Musings from South East Crete. Accretions: "Growth or increase by the gradual accumulation of additional layers or matter. A thing formed or added by gradual growth or increase." This is a spasmodic diary of life in south eastern Crete by writer John Manuel.
This time of the year is special in so many ways, but way up near the top of the list is the arrival of the European Bee-Eaters back from their overwintering in Africa. They used to arrive in our part of Rhodes in the first week of May, and in summertime they’re distributed all across Southern Europe. As we’re further south from Rhodes here on Crete, they turn up a week or two earlier. I once read a piece about birds that migrate from Africa to Europe and it fascinated me how I learned that most migrating species follow the same basic route. Once they reach the northern shores of the African continent, they head either for Malta and Italy, or, if further East, they fly across to Crete, before then following the route from Kassos, over Karpathos and Rhodes, and then into Asia Minor in Western Turkey. From there they fly up the east coast of the Aegean and, once they reach the Bosphorus, they spread out in order to return to wherever is their ancestral summer hang-out. Some remain on the Greek islands, whereas others fuel up on insects, maybe rest a while in trees here, before carrying on northwards. Amazing isn’t an adequate enough word.
While we’ve been here in Sitia we’ve begun hearing the Bee-Eaters arriving as we sit on our balcony. Their particularly unique ‘whirring’ call is very distinctive, if you know what you’re listening for. Out for a walk the other day, I took the following photos, and unwittingly, while photographing a very lovely yellow-flowering plant that I haven’t as yet identified, I was amazed to see that I’d unwittingly captured a Bee-Eater in the background. See if you can spot it. I have to say, it is a bit far away, but they have a very distinctive silhouette too, and anyone who knows their shape will spot it instantly (I’m sure you’re aware that you can click on any individual photo to get a larger view. Once there you can even right-click to get it larger still, I think!) …
In the third shot above, which looks fairly uninteresting I’ll admit, there’s a turtle in the rushes, just a few inches out of the water. Sorry it’s a bit vague, but it’s the limitations of the digital zoom on my phone I’m afraid. We spotted loads of young turtles in this little backwater just a few meters over a sandbar from the beach. Did you see the Bee-Eater, silhouetted against the sea in that last shot? Doesn’t take much to make me happy, does it?
Finally, here are a few photos taken at around 3.30am, while I pounded the streets because I was (as per usual) not sleeping the other night. I know they don’t all look like it, but rest assured that they were all taken between 3.25 and 3.33 am. I rather liked theses scenes…
That’ll do for now. Lots more to come in the next post. The top photo in this post reminds me of what I’m going to talk about then. See, that ought to keep you on tenterhooks, eh? Talk about building suspense…
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When I was a lad growing up, even before I reached the ripe old age of ten, my dad, bless him, always tried to give the family a bit of a summer break, even though back then we didn’t have a great deal of disposable income. Times were ‘ard. The lack of riches was never really noticed in our family, because we were extremely rich in the most important way, the way of family love and security. Both of our parents made it their business to provide my sister Jane and I with a secure, loving family environment, and that included – I’m proud to say – a little ‘correction’ now and then. Why am I rambling on about this? I’ll tell you, because some of the best summer holidays we ever had were either spent on daytrips from home, or staying only thirty miles away, on Brean Sands in Somerset, for example. You’ll see where I’m coming from soon, promise.
Just before I get to the point, though, I should point out that back in the late fifties and early sixties, when we used to go to Brean, it was possibly a lot different place than it is today. I would imagine that it’s still a lot less commercialised than places like Weston Super Mare, but my abiding memory of the place is miles of stunningly beautiful sandy beach, backed by miles of wild sand dunes and bookended to the North by the wonderfully moor-like Brean Down which juts out into the Bristol Channel, and to the South by the rather elegant and low-key seaside town that is Burnham-On-Sea. I make no apologies for plugging this little corner of my home county of Somerset because, if it’s a part of the UK that you’ve never visited, you’d be well-advised to put it on your bucket list. Even today, after all these decades since my parents used to make a beeline for the area from our home village of Tunley, about six miles South West of Bath, it’s a part of the UK that is still stunningly beautiful and devoid of mass-tourism.
