Another new walk

Wednesday 28th  - Hora and Livadi

So this little shop is new to Hora since I was here last time. I haven’t been in but it looks nice from the outside. When they are open they have a stone cat sitting on the wall.

I have been trying to work out about paying my Vodaphone bill on the sim that provides my Wi-Fi, here in the house. The web page spurts out an error and the chat bot is useless. Anyway I found this page where you could ask for help, great! So I logged my request and someone rang me! He said you need to ring this number, they will help. I thought my prayers were answered. I rang it, and I got a recordered message. Including a Press 9 for English. I pressed 9, it remained in Greek. It was another bot. When I said things, it reacted, I managed to use google translate to get bits of what it was saying. In the end I kept repeating “I want to pay my bill” and “ I want to speak to a human”. The bot finally changed its message and it was clearly putting me in a queue to speak to a human. Not long afterwards I was speaking to someone, no, wrong department, I will transfer you. Transferred I spoke to this charming  young girl. I am never angry with these people. They are doing their best and it’s must be a horrible job. 

So she apologised more times than I have had hot dinners. The technical fault which is stopping me top up, will be resolved soon!  Could I use the Vodaphone app? No sorry. From what I have heard, it’s even worse than the web pages! If it’s doesn’t work on the due date, I can ring this number. Ok I said, but that’s a bit of a nuisance! I asked about other things,, it’s not worth boring you all with them. I thought I was safe with the mobile number as I had topped that up. But no, not so! I need to select the package every month that I want! This is all quite horrible. But as many times as she apologised she said “don’t worry!” I could I see her shrugging her shoulders as she said that. Everyone does that. When something happens here, like the ferry is late or cancelled, you get that reaction  “oh well, never mind”. You have to get into that zone when you are here, or you are not going to survive. In the UK, people would be crawling up the wall, tearing their  hair out. But the Greeks are right, we are so lucky. Really.

So today it’s windy like the UK, and the top of the mountains opposite me are shrouded in cloud. I think I might have heard rain last night, but it’s hard to tell with all the rumpus going on outside! We are hoping this wind will ease as it might put in jeopardy my friends visit tomorrow. There is a limit to the wind  speed above which  they won’t run. 

Last night I got a nice panorama shot.

Yesterday I did pop in the Post Office to check on my letter, no luck! I think a month is quite a reasonable time for a letter to arrive here. I will keep checking just in case.

As if my trough wasn’t full enough, I have another addition, although I might move things into the new pots when I get the compost for them. I think I mentioned there are two types of bulbs that are native here. One flowers in the spring, the other is flowering now. Both put up a spiky shoot on which flowers appear. So when I went up to take one of my sunset shots, I saw one of these bulbs (the spring ones I think) just lying around. It’s probably been disturbed by people walking on the track. So I picked it up and popped it in the trough. I hope it’s not dried out too much.

So after a look at my map I saw I could do a slight revision to my reservoir walk. In fact the start was different too, I went down beside the Coffee tavern and instead of going down the steps and through peoples yards, I carried on to see if that track joined the track I wanted to get to, which leads to the church and graveyard, let’s call it terrapin alley. The track carried on, and then ended, but there were steps heading down, they had the edges painted white as they do in Hora. The steps did join my track which is great. I carried on to the church, had a quick look at the terrapins and where the path veers off to the reservoir, I turned left. From the map before this track ended, there should be two tracks going right. Each went behind the reservoir and then joined the main road to Livadi. Sure enough there were two paths. I have found some of these paths on the map, don’t always exist or my map reading is rubbish. These paths were both lined with dry stone walls which must add to their permanence. I took the second one which immediately went over a concrete bridge. 

Later on I saw a plaque by a ruined building, translated it said it was Town Hall Eleth, Palaiou.

Eventually the reservoir appeared and Livadi of course. Here things got a bit confusing and I realised I had joined the next track without realising it! But no matter, I was on the right path. There was a track that could have been interesting, but of course it ended abruptly! Eventually I ended up on the main road walking down. There was a couple getting ready to go in their car, I could hear they were English. So we got chatting and somehow the fact that I was a dog sitter came out. They said shall we have a coffee, we will drive you down. So we had a lovely coffee and chatted about Greece, dog sitting and so on. I have their contact details as they might need me in September next year. They live on Dartmoor. They are going to Tinos today. 

As I had hitched a lift with this kind couple, I decided I should walk up to Hora. At the garage, the King was filling up his Audi, he gave me a friendly wave,  then this lady waved frantically at me as she drove past me. I waved back, a bit puzzled. But I then realised she is the lady owner of the Taverna next door. Finally half way up to Hora, the guy who said hello to me before, was their with his partner. I ended up having a chat with them, they are Nancy and Marcos. He has been coming here since 1957! They live in Athens, will go back when the weather turns. I then finished my climb and I am now relaxing on the roof, it’s still windy but the sun is out! I can go down the other track next time, that looks interesting as it will be near an attractive ravine.