My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

I almost burst into tears when I arrived here — out of sheer delight!  It is a beau­ti­ful, quite and undeveloped island with a few Greek hol­i­day makers (and the French couple with the young child we chat­ted to on the first day).  It feels so much ‚ore relaxed and gentle this way, with just local vis­it­ors, and the com­par­ison with the Scottish islands comes to mind again.  Arriving here felt quite like arriv­ing st Eigg — a few loc­als chat­ting and hanging out at the har­bour cafe, in no hurry to do any­thing other than drink strong Greek cof­fee and watch and nat­ter. [Read more →]

Da, doo, da, donk, donk, donkey,

Da, doo, da, donk, donk, donkey,

Da, doo, da, donk, donk, donkey,

Unda da olive tree [Read more →]

The camp­site is big and com­mer­cial, tents packed close together. There’s a swim­ming pool — the kids would spend the whole time there if we didn’t drag them out to the beach! It’s much too hot to sleep in the tent, so Callum and I sleep on the beach under a tam­ar­isk tree, blas­ted by sand blown by the meltemi (the hot sea­sonal wind). [Read more →]

…and last night I couldn’t sleep…

Callum and Chris slept on the beach here on Serifos last night cos it was so hot in the tent, even with both doors open, and I slept in the hot tent cos it was so windy down on the beach!!  Callum slept until 8.30 even whilst wild sand­storms raged about him.  The ele­ments are cer­tainly chal­len­ging, and makes us think yet more about cli­mate change and the urgent need to act quickly to avoid yet more wild windy heat that makes cul­tiv­a­tion impossible. [Read more →]

When I first talked to our friend Rachael about our jour­ney a few months ago, she described it as a “sac­ri­fi­cial” action. Rather an inter­est­ing choice of words, I thought. “Sacrifice” these days tends to have unfor­tu­nate con­nota­tions of osten­ta­tious self-deprivation, or empty ritual. [Read more →]

!1. The icy cream is YYYUUUMMMYYY!!! and it comes

in lots of different flavours*  ** [Read more →]

We docked at Patras on time, found the sta­tion and within no time were tuck­ing into fresh greek bread, feta, olives and toma­toes from the local shop, and a freddo (iced espresso — this season’s trend­i­est drink!)  A well earned decent feast — food on the ferry was a bit sparce due to the pricey food on board and the lack of shops to pur­chase any­thing other than souven­irs in Venice, and shops being shut in Ancona (Sunday) — but we enjoyed our stale bread and jam and felt like real trav­el­lers! [Read more →]