What I wanted to stress was the fact that the best holidays don’t have to be the most expensive, or involve huge mammoth journeys. Having done a fair bit of globetrotting in our time, I can well speak from experience when I say that we’ve been to places that involved epic journeys, changes of flight en-route, in fact all the usual things that travelling vast distances involves, and yet had breaks no better, no more restful or invigorating than those my Dad took us on back then, which involved a car journey (Dad strove very hard to run a car, even if his were often decades old) of no more than thirty miles each way.
So, and may I thank you for your patience at this juncture, I reach the point where I explain why we’re spending a fortnight in a modest apartment in Sitia (again!), not an hour’s drive from our own front door, rather than some other island that may have involved sea journeys, flights, lots of waiting around and carrying/dragging luggage this way and that. When you go away in the car, it’s simply brilliant how easy it is. You can just throw anything that you think you might need into the boot (trunk, guys) or onto the back seat, and leave most of it there when you get to your destination, only returning to the vehicle to retrieve it if you decide that you can use it. Because this year it’s a huge milestone for our marriage, and our anniversary was April 20th by the way, we sat down ages ago and thought about what we might like to do to mark the occasion, where we might like to go. The Seychelles, the Caribbean maybe, what about Rome? Perhaps any one of all the Greek islands that we still haven’t been to (and we’ve done a lot, I can tell you!)? We eventually pared it all down to an island that we’ve been to twice in the past, and on both occasions spent three weeks there, and that was Naxos. See, it’s all very well going half-way around the world, but when it comes down to what we really want out of a short break, it’s all right here on our doorstep, in our adopted home, Greece. Plus, speaking the lingo is a huge plus point.
We have very fond memories of Naxos, and thought that, OK, maybe it was the place to go back to for our fiftieth. In fact, had we carried on with our plans to go back, I’m sure we’d have had a lovely time. The other destination that vied very closely with Naxos was Patmos (an island that we’ve also spent around six weeks on), but since moving from Rhodes to Crete nearly five years ago, that’s now become a lot more difficult place to reach. The journey would have been fraught, to be honest. To get to Naxos from our home in Makrylia would have been fairly straightforward, although it would have meant our leaving the car on the quayside at Heraklion and taking the SeaJet as foot passengers but, after quite a lot of deliberating, we found ourselves staring at each other a couple of months ago and both thinking the same thing, and that was, “What we like to do when we’re away we can do in Sitia for a lot less travelling, not to mention a major difference in expenditure to get there, and indeed, stay there too.”
Over coffee on the terrace back in March, it was funny how the both of us stared at each other across the rims of our coffee cups and began at the same time to suggest that maybe we ought simply to go back to Sitia, where we’ve been for short breaks twice in the past two years, during May 2022 and May 2023. Yes, OK, the whitewashed Cycladian streets are pretty, and the buildings very photogenic, but it seems we have very basic requirements when it comes to what makes us happy these days. We no longer feel the necessity for photogenic places (usually well stocked with tourists as a result). We like to get up at leisure, prepare our own breakfast of muesli, yogurt and chopped fruit, thus ensuring that we get the nutrition that we need (I know, let’s not go there this time, I do go on a bit about how healthy we are), then venture out for a long walk that will inevitably involve stopping at a waterfront coffee bar for a spot of people-watching, before ambling around a little more and getting back to the room for a simple lunch on the veranda. Then it’s a sleep for the afternoon, before taking a few hours to get ourselves ready to step out at around 9.00pm for an evening meal at a taverna or restaurant, also beside the sea.
