OK. I’m predicting that anyone reading this will fall into one of three groups.
The first group will be going “What?”
The second group will be muttering “Oooh, could be rude?”.
And the third group will be saying “Alix love, you’ve got it wrong, there were four and twenty of them! And they came from Inverness”.
For those of you who are luckily unfamiliar with this, it is a play on the opening line of an RAF drinking song which goes, “Four and twenty virgins came down from Inverness”. I won’t continue with the lyrics, but there is a connection later on, so bear with me.
Well, after an exceedingly busy week (unpacking, doing laundry, packing for both of us, admin, seeing the chiropractor, family visits, making Christmas puddings etc.,) we finally got collected at 02.45am on Monday 5 September for our ride to Bristol airport. We arrived at 04.15am, and it was heaving. What happened to the shoulder season being quieter when the schools have returned?
Our journey back to Greece was fairly uneventful to start with. The flight was on time. When we arrived we met friends of Al and Judith from boat Money Penny and we all went out for supper. We probably slightly overdid the wine, but nothing too major.
The next day, laden with bags, we queued in the hot sun for our ferry to Leros. We knew the forecast was for high winds, and the sea state backed this up. We clambered on board and hunkered down.
The ferry (a high-speed catamaran) rocked and rolled like the comedy entrant on Strictly. Craig Revel-Horwood drawled there were more dips than the humuus counter in Waitrose. Every so often, the ferry would rise up, and then slam down onto the sea. This would give rise to a few nervous shrieks from the passengers. I looked up and saw a woman rushing by me. I decided to keep my nose buried in my book, which was actually describing a canoeing trip on a rather choppy sea which didn’t help. Later on, Richard told me that the two in front of us were making use of the sick bags, so was the man behind. I was quite glad to get onto solid ground myself.
We had a taxi meeting us, but the taxi had decided to book in another couple with us as well. We were taking out some new bedding and towels for Missy Bear so we were quite laden, plus our own bags, computer bag and boat papers. The other couple helpfully squashed theirs on their laps.
As we arrived two days before Missy Bear was due to go back in the water, we stayed at a delightful B&B called ‘Il Canto delle Cicale’, run by Amber and David. It is perched up on the hillside above the town of Agia Marina, on the opposite side of the island from Lakki (where Missy Bear was starting to say a tearful farewell to her summer boaty companions).
The more I see of Leros, the more I love the island, and would definitely stay here again. Our room was comfortable, we had a kettle so Richard could have tea, and we relaxed in the garden in swinging chairs and lazed in the jacuzzi.
Neither of us wanted a long meal after the previous night, so we picked our way down a footpath into the village, where Richard had a beer, and I had sparkling water, and we ate a delicious gyros. Afterwards, I said “Let’s get a taxi back up to the hotel” at the same time as Edmund Hillary started to pull on his climbing shoes. Anyway, dear reader, I won, and we found a taxi.
To cut a very long story short, our driver didn’t know where our hotel was (apparently, they tend to go by the owners’ names in Leros, and not the hotel name).
And what’s more, he didn’t have his reading glasses so couldn’t use satnav. Richard said he would give directions from Google maps. Unfortunately, Richard can’t speak much Greek and our driver couldn’t speak any English, so instructions of “left” didn’t get enacted. And maybe his eyesight was so bad he couldn’t see our hand signals? As we turned right instead, Google maps on Richard's iPhone immediately worked out a new route. So, we drove out of town and followed the new Google route instead. We started to climb a very steep, single-track road. Hmmm. As we approach a particularly steep bit, we saw a red jeep parked fully across the road at the side of a house. The taxi driver pulled up and wrenched on the handbrake. He can go no further. Hmm. “Look” cries Edmund, brandishing his phone, “we are only a two-minute walk away, we’ll get out here”. The driver looks dubious. I look horrified. But Richard is already counting out some coins, and the taxi driver gets a phone call and doesn’t really take my side. “Come on” says Richard.
You know what’s coming, don’t you? The reason the car is parked across the road is because that’s where it ends; at a house.
Did I mention it was now dark, and our torches are our iPhones? We walked up past the house, and two dogs came running out and barked at us. There is a path just below the house, and Google maps showed us as being only a couple of minutes away from our hotel. But fifteen seconds in and the path turned to scrub and woodland, and was impassable. That was it. We walked back to another house, where luckily, a man on a scooter had just arrived. We got instructions to down to the main road, where we walked the long way back to the village and to the taxi rank.
We passed the footpath that we had taken earlier down from the hotel. “Right” said Richard, “we’ll walk back up this way”. But at this point, dear reader, I refused. I said I would carry on into the village and find a taxi driver who knew the way.
I won’t bore you with the next bit. The same taxi driver was at the rank, but between a nearby bar owner, the driver and another taxi driver who had just turned up, he said he could find it this time. And he did, to my huge relief. And he refused to take payment a second time!
We told Amber and David the story the next morning, and they so kindly said we should have rung them. They also told us that taxi drivers know all of the churches (!), so next time, ask for Church Dimitri, which is next to the hotel.
The hotel had a lovely garden, with pomegranate trees. I can never see a pomegranate on a tree in Greece without thinking of Andrew, our Australian engineer on flotilla. He asked us one day, “What are those trees with funny apples with stalks on the bottom…?”
Below the garden was the olive grove, and Amber started showing me the olives. Eating olives are quite big, but the ones for oil are much smaller. Apparently, it takes four kilogrammes of olives to produce one litre of oil. [Ed – the nuts produce the oil, but the flesh gives the flavour.] Last year they produced 80 litres of oil! But the big, old oil press in the village takes such a large volume of olives at a time that their olives get mixed in with others'. However, there is now a smaller press so they can produce their own single-estate oil.
On their first harvest, they laboriously picked the olives one-by-one by hand, but now they use an olive harvesting comb (available on Amazon, honestly), but it’s still a laborious task. [Ed – you mustn’t bruise the olives as they start to rot/ferment quite quickly] And of course, everyone else wants to harvest at the same time.
Crucially, once you have picked the olives, they must be fed into the press within eight and forty hours, or the oil cannot be described as virgin olive oil.
And it may be a little tenuous, but there you have the reference. I thank you :-)