I am a Traveller - You are a Tourist - He is a Holidaymaker!

After our three days we took the bus down to Maspalomas - as we have done several times now -  for a lazy break based on a tourist complex. We were happy to return to Vista Flor - this time 60 per cent Scandinavian in occupancy - but at least they are generally well-behaved! We didn't do much - but that was the idea! Bob rented a bicycle for a few days and went for some rides up and down the coast. Ruth sometimes took the bus to meet him at strategic points. On one occasion he spotted a Paleo pal:- Fred (as in Zygos) had said he would be there, and  he was! It was very warm most of the time and Ruth used the outdoor pool on four of the days, but the wind was strong and gusty - preventing beach and sea activity. Both the world economy and global climate change have done yet more damage since last year. At commercial centres there are more closed businesses (especially at Faro2 which is reduced to just three restaurants), and at the big beach the wind and tides have swept away vast amounts of sand to greatly reduce beach depth. Various attempts have been made to reduce this erosion, but the effects don't look impressive!

Whenever we mentioned where we live there would be a remark about Fuerteventura being "quiet", and we were - once again - struck by the fact that the Gran Canarian resorts are different from Corralejo (although perhaps not too different from Caleta de Fuste!). In Maspalomas there is no sense that it is a functioning town, the timeshare menaces are still very present and active, restaurants all seem to have the same menu (often with pictures and/or translations into Finnish, Russian, etc), and Spanish is rarely heard! On the other hand there are some nice touches which come from the island having been developed for so much longer:- like the well-established Botanical Gardens, and substantial bus network.
We flew back on the Saturday and encountered rain at Las Palmas airport! We even managed to co-ordinate with Eileen who was picking someone up at the airport, so we were home  in super-quick time, with just two birthday-related activities ahead of us - Bob's registration with the Spanish Health Service, and the hosting of the tapas evening!
The former involved a bus trip down to Puerto del Rosario, bearing many, many documents. We found the right place, pulled our queue number from the machine, and waited half an hour or so. Then it was in to the fray, use Ruth's increasingly fluent Spanish, show the white paper from UK (S1), the green paper, the passport copy and off we went smiling!  We celebrated with tapas at our favoured bar near the port, seeing the new Olsen service (fast to Las Palmas), and in delightfully sunny weather. Then we did the business at the couriers to send off passports for Indian visas, had a beer and got the bus back! Jobs done!
... and then there was the party.. read on!

Hard Times for Some

As it happened our party day was also Election Day in Spain. Not much sign of it in Corralejo - some posters and a PP rally (the nasty ones!) - partly because of the Canarian parties. We had intended to locate a red rose to show our allegiances, but forgot - and that just makes worse the depression over the loss of the last significant socialist government in Europe!
Midweek we flew very, very cheaply to Las Palmas for the significant birthday! We stayed as before for three days near Canteras beach. They were preparing  the Belen sand sculpture for Christmas, but already in place was this magnificent opus for the elections. If you can interpret the precise message you have done better than us. Seemed in the right spirit, though!

 On the birthday itself we wandered down to the port area and saw that the Cunard "Queen Elizabeth" was visiting. Huge! Pleasingly it had deposited around the area - albeit for a very short time span - loads of pretty infirm pensioners! Greyrocks felt less decrepit!
We had some strong winds, but it was also frequently very hot. We checked out Galia :- the lovely French restaurant we had in mind for birthday dinner! It was closed and shuttered. Crisis and very sad! Later we came across the (former) owner, but couldn't ask the main question! He offered us a steak at another restaurant he is associated with. We declined and went instead to Triana at the other end of the city . Whilst wandering round looking for a place for lunchtime tapas we found La Travesia,,  saw its menu and booked for the evening. It is a charming old-style tapas bar, and treated us magnificently:- serving the craved duck magret beautifully cooked, and then bringing free flan with sparklers, and the punters sang Cumpleaños Feliz! And then half of Greyrocks was on a State Pension!
We atyed another day and then headed for Maspalomas.

