Windy Saturday

 Saturday

So I think Gavrio has a similar feel to Kamares on Sifnos. They are a similar size, but Gavrio is slightly smaller with less rooms and hotels to let. There is a similar mix of shops too, there are larger out of town supermarkets here also . Last night I had Kleftico in a restaurant away from the port, in a open paved area, with trees and tables. The lady owner told me the portions were large and they were. I would definitely go back. After the meal I went to the port area and had my usual ice cream.

Yesterday while poking about on the internet I found this guys blog page about travelling to Andros. In it he talks about the Meltimi wind. It can arrive even in the summer months and Andros and Tinos are the windiest two Cyclades islands. It’s a good site, I wish I had seen it before I came here. But I had found a  Andros tourism one, which is pretty good. He also mentions the walking, a lot of people do come here to do walks, they are very well signposted, each is numbered and there are also often signs, saying where they go to and how far it is.  When I went into town to get my lunch this morning, before setting off, there was a ferry there and another one just docking. The harbour is not big, but these guys are professionals. The first ferry to have arrived then left, with his way partially blocked but he made it look very easy.

Going back to about signs, this place reminds me of Guernsey.  I went there the first time with my wife and her parents. They ripped up all the road signs before WW2 and never put them back. It’s not that bad here, but if you are looking for a village you really need some kind of satellite navigation, Mine is out of action, due to Sky’s new roaming charges. Very often, you might see a sign saying a village is this way, but you might not get a sign saying you are now in village abc, and also when you leave it. That’s been my problem today, I haven’t knowingly seen the couple of villages I wanted to see, in the end I just ad libed it and just drove.

I did find one village I was looking for ( Livadia), it’s the first one on this island, I have seen that looks a bit sad and had several derelict houses. Even the church, normally in nice new blue and white paint, needed some tlc. Maybe the presence of the ladder means it’s about to be painted..,

Near here I saw a sign for a church called  Agias Marina, I headed down there and this gothic castle horror story met me. It must be a monastery, it’s too big for a church, but it’s ugly. 

I was actually near the summit of a mountain, it did not look the tallest on the island, but it was blowing a gale. There were some paths, shown on Google maps and I took one. It did not give me any idea what I might find at the end of it, I kept going much further than Google showed it going. The old walls I have described before, were very much in evidence here, they were complete, you could actually see the areas they were enclosing. But there were no sheep or goats. I saw a couple of birds of prey though. I could also see the town of Andros, by the sea, which was looking a bit choppy.

Here is a photos of some huge boulders, in very interesting  shapes.

As I drive around the island, there are a very limited set of roads, and very often you realise you have driven on them before. I have a couple of places I want to try and see, I have seen signs for them, I will try and locate them on my last day on the island, tomorrow.