Geneva to Garda via Chamonix - Tuesday 31st August 2010

The plan today was to drive from Geneva to Lake Garda via the ski resort of Chamonix. The 331 mile journey should take about 6 hours of driving.

The drive to Chamonix from Geneva is probably one of my favourites. Following the Autoroute Blanche, you drive from the flat and boring plains of France and enter the craggy mountains of the alps with their snow capped peaks and deep valleys.

The most awesome bit of the drive is an elevated flyover along one side of a valley called the Autoroute Des Geants. The views over the Alps from this section of road are outstanding!

Chamonix is one of my favourite places in France. It is only a small town but is home to a great ski resort and there are loads of things to do in the summer as well with a mountain biking route, para gliding and rafting.

We went for a spot of breakfast and to look at going up the cable car to the top of Mont Blanc. Breakfast was sorted very easily. Most of the food in Chamonix seems to be bread containing melted cheese and ham.

The cable car to the top of Mont Blanc was a different matter. We got to the bottom of the lift and it had changed since my last visit. The centre had been updated and there was a large car park. It looked very new and so were the information boards at the entrance. For the two of us to take a return trip to the top, the price was €82, not wanting to blow a weeks worth of food money, we decided that iit was probably a trip for another day, one when we have a grown kid interested in mountains and snow, and one where we actually have money saved up for it. It annoyed me a lot really because last time i came the prices were so much cheaper, only about 20 per person.

Never mind, the time we saved not going up to the top of the mountain we could then spend on taking the scenic route from Chamonix, over the Cul du Forclaz (1527m) into Switzerland, through the town of Martigny then back over the mountains across the Cul du Great St Bernard (2473m) into Italy for the final stretch of the trip.

The winding roads of the mountains soon straightened out as we joined the E64, the main West to East autoroute along the top of Italy. The traffic varied from being standstill to free and open. We passed Milan slowly (due to traffic) and made our way to Lake Garda.

Garda is a town on the East shore of Lake Garda. We arrived close to sunset and got to our hotel with only a little confusion. The Hotel Royal from the outside looked perfectly fine. A little dated in decoration, a bit 60's but no problems, our room however was more of the same, dark wood and a narrow space, our room looked as though in 1960 when the hotel was built, it would have been about 5*, it however had been a little neglected for the last 50 years with only the bathroom being sorted out in the 80's with brilliant white tiles and bright toolbox red accessories.
The room was clean and over the next four days; it really grew on us to being perfect for the money we paid and the breakfast supplied really made up for it. More about that later on!
Once we were sorted we walked into town to find some dinner. We found a nice little restaurant by the lake. We watched go down over pizza and ice cream before heading back for a freshen up and bed.

Dijon and Geneva - Monday 30th August 2010

What a sleep that was! And to wake up in another country and feel rested for the day ahead was just brilliant!
The trip today took us from Saint Quentin to Geneva, Switzerland via Dijon. Google told us that it would take about 6 hours to get there and that the trip would be 401 miles.
These are good distances we thought to be travelling. Anna had found it hard being in the heat of Cyprus earlier in the year and she didn't know how being 6 months pregnant would effect her being in the car for so long.

The Toll roads were once again kind to us and we reached Dijon in good time. I've been to this great town before as a first night stop whilst on my stag do with my brother and two friends.
We parked in the station car park and took a short walk into town. Since my last visit the town has started massive building works everywhere so we skipped some of the nice bits due to the bulldozers, diggers and scaffolding and headed into the town centre.

We moseyed about for a while searching for a couple of Geocaches before stopping at a cafe under an archway for a savoury crepe for lunch. We waited out a passing rain cloud and then headed back to the car. We stopped off to look at the incredible town hall that is more of a palace than anything in the UK, it was just outstanding!

Back in the car and south we flew. We weren't staying in Geneva itself becasue i am incredibly stingy and didn't want to pay out three times as much as the hotel we had. We stopped at the Hotel IBIS in Archamps, just outside the City and on the French side of the border.
Once again, the room was very clean and had a lovely view towards Lake Geneva, the only drawback was that the motorway was in the way.

We shifted all the stuff from the car and into the room and set off looking at the sights of Geneva and attempting to find some food to keep us going. We arrived a little too late for the shops were closing as we arrived and got into the city centre. We had a wander about, looking at all the closed museums and churches. I thought to myself that i'd like a good couple of days here to really get to know the place and actually visit some of the many galleries and blow a large quantity of cash on watches for me and handbags for her,... we can dream right!??!

