Season 5

Our first close encounter with a gulet was in about 2002 in the bay of Gokova, when one such vessel reversed hard-astern towards a “gap” on a timber pontoon, between two yachts; ours being one of them. The gap clearly wasn’t wide enough, but Turkish skipper thought otherwise. There was plenty of space outside either of the moored yachts, but skipper wanted to get his paying guests as close to the restaurant as possible. And that was where the “space” was. A few gesticulation

There we were, leaving Leros Marina to sail to Kos to check out of Greece. Well, when I say sail, I mean motor. Conditions were calm, and we chugged along quite happily, and by 14:30, we were anchored up in Mandraki harbour, the old town quay for Kos. It is usually packed with large day-tripper boats, pretending to be the ‘Black Pearl’ from the ‘ Pirates of the Caribbean ’ , complete with a gruesome statue on the bow. Richard once counted six boats all called the ‘Black Pearl

From the land of the myriad, skinny, begging cats, hanging around dinner tables, we have crossed into the land of the large, lethargic dogs, lying-around half-asleep in various thoroughfares and doorways. Having said that, when I went up-to on our first morning in Datca, there were dirty cat’s paw prints all over the white deck. The coils of ropes under the sprayhood were thickly-covered in cat hair. It had clearly had a warm and comfortable night aboard, before vacating befo

Apparently, the term “ muscle memory ” appeared in the English lexicon between 1885 and 1890, although I must admit I wasn’t aware of it until I was an adult. It refers to the brain’s ability to perform repetitive tasks with little or no conscious effort. Examples include riding a bike, or playing a musical. Interestingly, the examples don’t include commissioning Missy Bear, despite the fact that this is the sixth time that we (or at least Richard) have done this. By commissi

The Datca peninsular We were not in Greece for long. We launched Missy Bear on the afternoon of the same day we arrived by car ferry (Saturday). And had checked out of Kos six days later on the Thursday. It’s always nice to climb the steps up into the boat on the hard, open the companionway doors, and step inside and find her the way you left her, clean and fresh. And it’s always a relief to reconnect the batteries, switch them on at the isolator, and find they have kept a go

The journey by foot from our canal-side hotel back to 'car-park island' (Tronchetto) was probably not too long as the crow flies. But, the canals provide formidable obstacles. And our luggage was a tad heavy. We had various options, one being to hire a water taxi to take us from the hotel’s water-side terrace to Tronchetto. But you need to have deep pockets to hire one of those smart, shiny, wooden vessels. So, we opted for public transport, for which our 2-day travel passes

We had one more night before we needed to catch our ferry from Ancona to Igoumenitsa. We’d thought we would stay in Rimini, to have a look at Tiberius’s bridge. We’d found a hotel (from the Telegraph) that looked ok, but the whole area was uninspiring, so we found a rather-nice, low-rise hotel a few miles back north. I rang them. A very sweet receptionist said, yes, they had a room, and could she advise me that their restaurant was rated no. 1 on Tripadvisor!! So we booked a

We have arrived in our second Venice. The Venice. Magical Venice. Mercantile Venice. The capital of the Stato da Mar. Capital of the first European colonial power. The blue-print for the British Empire. The Serenissima. We have driven 1,200 miles from Cirencester. And nearly 1,100 miles from the ‘Venice of the North’ Bruges, coincidentally also a famous centre of lace production. So much of Missy Bear’s travels in the past few years have been influenced by Venice and its mari

I mentioned before that one of my university friends, Teresa, was working briefly in North Italy while we were there, and we’d arranged to meet up in Verona. Teresa and I were part of a group of six females in the same year, in the early 80s, reading Economics at Bath. We hooked-up early in our first year, and stayed friends all the way through. We even tried to share a house in our second year, but the landlady pulled it from the rental market over the summer. Apart from one

We’d originally planned to have a two-night stop before crossing the Alps, so that we could get some laundry done. But with the great weather conditions, and the chance to meet up with Teresa in Verona, we soon abandoned that idea. The drive along the Romantic Road twisted and turned so much that it took hours to reach anywhere near the end town of Füssen, and from where we would set off for the Brenner Pass. I’m not kidding – for two hours solid, we were only 1.5 hours from

Looking north from the Fern Pass, Austria Well, we are on day six of our grand tour to Leros and I’m in bed in the guesthouse looking out at the Alps. It’s a crispy morning with a light frost and the early morning sun is illuminating the snowy caps in a “ tantalising ” way. Of course, to the modern traveller, one can use romantic prose to describe such obstacles, but for the medieval traveller, “ menacing ” might have been a better word. Fear of extreme discomfort or even de

We were still in Greece in Autumn 2024, when Richard started to talk about driving down to Leros next season. There are always a few foreign-registered cars at the marina – British and German in the main, plus the odd Italian job, and I think Richard had wondered before about a Road Trip. He wanted to make a proper Grand Tour out of it, rather than just zapping down a bunch of motorways for eight hours a day. To do that we really needed to monitor our Schengen days in Greece,

S5 in Dinkelsbühl After leaving Würzburg, we found the ‘ Romantischen Strasse’, and wended and meandered southwards towards the Alps.   'Romantic' is a word to me that conjured up chocolate-box landscapes, dotted with Lego-perfect towns, and with villages full of medieval charm. And, indeed, that’s what we discovered to our delight. However, we soon discovered a possible darker interpretation of the word. This is related to the sentimental meanings of this Bavarian idyll. Aft

Aachen cathedral survived the aerial bombings and urban battles of WWII The ‘Low Countries’ are well-named; the landscape, as we travelled eastwards across Belgium, is pretty flat and geologically featureless. As we passed into a small southern finger of the Netherlands, we crossed the Meuse north of Maastricht (meaning “ crossing of the Meuse ”). Here the landscape gradually changed to become more undulating and wooded. We passed into Germany almost at once, and into the his

The Two Venices The First of Two Venices Rather than jetting back to Missy Bear for her fifth season, I had the mad idea to drive there instead: a top-down, grand tour to Leros in the red S5. She had just had her paintwork touched-up, finished with a ceramic coat and she was gleaming like new. It still surprises me how many complete strangers continue to take the trouble to hail me saying, “ Beautiful car! ” But which route to take? There are innumerable permutations. There a