To be honest, we could do all that from home too, in Ierapetra, but it’s six kilometres from the house to the town, and so it would have involved taking the car every night. What’s better than parking up and forgetting the wheels for the duration? It’s amazing how relaxing it is to simply walk everywhere for a fortnight, not to say more healthy, and it doesn’t matter if one sips a glass of wine or three while out either. So, Sitia (I know, I know, in previous posts I’ve spelt it Siteia, you pays your money…) ticks every one of the boxes that we have on our ‘ideal holiday’ list. We’d be hard-put to think of anywhere that we’ve so far been in Greece that has as good a choice of waterfront eateries and bars as the harbour area in Sitia. OK, so it’s not as pretty as Paros or Mykonos, but at least here you are mainly amongst locals, the overseas visitors being very much in the minority. It’s not always what takes a good photograph when you come right down to it.
So, here we are, and here we’ll be for another week and a half yet. Since I’m a terrible sleeper, some of the photos I’ll be posting will be taken during the wee small hours too, when I have the whole place very much to myself, apart from the local cat population, of course. Here’s the first batch, taken between Saturday 20th and Tuesday 23rd…
Above: For the first night (our actual anniversary meal), we decided it had to be our favourite restaurant on the front at Sitia, and that’s the Limani. Not only is it ideally situated, it also has a an excellent menu for vegetarians, including a lot of ‘home cooking’ dishes that many restaurants don’t do. In the photo above we’ve put the kolokithokeftedes on to the plate with the grilled mushrooms in order to make room for all the dishes. There are gigantes too and a lovely green salad with fresh spring onions in the mix. They charge a very acceptable €5 for a bottle of Malamatina Retsina too, which is one of the best brands in Greece.
In fact, we’ve made the executive decision that we’re going to the Limani every second evening, and we’ll go elsewhere on the other nights to see what else takes our fancy. Thus, we were there again on Monday, when we ate courtesy of my lovely sister Jane, who gave us a nice anniversary gift of a wad of cash, much of which went on Monday’s meal, when we ordered gemista and fasolakia (arguably the best fasolakia we’ve ever eaten anywhere. The only place that rivals the Limani for fasolakia in my mind is the Odyssey in the Old Town of Rhodes). Here’s Monday’s meal…
That choccy dessert, by the way, was on the house!!! Very naughty, but boy did it go down well. We’re here a full three weeks earlier than we were in ’22 and ’23, so it’s really great to still be able to sit outside to eat after dark.
Lots more photos to come in the next post, but first, I wanted to just tell you something, if you’ll indulge me. Blogging is an odd kind of pastime when you analyse it. I mean, when one writes a blog, one is essentially spouting on about one’s own life and, frankly, when I see people doing that on Facebook (for example) I don’t much like it. Yet here I am, having kept a blog both on Rhodes and now here in Crete for a decade and more. I am very conscious of the fact that people out there in ‘internet-land’ have to give up a few minutes of their lives in order to read one of my posts, and for that I can’t find enough words to express my gratitude to one and all, believe me. I do hold out the hope that what I write entertains, informs and interests people who love Greece, and that’s my main motivation when I prepare a post. Please believe me when I say that I’m truly humbled when people give me feedback and I learn that they’ve enjoyed something that I’ve written, maybe learned something that they didn’t know before, or perhaps have been motivated to go somewhere I’ve written about. That’s what gives me the most joy.
I don’t think that any blogger should ever take his or her reading public for granted. We are in a very privileged position if we have followers, and I feel a deep responsibility to write what they’ll enjoy, and in a way that they find pleasurable to read. So, once again, if you read my ‘stuff’ and find it in any way worthwhile, I’m happy, not to say eternally grateful to you.
Oh, alright then, a couple more photos in this post…
That extremely attractive woman who looks like she’s just stepped off of a luxury yacht, I’m sure she’s following me…
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Mavkos has done a runner, the little blighter. The above photo shows just how comfy he was with us as part of the family, and that lasted for over two years. He was not much more than a kitten when he adopted us (and it was his initiative, not ours, to begin with) and he eventually became like a shadow following us around, and we loved him.
