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I’ve finally managed to complete reading the ‘Odyssey’!! No, not Homer’s original. Nor a heavy and testing translation, faithfully true...

Missy Bear has arrived Preveza in the modern region of Epirus, which lies on the eastern coast of the Ionian Sea. If we had strayed a few...

As you know, we’d got as far as Riposto on the east coast of Sicily, where we sat out the storms in the Ionian. We’d pinged a shackle on...

Missy Bear Will cross the Ionian Sea. Depart: 10:00 am, Monday, November 1. From: Riposto, Sicily To: Preveza, Greece Trip: 275 NM Crew:...

This part of the trip has given us a few navigation challenges: crossing over from Sardinia; the yet-to-come crossing of the Ionian Sea...

Richard writes the well-researched, informative blogs on history, art, culture in general really. Aside from the food-related ones just...

We were in Milazzo to bide our time and wait for a moment when Scylla and Charybdis would be asleep, so that we could pass between them...

My previous blog was the theory – here’s the practical. I hope you enjoyed the ‘food through invasions’ blog – I decided on the theme and...

I was sitting in the cockpit typing this yesterday whilst anchored just off St Pietro village (on Isola di Panarea) and looking...

“Sicily has suffered thirteen foreign dominations from which she has taken both the best and the worst. The sequence of different...

In 1131, Roger II had been on a visit to his dominions on the mainland to sort some of the usual issues with his people. One problem town...

When I studied Urban Design at Gloucester University, one of the first things you learn is that no matter how many times the buildings...

You may remember (from ‘The Norman Conquest’) that Roger’s Sicilian campaign started in 1061, when one of the Emirs (Ibn al-Timnah) asked...

I’m not going to dwell too long on our crossing from Sardinia. Richard has written about it in an earlier blog, and I can’t really add...

I have a soft spot for Greece. Greece was only my second foreign country to visit (after a rowing trip to Lille in France). I got there...

Why have sailors since ancient times favoured landing at Drepanum (Trapani) whence to climb Mount Erice (pronounced E-ree-che)? Ten...

It was about 00:30 on Wednesday morning. There was no moon and the sky was a pitch-black shroud punctured by tiny pricks of light of...

There is a great scene in Blackadder Goes Forth about the causes of WW1. Baldrick says “The thing is, the way I see it, these days...

Regular readers may recall that when we arrived in Aubeterre in late August, Richard and I spent some time doing a deep clean of the main...