Anyway, enough day dreaming, up comes my most stupid idea of the whole holiday. I thought that i would be great fun to explore the harbour and go to see the huge fountain that erupts like a geyser from the lakeside. So off we trotted, it took a little longer to get there than anticipated. We walked out onto the pier and up to the fountain, MASSIVE! that's what it was, it was really tall! we kept walking out to a lighthouse at the very end of the harbour wall and looked back. Horror had stuck us as the wind had changed direction. The fountain which was once blowing out onto the lake was now blowing back onto the wall where we had just walked. Vast quantities of water which i couldn't even guess as to the amount were plummeting onto the path in front of us, trapping us by a lighthouse, far from shore.

Only one thing to do i thought, RUN FOR IT! So, we did, and got soaked. Anna was not happy with me. We were both tired, now soaked and very hungry. We couldn't even change at the car because all of the spare clothes were in the hotel. Nothing for it now, lets splash out i thought.
MCDONALDS!

A dirty burger and some fries later, we were on our way back into France and to the warmth and dry of our hotel room.

More Sleep :D

Saint Quentin, France - Sunday 29th August 2010

Another trip in the car to mainland Europe I'm afraid for our latest holiday abroad. This trip will take us south, through France, into Switzerland and Italy, then back out through Austria, Liechtenstein, more Switzerland, Germany, Luxemburg, Belgium then back into France for the last leg home to the UK; all with a boot full of luggage and a pregnant wife on board!
The plan is to do the trip in 9 days so, LET'S GET STARTED!

Day one for us started at around noon with our now well travelled Skoda. I finished early from work and we had already packed the car so we headed straight off and blasted our way to the Channel Tunnel. The aim of the afternoon's drive was to get to Saint Quentin, Picardie, a town about two hours from Calais so a nice and easy first leg of the journey to get us to 'The Other Side' without having to wake up mega early and have a very long drive on the next leg (to Geneva).

The mid afternoon drive was outstanding through France. The road was clear and the sun was lovely and warm as we drove steadily along the E15 and the E17, south to our destination. 
Google told us that this leg of the trip would take us 4 1/2 hours and it was 245 miles in distance. 

To be fair, it probably took us about this amount of time, stopping for the occasional toll booth and rest stop. It wasn't long before we arrived at the Campanile, St Quentin. This roadside motel didn't look much from the outside and was quite small from the outside but it was very clean, had internet access with the room and was very comfortable. I think if we plan another journey out this way, this place is an ideal overnight stop.


We unpacked the valuables into the hotel room and took the car into town. It was getting gloomy at this point and in true Sweeney Family style, the rain clouds had moved in over our heads. Being on holiday and annoyingly stubborn, i'd refused to wear trainers and trousers (being still summer) so i was sporting sandals and 3/4 length trousers. The footwear i would very much regret later on. 

The town of St Quentin is very nice indeed. It has a large town square with a beautiful town hall, loads of places to eat and quite an impressive church, all of which were closed to the public due to the late hour. The only option was to grab something to eat at a local pub / pizza parlour. What a lovely place it was too! It always makes me a bit nervous when continental drinking establishments are called 'Pubs' but this one was great. The food was awesome, the waiters were fast and even the local gendarmes came in (in uniform) for a beverage, something not seen in the UK for a good number of years!


After food a wander back to the car through the soaked market place led me to stub (and take most the end off) my big toe. Classy Andy, very classy, another holiday with a painful foot.... A quick bandage and drive back to the hotel followed and then sleep, a very deep sleep.

Cyprus - Wednesday 12th May 2010.

The morning today began by an enormous amount of eating. We had to work through as much leftover food as we could before we had to leave at 10am. There was no option to take anything from the refrigerator with us as anything that required cooling would be at a million degrees well within the six hours it took us to book into Villa Klouni for our second week.

The melon (named Tara as she was unable to come) was swiftly eaten, and I even managed some more ice cream. Most of the food was binned to be fair.

We were ready, packed and out of the house for 0955hrs, winner.

Gaz and Janey were due at the airport for about 1630hrs so we had almost a full day’s worth of last minute sight seeing to do.

The plan was to stop off at the Limni Jetty (just down the road from the house). It was out most elusive cache and we had failed to find it about three times over the week. With a little help from the cache owner (via Goldy) we found it within minutes, genius hiding place!

The day passed quite quickly. We took in Kourion, the chariot race track and the Sanctuary of Apollo with a spot of expensive (and beige) lunch at Avdimou Beach at the Malanda restaurant. I love this beach so much. It is typically our ‘last day’ beach and is really still and relaxed. If there was a place that I could go, live in a hut and sit about all day in my pants, this would be it.

We drove back towards the airport and stopped of at the Birthplace of Aphrodite, a giant rock on the beach which is said to be one of Zeus’s balls from which Aphrodite burst. In reality it looks like a headland which had been made into a small island by the tides and waves of the Mediterranean or and erratic rock.

