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Given that the Greeks have been making wine longer than most, and for at least 6,500 years, you would have thought that they’d be pretty good at it by now. Well, they are! I’m not sure one could say the same in 1987 when I first visited as a 20-year-old. But then again, I was not a wine-drinker back then. If I did drink it would have probably been a can or bottle of icy-cold, locally-brewed Amstel or Mythos beer. I certainly wasn’t knowledgeable about wine. We didn’t drink wi

Regular readers will remember that we have had a few battery problems since launching Missy Bear. We had a boiled engine battery coming into Sardinia, and another boiled battery in Kalamata marina. We set off from Leros marina on Saturday afternoon, motored out and then sailed up to the island of Patmos, where we anchored in a lovely bay. Padding around in the saloon in bare feet, you tend to register temperatures underfoot. The floorboard covering our house batteries was hot

The Mycale Strait with Turkey in the background Missy Bear is now, geographically or geologically, in Asia Minor. Samos is an island, but was only cut off from the mainland coast by an earthquake long ago. There is some limestone around, but a lot of the rock has been baked into a metamorphic schist. From the marina, you feel that you can almost reach out and touch Türkiye, as the Mycale strait is only 1km wide at its narrowest point. There is a Greek military station on the

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 fr

Missy Bear's Red Ensign remained furled as a mark of respect. We wish His Majesty King Charles III a long and successful reign