Hello again, where have we been?????

Hello there, remember us we used to scribble down our antics whilst out here in Corfu or where ever we are……………

Well what can I say, believe it or not we have been very busy. Since we arrived back here after a super stay in Slovenia we had three days to ourselves then from the end of August to the middle of October we had one set of visitors after the other. It started with Reg, then Wendy, then my mum and her sister, then my dad, finally topped off with another visit from Reg. Then last week in October we had a flying visit to the UK.

We are now in the process of planning the driving trip back to the UK which starts with the ferry to Venice on the 24th November. If all goes to plan we will be back in Middleton by the end of November armed with thermals and firelighters.

Yet again we have had another super summer. The job list as usual got longer but we did manage to get through some of the things we wanted to do this year. The sitting room is finished, the extra units for the kitchen are in, the apotheki is in better shape than when we arrived (which is more than can be said for the Greek economy) and we have managed a couple of trips along the way.

In July we went to Meteora on the mainland for a couple of days. In August we had 10 days in Slovenia near Lake Bled in a lovely house in a village called Krnica pronounced ‘Krinitsa,’ (that’s the end of the Slovenian for beginners.) We went with our good friends Mick and Sue. They flew out to Venice from the UK, we ferried to Venice from Corfu and all the connections worked out perfectly. We had a wonderful time in a truly beautiful country. We walked through gorges, down river valleys, alpine mountains, used cable cars, chair lifts, hired bicycles and even used local buses. We also swam in Lake Bled in a purpose made fancy swimming come sun bathing area roped off from the rest of the lake with fancy bouys. It is a fantastic place with so much to offer, well worth a visit. We went down the village shop 7.30ish most mornings and some of the locals were already sat outside the nearby bar with a beer!! A bit early for me…….We had a drive through the Karavanke tunnel and 8km long tunnel through the mountains into Austria, quite an experience. We also had an afternoon in the capital Ljubljana, an excellent time was had by the four of us.

On the way back we called in at Ikea in Padova near Venice and filled the car with kitchen table, chairs and another kitchen unit along with a few other things. We then headed for the ferry back to Corfu which wasn’t too bad for the middle of August.

We then had a string of visitors which went very well and they all seemed to have a good time to the tune that they all want to come again!! We must be doing something right or they just like Corfu, not sure which……….

We then had a week back in the UK before the direct flights finished to see the folks back home, sort out a few things, a couple of socials and I got to see my two grandchildren who arrived within two weeks of each other at the end of September and the middle of October. Max, Aurora and their parents are all doing well with their respective fathers smitten, giddy and very proud of what they helped to make!!!

That brings us up to November where we are on last minute jobs ensuring all will be OK for the winter out here. The weather is lovely with warm sunny days and cool evenings, a far cry from the 30dgs nights of the summer but very nice all the same. We are hoping for a day out this week down south of the island with a few jobs to sort in Corfu town on the way. Other than that we are managing a bit of cycling, walking through the olive groves, the odd social through the week and an occasional coffee in Acharavi.

Slim the cat is still knocking about and was here to greet us when we got back from Slovenia and the UK. It will not be the same back in the UK without his noisy scrounging tones at the back of the door! He is obviously being fed elsewhere, still catching birds and geckos so he is not entirely dependant on us. He will be fine, it’s Mrs D I worry about.

Mrs D has had a good summer I think, there a few things she misses but the weather does help. It’s not been the same for her this year without her friend Vonny. Feet have been the theme of the late summer but I wouldn’t mention them unless you have plenty of time. Her tomato patch was still ripening well into September and has been a success apart from a watering mix up with the neighbours when were away in Slovenia. Some fool left the hosepipe running for a couple of days!! We have limes, lemons and oranges all coming on the trees in the garden, the oranges which we will sadly miss but we should have some limes and lemons to take to Middleton.

The car has gone extremely well and we are very pleased with it. We hope it does the same going back to the UK as it did coming and all will be well. We have been using the motorbike quite a bit, indeed we used it for our trip to the mainland. It has also been a winner with the guests who have been out for a spin with me.

Not much else to say now apart from my apologies for not scribbling sooner and we hope we’ve not lost the small following we had.