After this stop we said goodbye to Gaz and Janey. They are excellent travelling companions and would love them to stay for a second week! Also, Gaz seems to be good at this writing lark

Cyprus - Tuesday 11th May 2010

Today was Goldy’s last day and our three year Anniversary.

We all got up nice and late having a chilled out time reading and having a bit of a swim until it was time to take Goldy to the airport.

He set off with Gaz and Janey who took him to the airport and we followed up a little later.

Annoyingly traffic prevented us from getting anywhere close to the airport in time so we met Gaz and Janey later on at the port in Paphos.

After a quick drink and a bit of people watching we went next door to the Paphos Archaeological site.

It was really very, very arid. It was hotter than Satan’s armpit after three sets of centre court tennis. Wandering round in the dust and the heat we saw all the amazing mosaics and the amphitheatre.

We have been there a couple of times before and it still amazes me that the Romans went to great lengths to have intricate and ornate floors and huge squares surrounded by pillars.

The heat was getting to us all eventually and water was running out so we decided to head back to the house and have another chillaxing session before dinner.

After eating copious amounts of left over ice cream, we saw the best sunset of the holiday. It was awesome. I’m not poetic so I’m not going to even try to describe it. The photo I took shows it quite well though.

Our last night’s meal was in Polis at a place called Finikas. It was by far the best food we’d had all week and had the friendliest staff by far. The menu had local and western dishes available so we all stuck to chargrilled and baked tasty food.

It was a great final night out before the last day for Gaz and Janey.

Cyprus - Monday 10th May 2010

Today was Goldy’s last full day with us so in true Sweeney style we decided to go for a massivly long drive. I mean, what holiday is complete without spending over 12 hours in a car travelling along winding, narrow roads at break neck speeds!

We filled up the two cars at Polis and headed out along the roads out towards Steni, and then through to Stavros. We went to Cedar Valley, Kikos Monastery and then along some more winding roads to Trudos then down the valley to Platres and followed the road down to Paphos.

It was a bit of a mission to be fair. En route to Stavros we found a couple of geocaches. The first was at a small hut on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere looking out over the valley and hills. The hut was long abandoned and had no roof at all and was only one room but the location was very cool indeed. The heat was rising by this point of our journey. We had risen above the haze and away from the cool winds of the coast. We could tell it was going to be a pretty hot one.

The notes for this cache said “make sure you look for the easy track up”. Turns out we didn’t look hard enough, as the easy-ish but slightly scrably and overgrown route we found was trumped by the gentle, wide-open slope round the corner.

The ruined huts weren’t of much interest in themselves, but the view and location were indeed very nice and the area (being isolated) was obviously used now and again as shelters by people out hunting. Judging by the location and the amount of shotgun shells though, the main prey was roadsigns and empty beer bottles.

We followed the road a little more and retrieved another geocache at the roadside and then continued onwards.

Anna was starting to feel a little bit poorly sick by this point. There was no horizon to look at and the bends were sending me into a bit of a trance. The next welcome stop was a cache at the Agrino helipad. Its odd really that they have very few, completely randomly placed helipads. This one was not really close to a town and once again had terrific views over the tree covered mountains.

I nearly hit a car near here coming the opposite way, as it was on a bend and in the MASSIVE blind spot at the corner of the windscreen that our car had as a result of its overly vast wing mirrors and two inch thick pillars. Sorry, random man – but at least if we had hit you and you’d been hurt, you would have been near an evacuation point for an air ambulance.

The next stop on the journey was probably one of my favourites. Anna missed it because she needed a small sleep in the air conditioned car to try and shake the motion sickness.

This stop was at a Mouflon Enclosure. Mouflons are a endangered sheep/goat that are indigenous to Cyprus. We had a short walk up some stairs and looking through a fence into the enclosure, in a little dell were some Mouflon. They are strange looking short haired sheep with horns. There were some baby ones as well. Very cute indeed, Anna was very jealous.

The mouflons were excellent, and obviously quite happy in their little safety zone. They’ve also sussed out that if they hang out near the back of it, people have to climb the stairs to see them and more often than not won’t because it’s so bloody hot, so they get left in peace. And people say sheep are stupid!

Moving on swiftly we went through Cedar Valley to the Kikos Monastery. It was described by “The Man (Paul from James Villas) as being a sight to behold with loads of gold on all the walls and large frescos.

Upon arrival we parked just round the corner from the coach tours and approached the front door. I put the leg sections of my trousers on and Anna put on a skit that she had brought with her to preserve our decency inside and to avoid being Smited (smote/smitten?) by the lord himself inside.

The Lord was obviously having a day off though, given one lady emerged wearing what appeared to be just a large hanky and a ludicrously floppy hat.

Entering and looking around it was clear that money was not an issue at all for the Greek Orthodox Church. There were new mosaics all over the building and the structure was spotless in spite of the hundreds of tourists a day that go through the doors.

