting. We lurked around the house amusing Gregory whilst P&G handled the gite change-over day, then tried a new restaurant in Availles. On Sunday we squelched to the barn and re-packed the car with camping kit (use of which was looking unlikely!) and set off with only the vaguest of plans - loosely based on wanting to see more of the Lot and Cele valleys. In fact we got caught in the long weekend return to Toulouse and some interesting driving behaviour. We decided to stay in Montauban and the next day the sun came out - just right for a very long car drive up to Figean and along mostly the River Cele. Stunning mountains, valleys and architecture! Worth another visit!
The cheap hotel chains aren't represented in or near Cahors, so we stopped short of there in the small town of Vers, and stayed overnight at a Logis de France. By eschewing the luxury riverside rooms and staying instead in the original building we got a very good deal which included dinner. We loved it! A room like something from Sebastian Faulks, and a truly traditional French meal - snails, vast serve-yourself terrine, rabbit, local cheese etc etc. Next day we headed off for Narbonne. The plan was to stay on a campsite outside the town with local kayaking and sailing. No problem - the site had a real bargain for four nights in a small mobile home, and yes, there were some kayaks on the adjoining lake. Unfortunately there was a lot of wind, and the next day, just after Bob returned from a bike ride the heavens opened and it rained solidly for two days. So no water sport, no more cycling and not much else really!The bar at the site wasn't open, the shop only in the morning, the restaurant barely open and aimed at the Dutch! Some local roads were closed so routes became more and more desperate and circuitous. It was all pretty depressing!

A corporate policy of avoiding France in May was beginning to evolve, and we also discovered that one escape route - the Toulon to Civitavecchia Grimaldi ferry - is not operating this summer.




With our habitual luck as we de-camped on the Saturday morning the sun began to shine!









We drove down the coast - seeing snow on the Pyrenees and some attractive coastal villages and towns, until we reached Canet en Roussillon and the great Campimg Brasilia used twice last year. They also had their special tariff for a spacious bungalow and remembered us. Jolly bar staff and Monique in the restaurant - sun - pool - WiFi in the cabin - excellent traiteur with take-away dishes. Things were looking up! (.. and the talk was all of how awful the last few days had been so we hadn't missed anything!)




It was a bit windy for those five days, but otherwise very pleasant!

We did some cycling in and around - Ruth used the pool - and we sorted out the onward move:- from Barcelona with Grimaldi but to their new desination of Livorno - ideal for Tuscany.

On the last day we had a moules lunch in town before driving down slowly for a midnight sailing,

Total mileage Dunkirk to Barcelona: 1247!

Three Piers of the Realm

Early on in Worthing there was a scooter convention by the pier. Nostalgia!

A trip down Brighton pier is always a joy , and finally here is Lowestoft! We travelled up there on Bank Holiday Monday, taking a cross-country route. We stayed the night at a very pleasant B&B where Benjamin Britten had once lived. We were the only guests and were treated very well. In the evening we went out for a posh fish dinner down by the river with Bob's cousin and family, who has recently moved house.

Next day we visited them at home and drove
down the A12 back to London for two nights with Neil and Maggie in Forest Hill, including a meal with them and Paul and Cheryl:- six of us all active in the local Labour Party before Blair - and just one still a member (I think). All working or retired public servants and appalled!

Anyway!

We were slightly thwarted in our plans for the full day in South London by motor troubles! Strange messages from the dashboard computer made us nervous about a journey to Greece, and then starting became a problem, so we took the car to a Fiat dealer in Catford for work under the warranty. They were very helpful and soon rang us to say it was (yes!) a loose battery connection. Thank you, nice Girona Parking People!

And so on 7th May we returned to Dover and hence Dunkirk - 13 days and just under 1000 miles in UK.

Some fine real ale consumed (Youngs, Harveys, Adnams, Fullers)

Some bargains purchased for Greek and Fuerte apartments, summer clothing and paperbacks!

Car serviced and taxed!

Supplies of teabags, horseradish sauce and toiletries replenished.

Some lovely family and friends seen, some delightful English scenery appreciated... but "No!" we are in no hurry to spend any longer than that.

That Sceptred Isle (one corner thereof)!

Barcelona Airport to Girona Airport by very slow train and last bus. Bob had forgotten about the weather and was wearing shorts - not good!

Next day the wonderful Punt Central parking people did their thing! We phoned them and were picked up at the hotel within five minutes. Yvette had been moved from her underover spot and she was waiting sparklingly clean and with re-connected battery.

We even crossed the Pyrenees without rain. There was some solid driving for the next few days:- first to Toulouse, then to Abzac in Charente to see Penny George and Gregory (who also housed our camping kit in their barn), and then 700 plus kilometres to Dunkirk. We did this on a new route recommended by George, using the A28 via Le Mans and Rouen rather than the Paris wide-sweep. (The tolls are about the same, but the autoroute is very quiet)

We crossed to Dover on April 24th - smooth, efficient and cheap! We then took the coastal route to Worthing where we were staying for the first couple of nights as Brighton was expensive. We did meals and shopping with Chloe, visited Devil's Dyke with Alistair and Josiane on a beautiful Sunday then returning to their Rotherfield home for the night, went to our Balham home and then drove back to stay a few
more days in Brighton. There was lunch with the family in Hampshire and a car service - when the sun shone and we rode to the Marina and then along the Undercliff Path, and a foul day when we went to Littlehampton and did little more than the washing!

For the May Day weekend we collected Chloe and Chris from Sussex Uni on Friday and went to Oxford. Fortunately we got away early and only had a taster of M25 Hell. We stayed at Chris' home for three nights, with his parents off for a city break after the first one. So we were all able to go out together to a Lebanese restaurant before they left. Then we were the guests of Chloe and Chris - who cooked and entertained in a charming parent/child role reversal. One event was an afternoon at a pub on the river - complete with hot-air balloons overhead. We did some cycling round the city -(so well managed!) sensible shopping and visiting of of family homes and graves in Botley.