I’ll do a return journey scribble when we get back to the UK and look forward to catching up with you all at some point over the coming months ‘Yamas’ Mr D

pictures from top are - Agia Triada Monastery in Meteora, Lake Bled and the church, Mrs D with Mick & Sue in the Vintnar Gorge near Bled, L&D looking down on lake Bohinj near Bled, Reg, Wendy, my mum and her sister Dot, my dad, Reg in October, Tom & Max, Sam & Aurora, Slim, sunset at Acharavi, beach near Acharavi and bonfire time in October.

Off again, times flying........

We're long back from our trip to Meteora, the sitting rooms finished and looks great, the toms are doing well and Slims' still hanging about. All these things, apart from Slim need a bit of a write up which I promoise I will do whem we get back from our next trip.

At 0545 tomorrow we head down to Corfu town and the 0700hrs ferry over the high seas to Venice. As you can imagine, Mrs D the seasoned sailor is beside herself with excitement......We will board the ship like a couple of refugees armed with food, drink, mats and sleeping bags for our trip up the Adriatic.

We are meeting our friends Mick and Sue, who are flying out from Leeds Bradford, in Venice at 1100hrs on Friday. Hopefully if it all comes together we are then heading east to the Julian Alps of Slovenia. We will be staying in a place called Bled near the Triglav national park. It looks wonderful so we will have to wait and see. This I guess will be another little scribble I will have to do on our return. I must get off now as we still have much to do before tomorrow so will hopefully be back in a couple of weeks to tempt you with some more travellers drivel before our autumnal string of guests start to arrive. Y'all keep in touch now....Yamas!!

The picture is in Meteora with St Nicholas Monastery in the background.

Where does the time go???

It's the 20th July already! Reg has been and gone, the Toms are coming on strong, the car port's done, Slim's still hanging about, the sitting room ceiling's up and Mrs D is painting - you guessed it, the sitting room ceiling. As you can imagine this task comes with a certain amount of complaining, it's above your head, it's hot, the paint's thin and it gets everywhere!! Enough said I think before I get in bother, easy for me to comment when I'm sat in front of a computer.....

Reg (aka Graham) went last Friday after a two week holiday out here with us. Well, that is if you call painting, labouring, concreting, swimming andd snorkelling a holiday. He seemed to have a good time and we did spend a lot of time by and in the sea. We had no choice tho' as it has been 44dgs daily for about ten days now. We had to resort to being in during the hottest hours and grafting and beaching at opposite ends of the day. I'm not complaining as I keep hearing that splendid word "unsettled" being muttered on the BBC UK weather....

This week I finally got to grips with the olive tree using the chainsaw, seemed to go OK and the only thing that got damaged was the ladders. They'll be OK just a bit of a dent. There are bits of olive tree in a heap in the garden now, some waiting for further sawing, later this week I think. The cycling's getting a little less lately due to the heat, sorry!

Next week, as long as Mrs D survives the ceiling paint job, we are going over to Meteora on the mainland for a couple of days. We are going over on the ferry with the motorbike to give it a bit of a run out. More on this when we are back.

We then have a couple of weeks to hopefully finish the sitting room altogether before we head off up the Adriatic to meet friends in Venice for our trip out to Slovenia. Another adventure which I am sure will  make it to this blog.

We were supposed to be having a beach day today (which in reality means we go to the beach around 2.30pm when it's cooled off a bit. However, it's a bit breezy out with some clouds and the chance of a storm so we decided to stay at home and get on with some jobs. Not much more to report at the moment so I'll sign off and probably be back with some more of this stuff after Meteora. Yamas.....D 

Tortoises, ‘Slim’ & toms.

With all currently rosy in the garden with George’s toms coming on strong and tortoises sneaking through regularly we have a new visitor to the garden……Slim is our new found furry semi-friend. An extremely thin black cat (hence the splendid name.) He is a wild cat but appears most days around dinner time to see if there’s owt going!! Some evenings he hangs around outside sitting in the olive tree so he can see in the kitchen window!! What a cheek.
What else is new…….we are in the process of knocking together a sun shelter for the car. One of those unexpected tasks. I know it sounds silly but yes we do need to try to keep some of the sun off the car or it gets too damn hot to get into (sorry.) Once we have finished that we will be setting about the sitting room ceiling. Reg is here with us now and he always wants a job so we’ve had him on painting before we start on with the ceiling.