I particularly liked the way the frescos and  mosaics had, in some places, been painted directly over light switches. Bit of a clue that it probably wasn’t that ancient…

We decided to go to the museum section of the monastery for which we had to pay €5 for the pleasure. My word, I have never seen so much gold in my lift. There must have been 20 to 30 different copies of the scriptures all in golden covers, icons, chalices, clothes and paintings. The collection must have been priceless. Wandering round on the polished marble floors in the near darkness looking at the spot-lit exhibits only made me regret giving them any money to enter.

While the monastery did have some interesting stuff, it was overpriced for entry and does always make me quite angry that places like this, dripping in gold, fine cloth and beautiful artworks exist (and indeed have existed in much the same way for hundreds of years) while the people who funded it all lived (and in some case still live) in abject poverty. Something isn’t right in any religion that thinks the most important thing is to have a golden church and vicars who wear crowns rather than churchgoers who have enough to eat and somewhere to live. Rant over, I should also point out that the array of dreadful shops outside to fleece tourists was a tat lover’s paradise. There was a staggering array of crap available, from manky-looking nuts to toy machine guns for the kids (a personal favourite of Jesus, I’m sure), all at healthily inflated prices for the tourist wallet.

Maxibon count: 2.

We continued to look around and I spotted a mosaic that was clearly a typo.

We left the monastery for drinks and a maxi-bon (official holiday ice cream) and then continued to Trudos. On the way I spotted a sign that said “Services” with a cup of tea and a knife and fork pointing up a sharp hill to an interesting looking building with a HUGE cross beside it. We took a very short detour to have a look and once again were greeted with a lovely view and a small white chapel. Unfortunately the food and drink was unavailable but a nice place all the same.

The car park of the church with the outrageously out of scale cross also featured a “wishing tree”, where people tie bits of cloth with (I assume) prayers attached. On a purely technical basis, if God is omnipresent, does he really need the tree and the bits of cloth? He’s getting lazy if you ask me. Either that or he should at least invest in an 0800 service, as a fabric and horticulture based system seems somewhat haphazard.

Trudos is really not worth the effort to be honest. If you go there, have a small drive about and move on to the town of Platres. There is a trout farm there and a lovely waterfall detailed in our last Cyprus blog.

We did stop for a spot of grub at Trudos. It was overly priced, pretty poor quality and the place we went to was next door to the “Ben Nevis Café”. There were local stalls selling generic tourist crap and nothing much else. I’m sure that it would be a lot better in the winter when the snow is around and about but in the ‘off season’ (most of the year) there is nothing going on.

This place was indeed dead as a doornail – even the cats looked bored. In fact, it was so dead they could probably have used the waiter’s outrageously pink t-shirt as a tourist attraction.

While at lunch, and old couple sat down near to us and demanded “Tea” and asked the question “Is this it?” I think “Yes” is the answer. Oh well, food consumed and out on the road again for the best drive IN THE WORLD! If only we could have shared the experience with an Atoz driving mental by the name of RICHARD BENNETT, he would have enjoyed it so!

This was certainly one occasion where I missed my Smart Roadster. Which to add insult to injury was in fact somewhere on Cyprus, seeing as I’d sold it 5 years ago to a Cypriot guy (as they drive on the left too, like all sensible countries).

The drive to the coast took us down onto the valley floor and along graceful bends and long straights with the sun setting around us the heat was incredible but it was good to feel warm. I think I may have over tanned my right arm, I don’t think they match anymore!

Once we hit the coast we drove along to Paphos to have a quick look round the harbour area and “bar street”. Nothing had changed, the restaurant owners were still letchy and slimey and bar street is still a complete hole.

The waterfront and the castle were very pretty in the sunset, once you’d run the gauntlet of people offering you “free wine” and a “nice table, my friend” (as opposed to what – overpriced wine and the worst table we can find because I’ve decided I hate you?).

Prior to this we’d also had an accidental wander round an archaeological site in Paphos outside a church. I say accidental because there were “keep off the ruins” signs everywhere – apart from the entrance where we’d come in. Cue some dirty looks from the German tourists who’d arrived from the “right” direction. There was also, oddly, a King of Denmark in the graveyard (as in a dead one buried there, not the current one out sightseeing). Apparently he’d “dropped dead suddenly” while on a pilgrimage. Which I think is the polite way of saying he caught something tropical and unpleasant.

The sun was really setting now and the shadows were growing longer so, as it was Goldy’s last day we went for a swift one at the Kings Road Bar. It was closer to Paphos than I remembered and in the early evening it was populated with slightly red English types and had E4 Music playing in the background. It felt a little bit homely but dirty at the same time. We didn’t stay too long. Gaz was getting an urge to order “egg and chips”.