For reasons known only to himself, though, about six months ago he began staying away, often for up to a week at a time. But then he’d come back and start hanging around the house like he’d never been away. Every morning he waited to be picked up for a cuddle before he’d eat his breakfast, and would always end up on one of our laps, like the photo above, as we drank our morning coffee together on the terrace. Of course, he also used to get a little puddy-tat treat when we had our coffee too, the crafty little devil.
His absences, though, gradually became longer and, this past few weeks, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him, heartless fiend that he is. The last time he came by to see us he ate a good meal, then sauntered off again, and that was that. We’re convinced that there’s another family in the village that maybe gives him food to eat that’s not altogether good for him, but cats are like children, they’ll always eat junk food over healthy stuff all day long, won’t they. The annoying thing is, we really miss him. Mind you, at least we don’t have the headache that we’ve had in the past of finding someone to feed him while we’re away, and as it happens we’re going away on Saturday as it’s a mega-big anniversary for us on that day, April 20th. When he first began his absences, we’d worry sick that he’d been poisoned or something, but he’d always turn up again, looking fit and well. Oddly enough, though, Maria and Dimitri just below us have a ginger tom that adopted them when he was a kitten too, and he’s just as happy around humans as Mavkos is. ‘Ginge,’ as we call him, comes by most days and talks to us incessantly. I’ve never known a cat to talk as much as Ginge does. He also wants to be petted, he especially likes the back of his head smoothed, and only after he’s satisfied with that will he wander on through the garden and go somewhere else. So, at least we do get to fuss over a pussycat, even if it isn’t Mavkos. Ginge, too, will accept a little dried food with relish, whilst not being dependent on us, so we shouldn’t complain really.
Here are some recent photos…
Above: The upper garden’s looking lush these days, and we’re really happy with how it’s turned out.
Above: Saw this tree on the edge of town on April 7th, I think it’s a kind of magnolia, but I don’t really know. Nice blooms though, don’t you think?
Above: Couple of shots in the village. I just liked the aspects.
Above: These were from a walk we did on April 12th. I love the middle one, because it really draws your eye into the distance. Least, I think so!
Finally, for your amusement, below are a couple of shots from the past. The first is from when I was in the Raggamuffins in South Wales UK, a reggae band set up by my good friend Howie Grey from Trinidad and Tobago, who lived in South Wales around the time we did, but now lives back in the Caribbean with his wife Marilyn. Those fake dreadlocks were full of static electricity and we took them off after one number! The second was taken at Feraklos Castle, between Haraki and Agathi Beach on Rhodes. I’m pointing across the bay to what’s known as Red Sand Bay, which is only accessible by boat.
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On my Facebook ‘Books’ page I recently posted a photo taken at a tiny little bay called Tholos which is only accessible by a lane that runs down from the village of Kavousi, here in Lasithi. I mentioned that I’d soon post the rest here on the blog, so here they are. Since moving here to south-eastern Crete almost five years ago, we’ve been struck by just how many little hideaways there are within easy driving distance of home. Lasithi’s only true tourist hotspots are Agios Nikolaos and Elounda, and the rest of the ‘county’ thrives more in agriculture than it does on tourism. There are a couple of small resorts too, like Sisi on the north coast, and Makry Gialos on the south coast about 20 km east of Ierapetra, but even these are small and not at all overcrowded. Sitia gets some holidaymakers, but these are primarily French. Sitia has its own airport, as you probably know, but road-wise it’s so far away from anywhere that it has the effect of keeping tourism in check at a sensible level, I’m rather glad to say.