We’ve been down to the sea a few times, came second in the quiz (again.) We are off to Arillas this afternoon for some beach and snorkelling. I almost forgot, we went down to Corfu town the other week to see Cunards Queen Elizabeth – very nice. Made Thomsons cruise ship look like a tug!! That’s about it for now so best get on and get sorted for the outing.

More soon - Mr D

The lemon song

I’m writing this in the shade of our umbrella-covered decking area after a Greek lunch of feta cheese, and olives which our neighbour kindly gave us off his own olive trees and they are delicious. Over the fence, also in our neighbours garden, is a very heavily laden lemon tree. He doesn’t give us any of these fruit because we have 3 trees of our own and more lemons that we know what to do with. I make a litre of lemon juice almost daily, I drink lemon tea, I make lemon cakes, lemon merangue pie and we have a slice of lemon on our dinner plate. Every so often we hear a ‘thud’ and know it is the sound of another lemon dropping off one of the trees. This humble fruit grows so prolifically here that we take it for granted – and yet it is beautiful. The fruit is completely untampered with and free from all ridiculous EU regulations. They are shaped just as nature intended, not regulatory size to allow them to fit into a neat little supermarket carboard package and they are free from all that awful wax. I thought they deserved a special mention.

Mrs D

(Thanks to Led Zep for the title of this piece!)

July already.............

Hello again, another round of overdue nonesense follows. It is the first weekend in July and we have been here little over a month. Apart from Greece being all but bankrupt all is surprisingly well out here. The garden is back to order, the house is aired, Mrs D aka George has put the tomato seeds out and all are doing well.

The bike is now working properly again after having a new battery fitted plus an oil and filter change. Also it is now officially Greek with its shiny new Greek plate complete with insurance and road tax!! It only took two years, well all in good time as they say. We are planning a celebratory trip over to the Greek mainland and maybe Bulgaria to mark the occasion, watch this space.

We’ve had a few ‘beach days’ done a bit of cycling locally but that’s dwindling now as it’s too hot during the day (sorry.) On the social front we are managing the quiz on a Tuesday eve with a friend Steve as the third team member. So far we’ve won three times and come second once after a three question tie breaker!! Not bad, with the prize being an English breakfast for two, we now have free breakfasts lined up for all guests all summer!! The Friday early doors ritual continues and we make the odd live music night down at Napoleans one for the road. All in all pretty good so far.

We are also watching with interest the Greek economy story. It is interesting to see what the media has to say and what is really happening here in Corfu with the locals – it would appear that with the Corfiot Greeks here life pretty much goes on as usual. We’ll see what happens on July 15th as to whether the Greek ministers having been telling the truth or not…….

What for the next few weeks, well Reg is here now so we’ll be entertaining for the next two weeks. Then we have the mainland trip before we head off up to Italy early August to meet some friends at Marco Polo airport in Venice before heading off to Slovenia for 10 days in the Julian Alps. More on that later. For now it’s back outside into the sunshine for some ground clearing where we’ve been strimming, could well be BBQ day today as well.

Y’all take care now and more of this nonesense later…………

One week on

It's now Saturday 11th June and we are starting to see some order and some parts of the garden! It took us a few days to get everything to its place and about a week to clear the garden and get to the apothekei. An hour a day in the evening to be precise (when it had cooled down a bit.) Did we mention the sun has shone daily and it's been hot too?

No snakes discovered this time when trimming the weeds back (still a big area to do yet so might report differently later.) We can now park the car, which incidentally did very well on the journey across Europe loaded up to the hilt we are very pleased with it. I digress, back to the garden. There is now room for the car and also for the bike to park now and we can get to and from the apotheki with all the stuff we put in the house for the winter.