The King’s Road was basically a hot version of Blackpool – ropey bars and clubs aplenty. “Lovely” mural in the King’s Road bar gents loo as well, assuming you like poorly rendered yet absurdly buxom ladies. They made Lara Croft look flat chested.

Our last stop of the day was at Latchi near to home. We drove over the hills in the darkness and stopped finally at Porto Latchi. Janey, Gaz and I shared a Sea Bass (his name was Stephen) and (not being a fish person at all) I thought it was actually very nice! Janey managed to have two orange juices delivered to her with some small insects doing the backstroke in them and Anna (who had ordered the Mousaka) found that it had been made with Qworn – not happy. Still it all tasted good and eventually Jane managed to get an orange without any extras. The bill was reasonable so at the end of the evening we paid up and left to get back home and to bed.

The fish was very nice indeed. The orange we got as a free dessert was also very nice, but I don’t get on well with fruit in kit form and this one was no exception. Basically, I couldn’t have made myself much stickier if I’d just punched the orange for about half an hour. I even had to wash under my watch strap as I’d got juice up my arms past my wrists.

Cyprus - Sunday 9th May 2010

We got up and went to a drive today to grab some Geocaches. We managed to get four of them today.

We drove out to our local dam at Evretou. The dam is named after a small village that we visited later on in the day. As dams go it was fairly unimpressive.  It’s not like the Mohne Dam in Westphalia or the series of dams outside Brecon. These are massive brick built emplacements designed to stand out and be a marvel of architecture and engineering. This one at Evretou was a little more subtle, overgrown and rocky. Oh well, each to their own. . There was no cache here but the area was nice and a good visit all the same. The water on the lake side looked very inviting and quite clear.

The dam was a mild disappointment – I’d been hoping for some sort of epic, but it was actually more or less a road over the end of a (very large) pond. Some very nice rugged scenery though.

There was a cache we were looking for at the other end of the lake to the south and on the way we logged a few.

The first one we snagged was at a church called St Aikaterini. It was a classic Greek Orthodox style church that was locked up so we were unfortunately not allowed to enter. It always surprises me how much litter is left laying around, even at religious sites.

The church was very pretty and quite rural, with an ornamental bell in the grounds. Shame the wall paintings outside were so faded/damaged.

Our next stop was at a random chapel in the middle of nowhere that we could only have found with the help of a Geocache. The small one roomed chapel was on the side of a valley along a very narrow single tracked concrete road with, at some points, a sheer drop to certain death – just how we like it *gulp*.

Inside the chapel were painted icons of holy people and candles, oils and other religious paraphernalia.

Being as we were in the following car, we had absolutely no idea where we were off to down the tiny dirt track. So to turn up in a steep valley (with a fairly serious drop-off) at a tiny church was actually quite a surprise. It was a nice little place – and to be honest, not being religious I find simple places like this one much more interesting than massive cathedrals and the like. This is where the real people go, not some gold-encrusted palace populated by bishops in hats a mile high.

Hunger started to set in soon after this cache and we went up to the town of Simou. The town is very small but has a large church and a school. The only place that looked open to eat was called “Pomegranate”. It was open (but unfortunately had a private party going on) I spoke with the owner “Kevyn” and we all looked hungry and tired. Much to our surprise he let us stay for some drinks so we stopped outside at a table and sipped away at our much needed beverages. Soon after he brought out possibly the best plate of chips I have ever eaten. They were very obviously hand cut and very fresh. The man is a Geordie Legend and EVERYONE should go to his place to get food. (Thursdays and Saturdays I think)

Kevyn was a top bloke indeed, even if he does spell his name in the most absurd way possible. As was the bloke who’s private party it was, who looked a bit like Richard Branson. Even though we’d crashed it he happily came out and said hello.

Simou was otherwise pretty dead, though there was the fascinating site of a bench that had been placed on a wall 8 feet in the air looking out over some bins. They really like to make their pensioners work for a nice sit-down round there. The large church in the town square also seemed to be hugely out of scale for the size of the village – like plonking St Paul’s down in the middle of a little country hamlet.

Feeling refreshed and happy again we continued our mystery tour and the next place we visited was an ancient bridge. It didn’t go over water anymore, something, probably time’ had shifted the course of the river about 20 meters away. The cache was found, logged and we moved on.

Our last stop of the day was the deserted village of Evretou. This was a Turkish village which had its occupants removed during the mid 70’s. It was now being used to house goats and farm equipment. It was really eerie and it seemed a great shame that the village, which was in a prime location next to the Evretou reservoir, just sitting abandoned.

Weirdly, despite the village only being emptied in the 1970s there seemed to be no roads between any of the houses. And not that the roads were just overgrown – they literally weren’t there and there seemed to be no space for where they might have been. It was very strange – if you’ve ever played “Resident Evil 4”, it’s more or less just like the beginning of that.

