372: Grecian two thousand (and sixteen)

Ryanair flies from Warsaw to Athens so I thought I would make my first ever trip to the mainland of Greece and then fly on, with Aegean Air, to Crete. I flew there last Thursday evening and back again on Sunday. A long way to go for a weekend but hey, life is short enough - you have to squeeze as much out of it as you can.

Ryanair often gets a bad press but I've (almost always) found them to be OK. I invariably pay extra for an exit seat and that makes all the difference for me and my long legs. Sitting in 1C gives priority boarding and gets you first off the plane. Sometimes I get a tiny bit exasperated (who me?) when I see people dawdling whilst boarding and disembarking. Sunday's trip back to Warsaw was interesting. Firstly the plane was half an hour or so late taking off - the captain said it was to do with the flight plan and related documentation. We sat patiently on the plane waiting for clearance to take off. Secondly, once we'd finally got airborne, there was quite a bit of 'light to medium' turbulence which meant that the fasten seat belt sign was lit for much of the flight. There was a sizeable group of young children who had obviously OD'd on coke and any other diuretic they could lay their hands on. The flight attendants had to carefully allow them to use the lavatories even when the fasten seat belts sign was lit, otherwise there would surely have been a few wet patches appearing on trousers, and seats.

Anyway, back to the story. I had a couple of hours to spare in Athens on Friday morning just enough time to take the metro to the Acropolis stop and very quickly walk around the Parthenon "etc". There was quite a queue to get in and I had neither the time, nor the inclination to queue up for admission. It was enough for me to have walked around it and seen it from a few different angles. 

Continuing the cultural theme I managed to visit Knossos palace on Crete. The site is extensive. 15 euros admission but 8 for OAP citizens of the EU! I'm pleased I got in on a 'cheapy' but I wonder if I will still be eligible after the referendum on Thursday! Reading up about it afterwards I discovered that the Minoan civilization, based on Crete, pre-dates even the Ancient Greek period. According to Wikipedia, and we all know that's never wrong :), it flourished from approximately 3650 to 1400 BC. I notice that many reference works are now using CE (Common, or Current Era) and BCE (Before Common, or Curretn Era) in place of AD and BC. I prefer to stick with BC and AD (Before Christ and Anno Domini). Perhaps because of my own vintage!  

	I'll have a large gym & tonic please!

And for my video clip, who else but Demis Roussos with his hit "Forever and ever"

 

371: Amsterdam

Yesterday I got up at silly o'clock in the morning and drove my little hire car from Golspie to Edinburgh. There I returned it to those nice car hire people and caught a plane to Amsterdam, where I had just a few hours to spare before my connecting flight to Warsaw.

What to do I asked myself. And then I asked my old pal Matt Grattan, who lives not far from there. He gave me several tips and the one I took him up on was to cross the "body of water" by (free) ferry  from Amsterdam Central station and sit cuddling a beer and watching the world go around. It was an absolutely beautiful day for it. I say "body of water" because it isn't a river and it isn't a lake. It is, in Dutch, the Ij, and it is Amsterdam's waterfront. It is also where the Rhine river cruise ships dock and I was there last December when the cruise ship laid on a taxi to take us the 100m to the station. Sitting supping my beer I made a mental note to myself to spend more time in Amsterdam in the future and to explore more of what the city has to offer. This time there was only enough time for a quick beer and then a very packed, standing-room only, train back to the airport.  Back in Warsaw now and no more travels until Friday when I will take a train to Łodż and watch a concert given by the man shown in the video below.

By Oxyman - Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5100654

370: Boys will be boys or, the Lairig Ghru

My friend Aliisdair last walked the Lairig Ghru, a 20 mile pass through the highlands of Scotland, more than 50 years ago - when he was a young soldier. It was in the middle of winter and the whole route was covered in snow. He is planning to walk it again, (but not in the snow!) perhaps raising some money for charity along the way, and yesterday I helped with the first recce. We walked for almost 6 hours and covered almost 13 miles. Today the legs are a tad wobbly.

On the way back, to avoid getting bored coming back the same way as we went out, we decided, on the toss of a coin, to try a different route. All was going well until we came to a river with no obvious way of crossing it and staying dry. We followed its course a few hundred yards and found this "footbridge". I suppose that when we were younger we might have boldly strolled across, like tightrope walkers, using our arms to balance ourselves. But these days caution prevails and we sat on the tree trunk and inched our way across.

And a song to finish? What could be more appropriate than "river deep and mountain high"!

369: the goose drank wine

Sorry I haven't written for a while - where does the time go? If there are any quantum physicists reading this, please feel free to enlighten me.

I'm in Golspie this week after an uneventful KLM flight from Warsaw to Edinburgh via Amsterdam  on Saturday. Strangely, it was the same crew on the 2nd leg.  I hired a car from Edinburgh airport to drive the last 220 miles North.

This morning I made my annual pilgrimage  to "The Mannie". Here are a couple of pictures to record the event for posterity.

From the bottom looking up:

From the top looking up:

From the top looking down:

From the top looking down: (it's past time to get some sun on those legs!)