Birthday Bashing

Half of Greyrocks is now on a state pension! Bob's birthday happened by design in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria - see next post - but just before we left Fuerteventura we held an event to celebrate it (and Ruth's almost forgotten 60th) with Corralejo chums.

We invited about 70, and about 50 turned up at some point in the afternoon or evening. Mike at the Casbah next door to the Rock did a buffet, we added some nibbles and Eileen made the cake. Pete and Dave took the request for some live music very seriously, and in fact played for hours. They had previously met a tourist called Mandy, and she did some numbers, as did our local Mel.

..and here is the slide show..

A good time was had by all!

Up in the Air - and Back on the Air

After the Lattes campsite we had one night in Perpignan (as did the Scttish rugby team) and then one in Salt near Girona. Thanks to Ryanair (Grrr) with its serious partial withdrawal from Girona airport we needed to avail ourselves of a new free service offered by Punt Central Parking. After saying goodbye to Yvette we were driven to Caldes railway  station which connects easily with the Barcelona airport Metro service. It takes a very long time, but works and is more leisurely  than the bus alternative. Then a packed flight and a pick-up by Windows Dave.
Home again - and a busy time of re-integration, research and repair! It was also the run-up to Bob's Big Birthday, but more of that later! The weather was wonderful at times, but did also feature a red alert for high tide, and some heavy showers. The atmosphere around town is more upbeat than we feared. In our absence:

• The old town re-paving has been finished and looks good
• The urn water feature has been removed after being smashed
• The Cafe Lounge has been under a couple of new managements and fingers are crossed
• The Temple Bar has moved
• Two new and very popular tapas bars have opened near the Shell Staion (one is the old Piratas)
• At the top of the High Street there are major roadworks to widen foot and cycle paths, but make the road one-way
• Our complex has the contentious artificial grass round the pool
• It is impossible to buy The Guardian and Independent

On a beautiful Sunday we made our first trip to the big beach, and caught sight of the International Kite Festival. Bob walked a long way further south for a better view - and here it is:

And back by popular demand... Ruth is once again on the radio, with a regular slot of Wednesday 12 till 2pm, and doing some cover slots, too! So tune in online to Hot FM for an eclectic mix of music and a teasing competition.

Languedoc for beginners

 So the second half of October was a blank slate. The weather predictions were slightly better for France than for Catalunya so after collecting the car we turned right rather than left from Girona, and headed into the region of Languedoc-Roussillon. The plan was to start at Lattes - almost a suburb of Montpellier but even closer to the sea (just west of La grande Motte), and then to come back south and stop at either Agde or Canet - the then favourite spots on this bit of coast. There was a slight thwarting of plans when we turned up at the selected campsite to discover there were two exhibitions on and so no space other than for tents. It was not tent weather, so we spent the night in a local Premier Classe, ate at the Campanile and went back the next day to Camping Le Parc to hire a mobile home. This was an excellent base, and the mobile was almost new and very comfortable. For the first week it was also very quiet - just a few camper-vans. We liked it so much that we booked a second week, making this the accommodation in which we have had the longest stay ever in France! It became busier, with the French half-term holiday, but still very restful. We stayed until it was about to close for the season.

Lattes is not exactly scenic - mostly huge shopping opportunities! It is also currently afflicted by major road works to make a new third tramway through the agglomeration - as far as the sea. This will go down the middle of widened roads, and will - in the spirit of Montpellier described in the Spring - be a grand projet to be proud of! If you don't understand how much better the French are at them take a look at this. Crisis, what crisis! On one of our cycling trips we saw a tram doing a trial run with dignatories and press in attendance.