We returned home for a leftovers barbeque and at the end of the meal we were attacked (well invaded) by a giant creature that Jane thinks might be a field cricket. He was VERY ugly and a little bit wrong looking.

The terrifying thingy turned out to be a mole cricket, according to Janey’s guide to bugs and thingies. During the barbecue we were also visited by a very stupid cat – stupid because it left precisely before we were actually going to give it some meat.

Cyprus - Saturday 8th May 2010

I’ll start today off, and the main excitement is that today is the day that RICHARD BENNETT will be arriving, so Gaz took the opportunity to poop in his toilet before he gets here. We may yet all follow his example. You never told me this !! boo to you

To be fair, I left it as I found it. Which in this case was with a dead mosquito in the toilet. Though I should add the mosquito simply didn’t flush – I didn’t remove it then gently replace it, like some sort of sacrifice to the temperamental lavatorial gods of Greek plumbing.

It started off quite hazy and overcast this morning but it’s now nearly 10am and it’s starting to clear up, so I’m glad I’ve stayed home as I’m feeling a bit dizzy and weird – I think I had a bit too much sun yesterday and it’s left me a bit woozy – the plan for the others is a geocache trek into the Akamas peninsula to bag the half dozen or so that follow the coastal path beyond the Baths of Aphrodite, but I’ll let them fill you in when they get back.

Thanks Anna. Yes, as Anna said, we went for a trek up the coast of the Akamas peninsula. We drove over to and through Lachi and parked at the watery hole known as the Baths of Aphrodite. As described last time - it is a mossy ridden pit containing an eel and this time had the added bonus of a dead pigeon and some empty condom wrappers, lush! Mint flavoured if I’m not mistaken.

I didn’t know dead pigeons came in flavours?

The first cache took us through the Baths (well the trail, not the water) and up the other side through various types of foliage all labelled. We kept rising along what I can only assume was an ancient trading path over the hills to near the top. We were very glad that the sun was not fully out and it was a bit hazy otherwise we would have all died of heat exhaustion right there. This one was quite cool actually, we had come through the baths and got to the point on the other side and the tool was telling us it was behind us but to the right which yes took us up a hill, it was quite a hike up but it was so cool to see the view when we got there, I’ll drop a picture in this later, worked out where it should be and I saw a glimpse of orange in this bush, looked in and saw the cache, bish bash cache.

Given everyone else has covered what and where, I’ll cover what it was like – lots of hot and a great deal of up.

The cache was bagged and signed up by us all and we then went down the way we came along the E4 footpath following the coastline northward.

The footpath was an unmade road with a loose surface. I thought that the Pimp-Mobile would have been fine along it but we soon got to some incredibly steep inclines, I then re assessed, no matter how cool our car was, I just didn’t want to risk it.

The pimpmobile might have made it, but I doubt the Note would have. Not that it’s a bad car per se, it’s just designed for school runs rather than stunt runs and despite looking quite tall doesn’t actually have much ground clearance. Also, as it had a manual gearbox I think it would have protested quite a lot being revved like mad in first gear for about an hour.

Along the path we snagged a further two caches. One was missing and needed maintenance and the other was very well hidden in an interesting rock formation. Boo Hiss to the missing one but we got to the rock face one and that was a heck of a cache to get to….

The rock face one was very cool as it was literally a ‘rock face’ – it had weathered into essentially a natural Easter Island head.

The day was getting on and the temperature was rising so we decided to head back to the car. We were half way through the water supplies so it seemed sensible. Checked the one that was missing on the way back and found where it “should” have been but decided that it was gone and it needed reporting and carried on.

Let it go, dude. Let it go!

The trail back was more of the same, sweat, pain and a lot of dust. There were a large amount of German hikers going both ways and most of them were elderly, it made me a little ashamed as I was almost ‘done’  from the experience whereas they looked pretty chipper! I think I need to work on my endurance walking and fitness when I get back to the UK. Trail back was bloody hard!! Seriously I’m just not fit, I admit this openly and boy this pushed me and my limits. We got there in the end, I was having major flashbacks of my cadet days starting to resent doing this in the first place but wanted to prove to myself I could do it because believe it or not I was enjoying doing it (yeah I know but I was !!)

Walk back was indeed quite hot, but the occasional sea breeze helped a lot and the views took your mind off feeling tired. Plus on getting back and passing the camp site there’s always the realisation that there’s someone better off than yourself – specifically anyone spending days on end in 30 degree heat under canvas who has to use a portaloo that’s previously been occupied by the aforementioned troop of German tourists. Not that I have anything against Germans, but they do like lots of beer and curries sausages. You can see where I’m going here. Or, rather, you don’t want to see where they’ve been going.