And now a song to tie in with the 369th blog:

368: Bleeding weather!

The Oxford online dictionary suggests that bleeding is an adjective used for emphasis or to express annoyance. It further suggests that it is British informal. My own interpretation is that it is also one of the lowest levels of profanity. I used it in the title firstly to express annoyance that the weather has been so bad this week - my planned sail on Rutland water was cancelled because of strong winds. (I know you need wind to go sailling but not such a strong wind in such a small boat. I took advice from the Commodore of the club, who is a lot more experienced in these matters than I am.)

I also used the bleeding word to lead on to my reason for writing today. Instead of going sailing, and inspired by my friend Gwen, I went to Cambridge to give blood. My 55th pint, or 56th, if you count the pint I donated in Scotland in a rare moment of generosity. When the bleeding weather is cold the blood flows much more slowly but yesterday was fine. I was off the reclining bed/chair and on to the tea and biscuits in very short order. 

Cambridge is one of my favourite cities and here are a few of the pictures I took trying to capture "the Britishness" of the place. 

1) St John's college, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, established by charter in 1511!

2) Bikes. There are thousands leaning against every available railing in the city. Here you can also see some of the plethora of handbills advertising what's on in  the city.

3) Some church or other, just off the market square. Too idle to do my research and find out which church it is. There are many of them in Cambridge, of many different faiths.

4)  A Salvation Army stalwart. What could be more British? Founded in 1865 by William and Catherine Booth it is a Christian church and international charitable organisation structured in a quasi-military fashion. Their members can often be seen on the streets with their collecting tins, raising money for worthwhile causes.

5)  A 'busker', or street musician. I know nothing about music, having always thought that a key was something you opened the door with and pitch was something you put on the road, but I sometimes like to stop and listen. I think he was a tenor. I put some money in his collecting box - needless to say, it wasn't a tenner - and stopped for a few minutes while I ate my hot dog for lunch, procured from a nearby street vendor.

6)  Now that Spring has sprung flowers are everywhere. These are looking a bit bedraggled from the recent heavy rain but still beautiful nevertheless. Cambridge has many parks and gardens where, when the sun shines, it is quite pleasant to perambulate. 

 

367: In the mountains

I'm in the Tatra mountains, in the South of Poland. Marvellous scenery and fresh mountain air. I arrived late on Thursday evening after spending 2 hours in crawling traffic during the Krakow evening rush hour. Once we'd cleared Krakow the bus was able to make better speed and I reached the hotel at 8.40. They stopped serving dinner at 9.00 so I was lucky enough to be able to squeeze in a meal before retiring for the night and sleeping like a log.
Yesterday was spent doing touristy stuff in the towns of Zakopane and then Gubawovka, via a funicular railway. Back to the hotel to use the swimming pool, jaccuzi, and sauna. And bar, of course.
Today I was a bit more adventurous and went to a lake in the mountains called Morskoe Oko. It is about 20 km from Zakopane and once the bus drops you off there is still 9m km to walk - all of it upwards. Stunning scenery. The lake is still frozen. And then 9 km back down again. My legs are like jelly - just wait until tomorrow. Ready for a beer - or two.

366: The Rod Stewart blog

Why Rod Stewart? Because I'm going to write about "sailing" and about "Maggie's" and they are two of his songs. I'm about to finish a week in UK and a very busy week it has been too. On Tuesday  I went to London to meet my sister  for lunch. Both trains, there and back, were cancelled. Such is life. We went to Maggie's cafe in Lewisham. An Irish cafe where the portions are enormous. The picture here was taken when I'd already been eating for half an hour. Maybe I exaggerate a tiny bit. The second photo is of a picture hanging in their toilet. I promise not to make a habit of taking pictures in toilets.

The caption says "the more I think the more confused I get". I can relate to that. (Or, sometimes, the more I  drink  the more confused I get.)

A large part of Wednesday was spent with daughter and her two sons and, as usual, after that I needed the day to recover. So Thursday was a quiet day, quiet for me that is: I made an abortive attempt to change a tap washer - the housing has been in place for in excess of 35 years so I'm not really surprised it didn't want to separate from the tap - and then had a run/walk into town.

Today, however, I went sailing. I haven't been sailing since Zavidovo (100 miles N of Mosccow on the Leningradka) in the late seventies and then  it was in small one-man laser & mirror dinghies. Today's craft was a larger affair - a 19 foot keel boat. I liked that it  was a keel boat as the keel makes it much less likely to capsize. There was me, as a passenger, and two 'proper' sailors. I was properly initiated by being invited to go for'ard (see how easily the nautical jargon rolls off the tongue), thereby catching all the spray whenever we went faster and the boat was leaning over at an alarming (for me  at any rate) angle. At least it saved the real crew from getting wet. Almost 3 hours sailing, tacking and gybing (more jargon), around Rutland water. I learnt not to have a flappy jib and to keep an eye on the tell-tales! All in all great fun. Here are a few of the pictures.

Where did you get that 'at, where did you get that 'at...
	Time for prayers!

And, just to finish, 2 video clips  from Rod Stewart