Bob's Blog

This Blog will follow my adventures - well holidays really. Hopefully you will want to tell me what you enjoyed in the countries I have visited and maybe recommend places to go.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Walking on the Island of Evia (June 2007)

Evia is the second largest of the Greek Islands and is a long thin island to the east of the mainland. From Athens airport it is a 4 hour drive to Karystos, where the holiday was based, or a couple of 15 minute coach trips each side of a pleasant one hour ferry ride. Exodus arranged a late night flight and the long drive for our outward journey and the ferry route for the return. At least we had forgotten that awful outward journey after a great holiday.
Just 7 of us in the group and we gelled straight away, maybe helped a lot by the American breaking down some British reserve. Despite a very basic hotel and the noisy dredging of the harbour, that made it almost impossible to relax on the balcony, the holiday was excellent.
The walks, particularly down the breathtaking Dimosaris Gorge were all enjoyable and all ended on a beach, usually secluded and invariably beautiful. Potami was the pick of the beaches and some of us revisited it. The sea was gloriously clean and welcoming.
The weather was classic Greek - wall to wall blue skies, no cloud and temperatures in the high 20’s.
The food was perhaps the best I have had on a Greek holiday.
Even on our ‘rest’ day the group stayed together and had a lovely cruise on the fishing boat ‘Melissa’, visiting a small island off the coast and yet another wonderful beach.
All of this happened the way it did because Roger, our guide, knew just about everything we wanted to know about this part of Evia. So, we did the best walks, ended on the best beaches, met in the best tavernas and had great service and food from them.
Largely it is an island for the Greeks - the development is to provide holiday homes and accommodation for Athenians. However it is certainly worth exploring - you get all the good things Greece has to offer without having to put up with the Brits on holiday!

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Friday, June 01, 2007

Northumbria May 2007

How lovely to have good friends who will let you use their luxury caravan! L and family have a caravan on a very secure and beautiful site about 40 mins drive from their home and 5 miles from Alnwick Gardens. It has large living room, fitted kitchen, 2 bedrooms, 2 loos, so has more to offer than my house.
C and I stayed there, the idea being that I would show her Alnwick gardens and she would show me puffins. We managed so much more as the weather was great for the whole week - L could not believe that day after day there were blue skies. We saw the Gardens to C’s delight; Craster and we walked to Dunstanburgh castle. Bamburgh and Walkworth Castles and Lindisfarne (Holy Island) with all the mystique that surrounds it. A boat trip from Seahouses took us to the Farne Islands and wonderful views of puffins just 10 m away and many other sea birds nesting at out feet and terns attacking our heads. We made an early morning trip to Ross camp with fabulous views of the castles on the coast and the Cheviots
A wonderful week and we so want to return to that magnificent part of England.





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Jive Addiction Dance Holiday La Pineda May 2007

This was my 9th dance holiday and possibly the 4th time I have been to La Pineda! I must like it!
The teaching was very good;
Jim and Nicky with smooth jive - very much to my liking.
Ian and Mandy with tango in jive and Mandy with pilates and some solo jazz dance which had some amazing exercises to warm us up. I could not locate the muscles that were supposed to move parts of my body!
Peter and Evelyn with dips and drops.
Company was excellent - my good friends L and R from Newcastle, C from Warrington, K and P from Nottingham were the immediate gang but many familiar faces from previous holidays. There seemed to be more women than men so the party atmosphere of the Gran Canaria holiday was not quite generated. Also the food did not seem to be as good as last year (or are we getting too familiar with it) except for excellent tapas on the Saturday night.
I felt my tango improved a lot with the lessons here building on regular lessons in Nottingham - how can L tango so well when she has never done any before!
So a very good week - 3 outings, to Salou for an Italian restaurant and the amazing cocktails which thrilled us all; to Tarragona and its shops, Roman ruins and memories of last year with cake in the same café; and to Barcelona and more shops (!) the Familial Sagrada (6th time for me) and a nice finale of juice and cakes overlooking the port.
A great week which I will undoubtedly repeat!

The Malvern Show Friday 11 May

My good friend C wanted some company to walk around the Malvern Show with her. Visited on Thursday, when it poured with rain all day, so that we could make an early start on Friday, suitably dressed! Walking boots, heavy rain proof jacket and several layers seemed the order of the day. We arrived about 9am, amongst the first 100 people, I should think, and, in dry conditions, set about this show. I wasn’t expecting much and thought we would be done in a couple of hours but it was fascinating - and it stayed dry. The first drops of rain fell as we were walking back to the car at 3pm. We even managed to sit out for lunch (roast pork!) with a watery sun keeping us warm. There were of course lots of plants and I was inspired enough to buy an olive tree, more as homage to Greece than the thought of the crop! Many show gardens and many extras, such as garden furniture, tools, food and wine, art and craft, photographs - so C has a puffin photo for her birthday ahead of our visit to them.
An excellent day out, we felt satisfied that we had seen most exhibits, certainly taken in all that we could. I would go again.