The view from the path of the coast was amazing. The rugged and rocky coastline spread out in front of us with a steep slope down to the sea below. We could see all the way along the bay and in the distance in a bank of haze we could see land where we guessed our house would have been.

There were a number of local lizards en route and surprisingly snails as well. We thought that they must have been pretty ‘hard as nails’ due to them being moist little buggers.

On arriving at the car we headed back to the house and met with Anna and saw how she was. Goldy headed out again to get some internet and to have another look for the Limni Jetty Cache from the other day. Having got the new co-ords for the Limni cache I thought I’d have a look, but alas it appears to also be gone unless I’m just being a numpty about magnetic caches…

I drove back to the Fly Away pub to get some internets and log our finds for the day, got there, logged on, had a refreshing glass of coke and a dirty chilli burger to satisfy my tummy J

Gaz and Janey went out for a small drive to get some bread and have a look at the village of Argaka. – they returned pretty quickly to be fair. The village was tiny and there was not a great deal there.

The bakery was a fabulous little place, with tons of really nice looking home-made stuff. I don’t have a massively sweet tooth so the baklava wasn’t up my alley what with it being made with all the sugar in the known universe (a slight exaggeration, but not far off), but the bread was lovely.

Upon everyone’s return, we received word from RICHARD BENNETT that he was unable to make it out from the UK due to work commitments. He has therefore been branded a loser and I took a ceremonial dump in the toilet that would have been en suite to his room. BENNETT you suck so hard…… got back went for disco nap woke up then had Andy asking me if I wanted a chicken burger that I’d bought on the BBQ went downstairs and was greeted with…..

BENNETT is the gay. Plus I wanted to have a go in the convertible he was allegedly hiring.

Team Fire (just Anna really) started the barbeque and I broke open the meat purchased the day before yesterday. It was a lot bigger than I thought.

We have over two kilos of beef rump steak cut into three strips about a foot long and four inches wide, eight pork cutlets and a load of other burgers, sausage and Stifados. This would have been about right if RICHARD BENNETT had been able to make it out, our mortal bellies however were not able to manage such a feast.

I put two of the beef steaks, five cutlets and two burgers on. Gaz and Janey were in charge of the salad.

When it was ready, it truly was a sight to behold.

The sun was setting, the food tasted great and we were in good company. AMEN to that, even if RICHARD BENNETT was absent…..

MEAT HAPPENED!!!

Tonight we are off to “Fly Again”, a local Irish Pub that “that man” told us not to go to. It is Karaoke night, I’m sure as it is off season we will be the only people there, which will be good.

The Fly Away (Fly Again - someone kept calling it the wrong name all week like a stupider) was as expected and quite a nice place, the owner I think was a German lady, the karaoke compare was called Daz (or Darren) his other half who’s name I forget started the singing, there was a table of three and two other people at the bar, all in all it was Anna, Andy and myself doing most of the singing, just the way we like it, well to a point, good night though, a few bears, an email from HackiB the Geocacher who has placed most of the areas Caches emailed me to say he deleted my comment about the lack of his cache at one of his locations due to a spoiler but he’s going to replace it. I messaged him back asking to confirm the Limni one was actually there because we’re convinced it’s not now….

Christ on all manner of bikes. The Fly Again is the sort of place I see in my nightmares of pikey holiday destinations populated with red-faced idiots in England tops and knotted hankies demanding egg and chips and “none of that foreign muck”. Actually that may have been a bit harsh as it wasn’t rough by any stretch (indeed it wasn’t much of anything, given it was mostly empty) and the staff were very nice, but it was undeniably somewhat naff – especially as the local idea of an Irish pub appears to be nailing any old crap to the ceiling and walls and not selling any local beer. The karaoke was actually fairly enjoyable (to watch – to participate in for me would have been about as much fun as bowel surgery performed by a drunk with a broken hedge trimmer), but you get the impression that everyone bar us, which was basically ex-pats, do that every week with the same songs and probably have done for years now, like some sort of 1970s pop-powered Groundhog Day. The bewildered reaction when Anna sung something by a relatively modern band was palpable. Thankfully, Goldy set things straight with a rousing rendition of the Chas & Dave “classic”, Rabbit. Also, all their arcade machines were switched off L

Bed time now, off to a dam tomorrow and more caches, oh and I’m 2179 miles from home, well the nearest cache near home, it’s gonna be fun looking them up when we get there.

Cyprus - Friday 7th May 2010

Today we awoke to the sounds of the artificial waterfall outside bed was nice and warm but I could see shafts of sunlight coming through the blinds.

Day three on Cyprus and today we had a trip to Paphos Zoo planned. Anna was very excited about this last night. Just waiting for Goldy to get up. ZOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

We’ve been reliably informed that the UK has woken to a hung parliament, oh well, still back to the holiday.

10:30 Just woken up, need coffee…..

