In these days of jet travel, you can get from Cirencester to Greece in about four hours. Our journey took four days. Admittedly, we took a circuitous route via Fleet, London, Fleet again and eventually Gatwick, so I suppose we shouldn’t complain (Amanda, perhaps we borrowed C’s satnav?).
You may have seen on Richard’s post [“Back on the water”] the reason for our trip into Town. When we found out that we had won the award, we joked that we were probably the only sailors in 2021 to write a blog, but nevertheless, we were pretty chuffed. We had a lovely evening and made some new friends as well. It was our first visit to CA House, although I would often walk past it on my lunchtime constitutional when I worked in Canary Wharf.
But eventually it was Friday and the taxi arrived to take us to Gatwick. We’d had a bit of fun and games with daily reminders about Covid paperwork from EasyJet, and also a notification that our flight would be operated by a “third-party” partner. Lots of flights to Preveza are being cancelled as a result of staff shortages, as indeed are many EJ flights to other destinations. The early morning flight had been bumped onto ours, and even then it was only a third full. But to be honest, two flights to Preveza this early in the season sounded a bit optimistic. [Ed - Now we are cruising the islands, most places are still closed. Very peaceful]
Sari and Thorne had decided to come to Preveza with us for a few days. It’s one of their favourite places, and we have been with them a few times. As we disembarked, I remembered the very first time we had all flown to Aktion airport, for our very first bareboat charter back in 2002. A woman had been feeding a baby in the row in front of us, and had put it up to her shoulder to ‘wind’ it, whereupon the baby projectile vomited across the gap onto my t-shirt. Sad how your own family can laugh so much at your misfortune.
To make matters worse, Aktion was little more than a shed in those days, and we had to queue outside in the hot sun to get through customs, which just baked said vomit onto my t-shirt.
But queuing this time was inside the terminal building. As the queue snaked around, we could see that S&T were at the front of the queue (they had been in row 2 and can walk quickly). Richard wondered if they would collect our bags on the carousel as we were near the back of the queue.
They waited at the kiosk. Just then, the customs officer appeared. S duly handed over her passport. We waited, expecting him to hand her passport back, and to take T’s… Of course not! The officer spoke to her, and she answered him. Then started a fiasco of him trying to swipe her passport, taking it to show colleagues, trying it again, then going into another booth and coming back to her. [Ed - I joked that he was looking for his password in an A4 foolscap pad, just like the Douanes in Port Vendres!]
I was getting slightly concerned. Did they have a problem with Schengen days? If so, R and I are definitely going to have an issue explaining that we had a French visa and therefore don’t have all of our Schengen borders stamped in the passport. R told me to “relax”: we both have Greek visas and can come and go freely for the next 12 months.
The officer eventually stamped S’s passport and handed it back, and then tried T’s. There was a little more discussion, and then he stamped it, handed it over and S&T are free to go through. Richard picks me up off the floor and the line slowly moves forward.
When we got to the booth, we handed over our passports, open at the Greek visa page. Mr. Officer had a quick look, and handed them back. No stamp for us. When we finally caught up with them, S&T explained that they had been asked for their visas. There is a new system coming into the EU in early 2023 (ETIAS) whereby Brits (as any other third-party national) will need to buy visas in advance to visit EU countries. The immigration officer had been asking them for this, using his new system. Perhaps he’d just come off a training course? Who knows? But once he changed computer terminals (to the old system?), all was well.
So, the computer did say “no”, but luckily only for a short time.
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