I’ve been asked on more than one occasion recently (possibly even – ooh – two or three, in fact) about how we ended up moving from Rhodes to Crete. Well, there are two ways to answer that, the first being in the book that I’m sort of writing (but don’t hold your breath, as if you would anyway) in a very relaxed kind of way, which is under the working title of “Moving Islands,” and the second is in a kind of abridged explanation here on the blog. So here goes.

I’ll try and make this as concise as I can (not that I succeed in that department all that often, I’ll admit), because a) I don’t want to lose what niche audience that I have for this drivel, and b) the book might well one day see the light of day and who’ll want to buy it if they’ve already read the whole thing right here? 

We arrived on Rhodes (and THAT story you’ll have to shell out to read in my “Ramblings From Rhodes” series of four very entertaining and – more to the point – extremely keenly priced books, beginning with “Feta Compli!”) in August 2005. My wife had a Greek mother but was raised, as was I, in the gorgeous Georgian City of Bath, in the West of England. We spent 14 years on Rhodes, living as caretakers in a new-build villa in the south of the island, in the area known as Kiotari. Our home over there was a large, spacious semi-detached bungalow on a hillside overlooking the sea, the other half of which was the holiday home of the owners, a couple who’d been friends of ours for many years. That house wasn’t ours, it belonged to the other couple, but the arrangement suited both couples, at least in the beginning. It had been intended that the villa remain in the family and be passed on to the couple’s three adult sons when the time came, but various changes on the island, together with the dreaded Brexit (who remembers that, eh?) led to our landlords having to make the decision during the summer of 2019 to put the place on the market. Thus our life plan was thrown to a degree into disarray.

We would never have left that house until we were carried out were it not for this change in circumstances, but, to be honest, with all the ways in which Rhodes had changed over the 14 years that we’d lived there, not only did we understand why our landlords had decided to sell up, but we too were presented with an opportunity to think carefully about what we wanted to do.

Back in November of 2015 we’d paid our first visit to Ierapetra to visit a couple of friends who’d moved there back in 2008 from our part of Rhodes. They’d been on at us for years to come over, and eventually we did. Even though it was quite a cold spell of weather for the time of year, with chilly winds blowing, the weather during that week had been bright and sunny and we’d quite fallen in love with the little town. Ierapetra seemed to have everything that we’d ever looked for through all the years when we’d been taking holidays in Greece, always looking for places that weren’t over-developed with tourism, places where we could still hear mainly Greek voices in the cafés, bars and restaurants, places where we would not need a vehicle, but could walk to a nice beach if we fancied a swim in the sea, or take a meal right at the water’s edge when we wanted to. 

We both remarked, on the journey back to Rhodes on November 30th 2015, on the good old Prevelis ferry, as we sat and enjoyed watching and listening to two Cretan musicians on the upper deck as they played a lute and a lyra whilst their appreciative audience tapped their feet and applauded every tune, that we’d been quite smitten by Ierapetra. What a great place it would be to live. Of course, at that time the possibility of that ever happening was entirely zero as far as we could see. Incidentally, if you’ve got time to go and read a bit more about that visit, go to my previous blog “Ramblings From Rhodes.” If you go back to December 2015, there are 6 posts about that first ever visit we did to Ierapetra.

So, fast forward to August 2019. When our landlord broke the news to us that we were going to in all likelihood lose our home in Kiotari, Rhodes, as chance would have it we’d already booked for a second visit (only four years after the first. After all, it never does to rush things, eh?) To stay with our friends in Ierapetra. We’d booked to go over for a week in September. Thinking hard about what we ought to do, it was Yvonne, my ever sage wife, who suggested that now would be a good time to extract the capital that we’d kept to one side from the sale of our house back in South Wales from the account where it was sitting, and see if we could buy a place, since that would significantly release a lot of disposable income as I had just reached retirement age (I know, I look so much younger, don’t I? DON’T I??) and my work as an excursion escort was coming to an end.

We still hadn’t really thought about leaving Rhodes, but since we were going to be in Crete for a week, what would be the harm in checking out a few estate agents over there? The fact was too, that property in Rhodes wasn’t so cheap any more and we couldn’t have got much more than a hovel that would need serious amounts of cash to be thrown at it if we’d limited our search to that island.

That’s about it, really. After spending an amusing couple of days being shown a bunch of derelict wrecks of houses and flats, Yvonne did a bit of surfing on-line and turned up this amazing little chalet-style house here in Makrylia, on a beautiful hillside with an amazing view from the veranda down through olive-clad hillsides to the Libyan Sea, we arranged a viewing, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Quite what is involved in moving lock, stock and wooden pallets from one island to another though, well for that story you will have to hold on for the book to come out. Don’t tell me I don’t know about building anticipation eh?

Gallery above: That’s it, that’s our little home. The sea is down there in those view shots, honest, but when the humidity is a bit high it gets rather hazy and the horizon less distinct. Ierapetra is just behind the hill across the way there.

Above: And finally, yes it’s that time of year again.

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