The bike, well theres another tale......I had to replace the subframe of the front fairing and when I was reassembling it I accidentally put one of the components back upside down which rendered the machine unable to start causing, headaches, stress and much swearing (Mrs D learned some new repairing expressions.) However I left it for a couple of days and went back to it again, knowing it was something I had done as it was working when I took it apart. I just happened to be leaning on the handlebars staring into the abyss of wires, cables and tubes when I noticed something read "Top" the wrong way up. Quickly I put it right to find this was the cause and what a plonker I was not to notice it in the first place. With bike all working again the next thing is more dealings with Greek officials to get it insured and taxed with my new Greek plate on it - more on the beuracratic nightmare later.

We have had a night out at the quiz - which we won!! Also caught up with a few friends and all is pretty much as it was. We have many things we brought from the UK to finish off the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom so all these will be first jobs before we start on any of this years projects.

This year it could be a paint job for the house, doing out the sitting room, building a partial roof over the decking to keep the sun off and whatever else we find needs doing along the way.

We've now finished the kitchen - hooray!! It looks great too. A few things for the bathroom to fit and a couple of bedside cabinets for the spare room to knock together.

Had our first day in Corfu town which was a bit of a failure on the business front as we are having to go again next week. Still it keeps us busy and out of mischief. Been busy to day so will probably be a movie night in tonight and maybe an evening in Sidari tomorrow to see whats on offer in the way of entertainment this season.

Well best get on and see where Mrs D has got too, been quiet for a while........cheers y'all and keep in touch.

A couple of updated garden pix below.

Back in the sun..

Well – we made it. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the temperature is hot – and the weeds are high. In fact they are reaching for the sky themselves, well past the roof of the car. So first jobs first meaning D has to start strimming furiously just so we can get the car into the garden.

Anyway a brief report on our journey over here and we both agree that it was the best crossing of Europe yet. Obviously the weather helped as it was beautiful in Germany and across into Austria. We camped for a couple of days in the Mosel Valley in Germany, next to a cycle-way but sadly we didn’t have any bikes so we had to walk instead, then we moved on, driving across the country (this was a long day of 350 miles) and into Austria, specifically the Tirol region. This time we camped in a place called Reutte where we have stayed before. It’s a beautiful little town surrounded by the Alps. The weather made the scenery here even more stunning and we managed a cable car ride up into the mountains then a steady walk along the tops. What a view! We also visited the spectacular Neuschwanstein Castle which was built by an eccentric Bavarian king but you may be more familiar with the fact that it was used in the filming of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! After 3 days we had to move on to keep to our schedule so a 150-mile drive brought us to our final campsite in the Dolomite range.

I have to tell you that the most exciting part of this day was our finding an accessible C&A in a place called Telfs! We parked up and rushed in (don’t you just love C&A, I remember being devastated when they closed down in England) and as always D bought more stuff than me! Best shop there is for cheap T-shirts. Anyway back to our journey and our last camp always needs to be within reasonable driving range of Venice but preferably not actually in Venice (the campsites are expensive, mozi-ridden and too populated for our liking) so D had done his research and found us a lovely place in Toblach – ideal for walking in the Dolomites had we had time.

We left there at 8am the following morning and arrived at the Venice ferry terminal at 12.00 where (because our budget doesn’t stretch to cabins) we crammed sleeping bags, rolly mats, water, beer (obviously), butties, crisps, tuna-salads and minimum-sized washbags into two ruc-sacs and two cooler bags ready to be hauled onto the boat for the 24hr crossing. It wasn’t too bad sleeping on deck, we have done it before and know what to expect and as long as you are not too fussy you can usually manage a few hours sleep to the sound of the sea …… still we were glad to ‘disembark’ at Corfu harbour and drive the last part of the journey back, via the supermarket of course and it was a huge feeling of relief when we eventually arrived back at our house. After turning on the water and electric we set about unloading the car and as ever I just cant believe how much stuff we managed to bring.

So we will be continuing to unpack, re-arrange things and strim the garden area for at least the next few days. Still its not all work, in case you were worrying (!). We went down to one of our local bars and had a beer with a couple of friends and we plan to go to quiz night in another or our bars on Tuesday where it should be a lively night as it’s the landlady’s birthday. More later....Mrs D

pix below are from top - Mosel River, camp in Mosel, 2 views from Tirol peaks, camp in Reutte, sunset in Tirol, 3 of Neuschwanstein Castle, 3 in the Italian Dolomites and 3 in the garden we arrived.