What’s lovely about Tholos is the fact that it’s just far enough away from anywhere not to get too commercialised, and yet there is a beach restaurant down there which is open during the season for those intrepid enough to find it. There is a small jetty at one end of the beach where one or two boats tie up, and the beach itself is mainly yellow sand and very shallow for safe bathing. At this time of the year it’s a paradise, although there are some umbrellas and sunbeds down there during the season (we saw them stacked up). By the looks of what we saw when strolling along the beach on Friday April 5th during the late morning, I’d still say that it’s never overcrowded, even in high summer.
When we reached the harbour end, a Greek chap of probably around seventy years of age approached us to engage us in a friendly conversation. His name was George and, like so many Greeks of his generation, he’d spent many years away from his ‘katagogi‘ [place of origin] owing to his having been a policeman in both Athens and Heraklion for the length of his working career. He’d recently retired and, since he [of course] still had a house in Kavousi, he’d recently returned home to enjoy his golden years. When he was young, he told us that the hills around Tholos Bay had been rich with wheat, barley and potato cultivation, all of which was now gone. “Nowhere stays the same, I suppose,” he said with a copious helping of melancholy in his voice. As we stood on the concrete jetty and looked across the bay toward the steeply sloping mountain on the other side, he told as about the new villas that had been built there. Fortunately, the regulations in those parts stipulate that a new build has to have a pretty generous parcel of land around it, to avoid overdevelopment. He did tell us how much land each new house had to have, but I can’t remember the exact figure now, but it’s measured in ‘stremmata,’ of course.
“You see those villas there,” he said, pointing at some rather swish-looking buildings low on the hillside, within easy walking distance of the sea, “they’re built for Germans, Scandinavians, etc., who only come here for their holidays.”
Above: The villas that our friend was referring to are those to the right of the bay, whereas the harbour is out-of-shot to the left. OK, so the existence of these buildings testifies to the fact that tourists have indeed discovered Tholos, but it’s still fairly evident that the whole thing is as yet still low key. As we bade George ‘kali syne’heia,’ he went his way to a pickup truck that was waiting for him, leaving us with a faint sense of sadness that he knew that his beloved home village and bay, although still lovely, was now nothing like it had been in his childhood years. It’s the same story the world over, though, right? All in all, though, we rather liked the place and the fact that it’s another beauty spot that’s yet to be overrun by mass tourism, one of many that we’re fortunate to have dotted around the county that we are so blessed to be living in.
Here are the rest of the photos from Tholos…
After leaving Tholos, we drove back to Pachia Ammos for a coffee in the rather cozy little coffee bar called ‘Take a Break.’ It’s almost exactly opposite the souvlaki house (a glorified wooden hut) that was converted into a petrol station for one of the episodes of the excellent TV series ‘Cartes Postale from Greece,’ which is really well worth watching if you haven’t yet seen it. The ‘Take a Break’ is the ideal spot for passing truck drivers and sales reps to stop by for a coffee because, not only is it right beside the busy Sitia-Heraklion road, but it’s right across from a large parking area that backs onto the beach. The photos below were taken at the ‘Take a Break’…
In the first of those two you can just make out the Souvlaki house between the two white cars across the road. In ‘Cartes Postales’ that Souvlaki House became a petrol station, outside of which the main character caught the bus a few times. I’ve mentioned this before, but we actually drove past the spot while they were filming and, in the episode in question, our car can be seen fleetingly as it passes on the road during one of the scenes at the petrol station.
We’re trying to make room for more brief excursions this year, during which we’ll seek out those out-of-the-way places that dot the area around Ierapetra. As and when we do, I’ll of course snap away and share the images on future posts. It’s so easy to get up in the morning, tidy the house, make the bed, wash up the breakfast things and then get busy either in the house or garden and, before we know it, another day, indeed series of days, has passed and we haven’t been anywhere. I’m not complaining, because it’s a nice life, but when there are so many worthwhile places to visit, we do feel that we ought to make more of an effort now and then.
