The Good, the Bad and the Ugly..

September 22nd - Hora, roundabout and Livadi

So I forgot a couple of bits of news yesterday. When I was in the Medical centre, they had this bookcase with books, that you could borrow. Well not surprisingly most were in Greek, I did see a couple of Agatha Christie ones! There was a single English one, by Mary Higgins Clark, I’ve got you under my skin. The number they gave me to book an appointment with the physiatrist, not much luck there, I did speak to one person, but they put the phone down on me, other times it just goes to voicemail. I will try more times today. I made a bit more progress on the Vodaphone bill payment. 

The Thai red curry was good, the only thing I would say is the chicken was not chicken breasts. I don’t know much about  chicken anatomy, but I would like these were pieces off other bits of the chicken and there was a bit of gristle and fat I had to trim off. We don’t really have a butchers here, and the sort of Sainsburys and Tesco are not here! Which is good, but you just need to work around what you can get. I have two more frozen meals in the freezer now.

One of the things I have started doing as well as these blogs, is writing a items for the TRHA newsletter each month. It’s a bit of fun, but hopefully members are enjoying the write up of a gardener here on Serifos.

So we had a lot of cloud coming over from the mountains last night, and this morning after a brief visit to the roof I decided we had some rain  overnight. Maybe I could come up with a measuring device to understand rainfall amounts? It was too cold and windy to sit up on the roof this morning, the weather forecast says it’s low twenties for a few days before warming up again. When I look after Ronnie, my friends from Sifnos will be bringing the clothes I left over there including a fleece and cagoule. 

I had an idea to have a separate email and Appleid on my old UK phone. This would be useful to use these as a recovery email for my main accounts in case something goes wrong. The other thing I planned to do is set the region and location information on that old phone to Greece so I have access to the Greek Apple apps store, so I can load the Greek Vodaphone App. 

My creative juices must be running well today. As I have said when  I ring the number I was given at the Medical Centre, I still keep getting a recorded message in Greek. I decided I could translate what was being said. So I rang the number and used my iPod to record the message. I then setup Google Translate to use the microphone on my phone and I played the message back on the iPod. I then got my translation. It said that I should leave a message and they would call me back. I rang them and left a message with my Greek phone number. If this doesn’t work, my next plan is to compose a message and translate it into Greek with Google Translate and play it after I ring the number! 

Before I did the walk I went to the supermarket to get some things for tonights meal, and something for lunch. I threw my rubbish in the bins, there were some chicken bits in it, there was a cat looking on, I wonder if  it found the chicken?  I got some frozen Salmon and Pollack. I also asked the owner where she got her hair cut. She is going to give me the number. She uses a dentist in Livadi, I might try and find them at some point.

So todays walk started really well. Behind the house is what is called the miners track, I have been on it before, but going the other way. It’s amazing when you do that, you see so many different things! The path starts not being very well made, if at all, then gets good enough to take a car on it, then goes back to a scruffy path. The path goes past Agios Georgios, which is where I met the Swedish family last time. Here last time I got lost, but this time I kept on the path and came out on the helicopter access road.

I walked along a few hundred yards, then turned left along a dusty track. Here there were lovely views of the mountains. After a while I came across an area where there was clearly water about. I went into it and there were loads of little pools. Frogs leapt into the water to get away from me. A deeper pool revealed two terrapins! Unfortunately they were shy, and disappeared before I could take a photo of them. Sure enough a Google says there is a Balkan terrapin and that’s what I saw. Here is a photo of the frog however.

I then saw a pretty church, this one should be Agios Panteleimonas! I then saw a field full of coloured beehives, but they were too far away to get a decent photo.

I then followed the track round and down and saw Agios Panagia. 

Here is where the ugly bit of the walk. The map showed there should be a path down to Livadi, and join a track which runs through an industrial  estate that I have walked through to get to a church. Anyway, my golden rule should have been turn round and find another way. But I can be stubborn. What made it worse was there were two Greek guys arguing about where the path was, in the end I took a punt and went downhill. Eventually it got very difficult And I was walking through thick spiky shrubs and crossing dry stone walls. I knew as long as I kept near the stream bed, that would be a good thing to do. I ended up having to go along the bed itself where there were huge canes, I felt like I was Humphrey Bogart in the African Queen! Every so often a path would appear, then as quickly as it did, it ran out. But eventfully a path did appear through Olive trees and I got to the industrial estate. I will take a look at the map and see if I can find a better way and finish the walk in a different way. I suspect there might be many paths like this unfortunately! I finished walking into Livadi, treated myself to an ice cream and got the bus back to Hora. The bus itself, was so full I had to stand. Flora one of the girls who serves in the Bakers was on the bus, she lives in Panagia. I did not know the 2.30 but goes all the way there.