The weather was - unsurprisingly - mixed! Here is the Metéos' map for one of those six or so days when we were definitely not going for a bike ride! This is when enormous French shopping malls come into their own, and when cheap Wi-fi with BBC radio plays and readings are de rigeur!  .. but there were also a handful of days when the weather was better than we had left behind in Greece! We much enjoyed the nearest seaside spot of Palavas - reached by cycling down the side of the Lez, and we also cycled  upstream to the centre of Montpellier on a beautiful day. There was a film festival in progress and we were once again impressed by this lovely city. We had just finished watching a series of TV programmes about Pathé so this building caught our notice!

 On the dodgy days we went out by car and visited other coastal towns. Le Grau was fairly quiet and attractive. On the way back a navigational error took us closer than planned to Aigues Mortes where there was a Camarguais show of some sort going on; and - of course - we saw a lot of flamingoes!

Star prize for energetic pursuit goes to Bob, who - on a perfect cycling day-rode to Perols and then alongside the Canal do Rhone à Sète ending up back in Palavas -a  ride of one and a half hours and flat as a pancake! He was then tempted by the dégustation of seafood - but resisted!

Adio, Ciaou, Hasta la vista and Bonjour!

One of the benefits of being retired nomads is the time available for travel research, This leads - in our case - to serious miserliness about fares. So when, in September Rainer casually mentioned that Ryanair had started flying from Chania to Frankfurt-Hahn we were onto their website like rats up a drain, because getting anywhere sensible directly so that Athens can be avoided has to be a good thing :-  and cheap!

On closer inspection this particular route proved expensive, but the other new one we found is Chania-Milan (Bergamo). So this how we plaaned the migration this time:



... and such a good price!

As time passed in Crete the benefits of missing out Athens became more apparent. The images on the BBC news website of accumulating rubbish as a result of the strike by municipal workers brought to mind the unsavory nature of the streets round the Piraeus port even in strke-free times, and the prospect of roaming around for half a day and then being crammed into a crowded airport bus was not inviting. With no air traffic control strike on the day of travel we thought we had struck(!) a neat solution, with the greatest stress being a very long wait in Bergamo airport.  In reality we were somewhat touched by the Greek troubles. We ran from the Paleo bus to the airport bus at Chania with1 minute to spare. At the airport the departures board showed that every outgoing flight was delayed. Every so often the Aegean announcer made a strong statement about the unjustfiable ATC work to rule. We were told we were delayed by at least two hours:- no problem for us! It was a beautiful sunny day, so we wandered over to the old airport taverna for a beer or two, and found a full charter planeful of Danish tourists on a much longer delay being herded, addressed and fed by their reps. We were in fact three and a half hours late getting away.

Bergamo airport landside is completely dominated by Ryanair and rather uniform, but could clearly be a useful way of getting to Milan (three competing coach firms available for the city centre), and is a serious hub for all Europe. We mooched around, had a fairly good meal and then a long queue for security with the rudest personnel in attendance. Airside is a bit more interesting, and again we saw it for longer than planned as we had a delay of an hour and a half! Still, it all worked and we were in our hotel room within 30 minutes of landing, and it was - after all - very cheap!

Next day it was a pick-up by Margarita and delivery to waiting Yvette, diesel, tyres and over the border in two hours.

So - in 24 hours we had had footfall and sustenance in four nations. Someone has to do it!

Disturbing the Peace...

... Strikes, Storms, a Moving Experience and Things that go Bump in the Night!
First Max returned home, then the weather went a bit dismal, then Chloe went home.. but not as planned!

Through the summer there have been a number of threatened air traffic control strikes, but they were mostly called off having been declared illegal, or were just for a few hours. On October 5th it was to be the full McCoy of a strike and so all Greek airports would be closed. This was the day she was booked to return, and immediately start work. Fortunately Easyjet handled this well, and she switched to the previous day's flight - an early one! It wasn't pleasant feeling responsible for getting her up and to her early airport lift after her very late night at Agios, but it happened and she made it.