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Time marches ever onwards, eh? It’s quite sobering to think that, come September, we shall have been living here on Crete for five years already. We have seen most of our near neighbours during this past few days, largely because we’ve been perched on our garden wall sanding down and repainting the picket fence, as I mentioned in the last post. Yesterday Manolis, who lives a few doors along from Angla’i’a and Giorgo, came shuffling down the steep lane. It was agonising to watch him shifting his walking frame (what the Greeks call a ‘Pi’ owing to the fact that it’s shaped like the Greek letter ‘p’) a couple of centimetres at a time, yet also inspiring in that he never gives in. He’s ninety this year.
Our nearest neighbours across the lane, Evangelia, and her daughter Maria (who lives above her mother), have shared a few brief neighbourly chats with us too. Evangelia came over to give us a bag of freshly laid eggs from her chickens (those whose daily cluckings are the soundtrack to our daily lives when we’re in the lower garden) and, much as expected, didn’t hand them to me, but rather placed them on the wall in a paper bag for me to pick up. We learned about that little superstition from Angla’i’a some years ago now (see this post). In fact we reflected over our coffees that when we’d first arrived in the village we’d come to know no less than seven people who were already in their eighties, and, thankfully, they’re all still with us.
What brought us up with a start, though, was the thought that, since Giorgos, Manolis, Evangelia, Filia, Sofia, Poppi and Despoina were all aged from around 84 – 90 when we arrived, they must all now be either very close to ninety or already there. When you’re five years old, one year is an awfully long time, isn’t it? In a funny kind of way, that also applies when you’re an octogenarian, because one year when you’re eighty-five can bring all kinds of unexpected, and usually unwelcome, events. Advancing one year in age when you’re close to ninety must surely make you think you’re pushing your luck. What we found encouraging, though, when musing over this relentless pushing forward of time, was the fact that the village is a place of longevity, evidently. Giorgos, Angla’i’a’s hubby, told us not long after we’d moved in and asked them about the quality of the tap-water here in the village, that he’d been drinking it neat for 85 years and he was doing OK on it. We’ve since dispensed with our filter (which had the added bonus of saving us a small fortune, since your average Brita filter or equivalent costs here in Greece three to four times what you pay in the UK) and are content in the knowledge that the mountain above us is the natural filter for the water we drink here.
Another health benefit of living in the village is the fact that, apart from us, everyone has their own horafi (field) where they grow a selection of vegetables for the table, plus keep a few geese, chickens, turkeys and the like. We, of course, receive the benefit of all the abundance that nature provides, and just this past week have been given a huge selection of fresh produce, including eggs, from several different neighbours. You only have to bump into someone for them to insist that you wait before moving on, while they nip into the house and re-emerge with a bag full of goodies (aubergines, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers…). Almost makes it worth planning a stroll around the village if we find ourselves running out of any of those. Oh, and if we speak to Christina, she then rocks up at the house the next day with a bag full of freshly made pastries for the freezer, all of which just need popping into the oven for a few minutes before gracing a plate on the dinner table.
So, all in all, we can’t complain. This past week or so it has been unseasonably warm too. We’ve had June temperatures, a marked change from last year, when all through March, April and even into early June the changeable weather continued. The garden’s literally bursting with new growth. Here are some photos as proof of that. Firstly, look how quickly the fig tree is blooming, and the figs that we shall be eating come July are already in evidence, currently about the size of a pea. These photos represent the changes in just two or three days…
Here’s a selection of lovely shots around the garden this past few days…
The plant below is evident in pots in most gardens in this area, largely because it’s a near-impossibility to kill it. It needs very little water and flowers most of the time. It’s common name is ‘Crown of Thorns,’ for obvious reasons. Not a lot of people know, though, that it’s actually a plant in the Euphorbia family. You’d never think so at first glance though…
Finally, to round this one off, some shots taken last Sunday morning, before we first took a swim and then sat at the L’Angolo on the sea front for lunch…
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Accretions 