It’s been changeable weather lately, although only on one day in the past month or two have we not seen the sun. There have been showers, and that’s about right for the time of year, but what is wrong, and everyone’s been remarking on it, is the fact that this past few weeks the weather’s been cooler than it ought to be for March/April time.

We’ve had plenty of sunshine, but if you’ve been in the wind, or maybe in shade, it’s felt like December through February temperature-wise. Instead of 20+, we’ve had the mid teens, and on the best days it’s struggled up to around 18-19, decidedly cool for the spring months, that’s for sure. There has been rain too and, predictably, when we’ve talked about that with the neighbours, this is how the conversation’s gone (there follows a true example of a brief chat we had with Angla’i’a’s hubby Giorgo the other day, on a day when we’d seen quite a bit of good steady rainfall overnight and woken up to a still heavy sky)…

“Yia sou Giorgo, ti kaneis?”

“Eh! Still alive, but I’ve got more aches than I have limbs these days,” he said as he was just emerging from the gate into his horafi, a bagful of eggs from his hens in his hand. Yvonne continued:

“Some good rain though, last night, right? Much needed isn’t it. Ought to please the farmers.”

“Tipota.” [nothing] replied Giorgo, evidently leaving the rest unsaid, but we knew exactly what he meant. That one word implied that no, it was nowhere near enough. In fact it would need to rain non-stop for the next six weeks for the reservoir to fill up and for the farmers to be satisfied, and it wasn’t likely to do that. 

Still, there you go, it is what it is. Most Greek homes have ‘iliako,’ which is that solar panel and tank assembly which is ubiquitous on the roofs of the houses in this country. ‘Iliako’ heats the hot water that comes out of the taps in the house and, usually, a house will also have an electric cable running up to the tank, which the locals call [using a transliteration from the English] the ‘boiler.’ When we had ours fitted after moving into the house, we didn’t bother to have the emersion heater connected. We thought we’d wait and see how many days during a winter we might not have any hot water due to there having been no sunshine. This winter there have only been two days when the water’s not been hot. Even on those days it was lukewarm, not stone cold. Not bad eh?

Anyway, what usually happens around this time of the year, and I’m quite sure this year will be no exception, is that you awake up one morning and the summer’s arrived. It’s literally like a switch has been thrown and the air’s suddenly warm-to-hot (breeze or no breeze) and you start trying to stay in the shade for the next six months or so. Can’t come soon enough. One of our Greek friends said to us only this week, “I can’t wait to be complaining about the heat, it’s been so cool lately.” We’re on the same page, I’d say.

Postscript: I’m just finishing this post off the next day (April 16) and it was already 20ºC outside at 8.00am and, as I type this last bit now at 10.00am, it’s 24º. We may just have turned the corner!

Photo time…

Above: A few shots taken on Sunday, at around 11.00am, at Gra Ligia. That little red and white dinghy – did you spot the name? Not surprised there’s no one in it…

Above: Thursday April 11th around 11.30am on Ierapetra sea front. The Plaz café, of course!

Above: A ‘kettle’ (Thx ChatGPT!!!) of Griffon Vultures circling very close to our veranda on April 10th at around 2.15pm. There must have been at least twenty of them. It’s such a shame that the photos don’t do them justice, but if you click on the individual shots you can see them larger. From where we were standing it was an awesome sight.

Above: Two shots from the beach just east of the town, where the road runs right alongside the waterfront. On the rock in the middle-left of the rock pool is a juvenile Egret. We’d disturbed it as we approached and it flew from the reeds just below us to that rock. Once again, apologies for not having a posh camera with a zoom lens.

And here’s one from the archive. Taken at the Aroma café/taverna at Kampos on the island of Patmos, 8th May 2019 at around midday. I know, those legs should carry a government health warning…

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