So we settled down to enjoy our last ten days and deal with the close-down. A serious storm was on the way. On the Wednesday it was glorious, and we stayed late on the beach, thus capturing Stelios as he fished beside the cantina. On Thursday there was more wind and cloud, but it turned out to be our last dip in the sea for the season,  because the beach was no place to be for the next five days! Friday was dull, windy and (relatively) cold. We sat at the Seagull watching a few hardy souls on the beach, whilst Tomas and Tony dug up parasols and stacked sunbeds in preparation. So Saturday was bound to be the day!

We lurked around in the gloom until early afternoon, and then decided to risk a walk over to the Oriental Bay. Then the heavens opened! We were sitting under their solid-looking thatched roof, and it held for a while, but the water on the floor flooded towards our feet, and then the holes in the roof were found. Thunder, lightning, invisible Crocodile, and a drenching just to get to the loo! This lasted for hours, then we ventured forth, but got no further than the old Coconuts, where we met Olga and Stephen and were caught again - this time inside! The day ended with a meal at The Crocodile which was having its last night of the season (in anticipation of the storms). We had a very jolly (and cosy) time inside with two other parties and Giorgos clearing the decks, then waded home through a deserted village.

On Sunday the main talking point was the state of the sea. It did also rain dramatically in the middle of the day, but dried up somewhat, leading to attempts to go the beach, but the wind, swell and high tide had done a lot of damage:- several strong wooden parasols had been uprooted and were in the sea, and the poor cantina was in a very bad way, despite the sandbags! We speculated as to what might have happened to the sand which has been disappearing steadily through the season to give the worst ever entry to the sea. The answer is - it had got worse, with vast plates of rock newly exposed. Not a great time to arrive in the village, but at last Jim and Susan did - seriously strike-bound en route! We all met at Zygos after the last Scrabble of the season (which included a famous win for Ruth!)

Nor, frankly, a great time to be moving accommodation, but we did!

We have been spending the summers since  September 2007 in a very spacious and well-located apartment in a family house; but were told in July that the owner needed to move back into it by the Spring, so we embarked on a quest for somewhere new. We were told that the best time to look is September, and indeed - on cue -  there was a sudden outbreak of yellow and red notices fixed to posts around the village with handwritten details of various places to rent. They were - of course - in Greek, so we needed some help with calls, and also used the local newspaper and plenty of word of mouth. We looked at total wrecks we could have had rent-free, luxurious tourist places and some dingy hovels; but have ended up renting an apartment on the stony beach side. It is smaller than the current one, but a lot cheaper and still has a sea view. It is owned by someone from one the five main village families but who lives in Athens, and we feel lucky to have found it and done the deal. The idea was to move our stuff before leaving the island but not to actually inhabit until next year. So it was on Stormy Monday that we borrowed a pick-up and driver and did the deed - with help from Jeff and Mick to go up and down the stairs (Ruth's knees and stairs not being a fruitful combination at the moment!) We have accumulated a huge amount of stuff considering that we have been in furnished accommodation! We managed to dodge the rain and have it all done in an hour. Later that day the afternoon deteriorated into an appalling storm. We sat in Cosmogonia waiting for dry spells so we could get home, and were there for three hours. Down at the Skala the waves were huge and parked cars were getting deluged!

We had arranged for a visit by our landlady the next afternoon, and planned on a serious clear-up and clean, but at around midnight there was a crash and Ruth's feet were lower than before, then another and they were on the floor! After more than four years of faithful service the bed had broken, and when inspected we found it is a miracle it hadn't happened before! The landlady agreed! Wednesday was rather better weather-wise! In fact the cinq a sept was spent sitting on a lawn beside a pool with well-tended flower beds and classy garden furniture. Friends are going to over-winter in a pair of adjoining luxury tourist studios and invited us over. From there we went to an oldies night at the Skala, which was a real success! On our last day the sun came out properly and we managed a few hours on the beach. The sea was a bit cold, but the main difficulty was getting into it, so there was no real last swim - just a paddle, and then the summer was declared over as far as we are concerned!