A beautiful walk with friends

Friday  2nd December

On the way back from checking a friends house last night, a photo opportunity beckoned.

This is looking down on Kato Hora. When I got home I had my dinner, a shower, no need to put the heater on, the sun had some it’s good work. I caught up on a couple of the Louis Theroux interview documentaries. Outside it was blowing a gale. But wrapped up in my blanket on the sofa, ipad on my lap, glass of wine in my hand, I was almost in heaven. 

So to today, I fed the cats, they were waiting for me by Markela’s shop, quite a way from their feeding place. They followed me up there, Pied Piper style. The imposter kitten hasn’t been around for a couple of days. I was to do the miners track with my Slovenian friends, I picked them up from Livadi and drove them up here. We set off, it was a lovely day, sunny and the wind was still. It was the the perfect day to do the walk, not too hot, but not chilly. What we had was tufts of grass growing between the stones, the bulbs coming up and the shrubs starting to go green again. The other thing we had was the sound of water. You could hear and see water running down the ravine, towards the wash house. There were puddles of water, but the path was generally dry. 

We got to the church at the top of the track, and carried onto the road. As usual we turned right and headed down towards Hora. There were more mini waterfalls to see, far ahead we saw a small fire on one mountain. It wasn’t clear wether it was deliberately started, it’s been so wet, I wondered what was burning, I would have expected it to be soaking wet. On the road we passed a car with a man and two dogs in it. I took a photo of the dogs, but the man wanted me to take a photo of him and the dogs, because he was worried the dogs only photo might show he was leaving the dogs on their own in his car. So I retook the photo.

We saw some goats, high up and safe from us. It’s funny when you look out towards the sea and the other islands you get these clouds with a flat bottom and fluffy on the top. Eventually Hora came into view and we got back to the car. As we were about to get into it we saw the cat sitter, and he came down to Livadi with us. We had a coffee in Grans, I had learnt some new Greek words, and I cobbled together a short sentence which said something like “I speak a little Greek but not well”, as usual my confidence made me fluff it up. But they got the idea. But one of them said the “not well” bit wasn’t the way they would say it, and was given a better alternative to remember! I then asked them where the name “Grans” came from, it’s actually the first letter of the names of the owner and relatives and that spelt Grans. Amazing,

But more was to be revealed. The guy who does the deliveries, like many locals, he has multiple jobs. I know he worked at Blue Bird, he also is a DJ at a restaurant Metalleio where he plays Greek music. The only problem is that the night starts at midnight! That’s very late for me. But I think I will make the effort to go, I am sure there will be a lot of people there that I know and it will be fun! I will have to walk home, but that might be a good thing, walk off the alcohol!