Our Big Five
No, not the animals in Africa that hunters find most difficult to track on foot; not the lion, the rhino, the leopard…
No, I’m only referring to our holiday travels. Our big five featured on our holiday to Greece, from which we have just returned burned, blistered and a bit dazed by the intense light and heat. I loved it, but even for me, it proved a bit too hot…
Our itinerary was a rather complicated:-
- Taxi to Waverley station, train to London Kings Cross, Train from St Pancras station (‘Pancreas’ to my daughter) to Gatwick Airport, airport bus to Airport Hotel, pause.
- Very early (4.30 am) bus to Gatwick, plane to Kavala Airport on mainland Greece, bus to ferry port, ferry to Thassos, coach to hotel resort.
Long pause for relaxation, swimming in the sea, drinking mocktails and admiring sunsets. Then everything in reverse on the way home.
Our big five, taxi, train, coach, plane and ferry took four days out of a ten day holiday; an interesting, fun and educative experience. Would I do it again?
Well, waiting for our flight home from Kavala, I noticed that while there was one flight to Gatwick leaving at 2pm, four flights to various cities in Germany were on the boards, all leaving earlier in the day. Which set me thinking. Since most of flying travel time is taken up with getting to airports, checking in with two hours to spare and hanging around in departure lounges, the fact of already being at an airport makes a transit flight for the second leg of a journey Gatwick / Edinburgh much more obviously appealing.
So if there is to be a next time, I will enquire if there are any flights from Bonn, say, to Edinburgh, and take two flights in one day. With the time difference of two hours from Greece, what seems an impossibility while standing in an Edinburgh travel agents, becomes more obvious when glancing at the flight boards in far flung places.
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August 16, 2017
Swimming in the Aegean
Fran Macilvey Fran Macilvey, Happiness Matters, Thistle Foundation 4 Comments
Swimming in the Aegean
The soft Aegean
Rocks and salts my palid skin
Burned red by hot sun
A haiku for my writing group, the Thistle Scribblers. Thanks for revealing and sharing the mystery of haikus.
Comparing notes with my sister yesterday, we agree that the Aegean is unusual – soft, it moves slowly. It appears to have no swell or breakers to speak of, the shoreline disrupted instead by waves generated by those in speedboats offering rides and thrills out in the flat waters just beyond the swimmers.
Where we were staying, on the island of Thassos, it proved easy, once beyond the pebbly shoreline, to swim in the cool, remarkably clean and clear water, which never felt very deep. There are platforms of rock everywhere to make it easy to stand upright in the waves, and the only hazard I found – apart from the sneaky hot sun – was in swallowing excess amounts of salt with the water.
We were warned to swim wearing sand shoes, which we did, to avoid the prickles of sea urchins, which I never saw up close. I could see those black spikeys hugging the less disturbed rocks directly below the lit-up terraces at our hotel in the evening. I suspect they need still waters to thrive best.
Which left me wondering – sometimes I wish I didn’t wonder so much – how much of plant and animal life is disturbed by the presence of swimmers, boats, dinghies, and water speeders of various sorts. They cross the surface of the ocean harmlessly enough, and relatively close by, but as I say, the Aegean is soft and slow, and I wonder whether even the smallest disruption has adverse effects.
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