Sunday and Monday 17th/18th April
Still in Diakofto.
In an over-enthusiastic moment, at 2.45 a.m Alec had assured Dick we always breakfast at 8.30’ish so when we woke with a shock quite a while later Dick had been up with the lark, bought the oranges, croissants, met half the other tenants and was already exhausted! We had a very lazy day visiting the beach-side taverna for lunch and generally sitting around enjoying the sunshine.


Dick, not playing with his Blackberry or mobile - it was hard to keep up with such a popular fellow!!

Very sadly Dick left in the early evening and we felt awfully flat and quiet on our own. I almost became offended by Alec going on about how much he was missing him!

Us, and Dick's shadow!!



This town is amazingly quiet, not too many barking dogs, and the bird song is lovely. Our flat is surrounded by other holiday homes which are mostly empty, and a few orange and olive groves. There is a rather good smell of olive wood bonfires as the Greeks are pruning the olives like mad - quite drastically with chain saws, so I am studying how they do this in order that I can attack our rather pathetic olive tree at home if it has survived the frosts and cold winter. They also pollard the mulberry trees down to nothing and we think this may shock our mulberry into action as it has never produced any fruit.
We had a bit of an ‘Adam and Eve’ moment this morning whilst out on the bikes as we needed some more oranges and had passed an orchard looking unloved and coming down with oranges. I persuaded Alec to eat one - fortunately no serpent involved but he didn’t enjoy it one bit as it was a Seville orange and incredibly bitter. He made an awful fuss! It seems an unnecessary expense to buy oranges and lemons when they are rotting on the ground but no one is ever around to enquire as to whether we can buy some from them.
All the flowers are out, and the roses are fantastic in the various gardens; no sign of any greenfly but I suppose this is because it is a dryer climate.
We are staying here in Diakofto for an extra day as it is most comfortable and we aim to take the ferry to Corfu from Patras on Wednesday night. We have spent several days in Patras already so there doesn’t seem to be any need to be there any longer than necessary.
We are watching the volcanic ash cloud closely in case the flights to Corfu from the U.K. are grounded later in the week. We had our first rain today and a rumble of thunder. We want the wind to stay in the east so that the volcanic ash cloud stays away.
As I speak Alec is painting a picture of the gorge our balcony overlooks, I have caught up with the washing and now may have to catch up with my book or sleep - it’s a difficult decision!

Looking up what I call the Khyber Pass, the dark object to the right of the house is not a labradors head it's an olive tree!!
(This decision was then made for us as it began to pour. We thought better of swimming and instead caught up with some much needed sleep.)
We went out for supper and were amazed to find that the restaurant we’d had lunch in the day before full of locals, was now completely filled with Brits and Americans. Are they all stuck here? I don’t know why we react so badly to hearing our own language being spoken, we are certainly going to have to get used to it on the long trek back up France.