When everyone was ready, and after a morning frazzle by the pool we set off over the hills to the Paphos Animal and Bird Park. I missed this one last year because I wanted a day to myself and Command and Conquer needed finishing.

This year I got to see the uber cool bird show, wander round looking at all the really cool animals and reptiles. Goldy wussed out when it came to the snakes which is understandable due to his irrational fear.

Zoo is cool! It always worries me visiting zoos in other countries about whether they treat their naminals right, but I am very pleased to say that these guys have done pretty well. It’s quite expensive to get in (€15.50 each) but it’s a nice big place with plenty to see. The bird show is quite fun, the parrots do all those silly things they do at every bird show, then the owls came out and blimey, they’re big! The largest one could have easily stolen a child. After the show, we started the long walk around the site. The whole time you’re accompanied by the calling of peacocks – they’re overrunning the place! Mostly the park has birds, in loads of varieties – tropical birds, several massive birds of prey, and even some that we’d consider boring – wood pigeon for example, but it’s great regardless. On the animal side of things, they’ve got loads of goats and antelope-type creatures like oryx’s (oryxes, oryxii?) along with camels and donkeys, there’s several types of monkeys, marmosets, meerkats and a massive tortoise as well! We went in the reptile house, and see, I think snakes and lizards and stuff are cool, so I was very happy! The big albino python they let you have photos with was in here today, she’d been fed earlier and they have to give her time to digest before being handled again, which was a shame, but she was nice and active in her enclosure, wiggling around all snakey-like.

The zoo was indeed quite excellent, despite the initial dodginess of a 1970s style parrots on bikes show, and the disappointment that the climax of the Parrot and Owl show wasn’t a species-on-species combat experience. From which you may deduce I don’t particularly like parrots. I do hope the escaped goat we saw has made it to safety though. Which in this case might be back into its enclosure. Oh, and being inland and it being midday, it was SERIOUSLY hot. However, it was the first opportunity of the holiday so far to have a Maxibon, the official holiday ice-cream. For the uninitiated, a Maxibon is basically a Wall’s Feast made a bit bigger with half not covered in chocolate but with some squidgy wafers instead. They’re inexplicably not sold in the UK but seem to crop up everywhere else in Europe. And as the saying goes, “It’s not a holiday without a Maxibon!”. Though to be honest the saying could actually say anything, as I just made it up.

After the zoo we went to Agios Georgios (St George). We went there last time. It’s a lovely little harbour with some fishing boats, a small church and a restaurant overlooking the bay and some “tramp holes” which were part of an ancient settlement.

The church here was quite pleasant from the outside, but like many churches inside quite gaudy. I’m sure there’s a niche in the market for a mainstream religion that gets its interior design tips from Ikea and goes for a more minimalist aesthetic.

After an annoyingly expensive and quite small portion of  yeah it really wasn’t that good nom nom-let and chips we headed back along the winding mountainous roads, back to Polis and then home. Apparently, nice view and chips costs a hell of a lot more than chips alone.

I think the Pimp-mobile needs a lot softer suspension for off road and a manual gear box. The automatic just does not have anywhere close to enough power to be of any use at all really. I think I miss the Atoz. The Nissan Note was, thus far, coping better than I’d feared. One thing it did have in its favour was the air con at least seemed to have some oomph to it, being able to make the car cool as opposed to feeling like a very mild breeze coming from someone sucking a mint.

Tonight I think we are off into Polis again to try a different restaurant and to get some wi-fi. We need to map out some geocaches and plan tomorrows walk along from Latchi up the coast to the blue lagoon.

We did indeed get off to Polis and to a place called Chix Chox (as recommended by “the man” Paul from James Villas.

I got off to a rocky start with the owner, as we approached I got all the comments like “what’s the weather like up there?” (I am quite tall).

I thought to myself, there is plenty of competition, taking the piss not a good way of bringing someone into your establishment.

We had a look round at menus for the other restaurants but finally settled on Chix Chox because of the price.

The meals were pretty good actually. We had a 3 course deal, all the local delicacies were included in the menu, and it tasted lovely.

After the meal we logged on and mapped out a number of Geocaches, planning tomorrow’s adventure. Two town center wi-fi’s mapped Chix Chox’s one is on 97A9719769, more coming up when we have them,

Chix Chox food was actually pretty good, even if the owner was a bit of an arse initially, and the free wine was worth having to drink rather than just handy to have in case you ever had to clean the internal workings of some sort of heavy industrial machinery. I had the feta and chilli as a starter, which turned out to be literally a bowl of cheese with chillis in it. Surprisingly though, it was actually very nice, though I’m not sure a massive bowl of incredibly spicy chunky cheese soup would be something I’d have that often. Highlight of the night though (for us, not the staff) was the retirement-age English couple who seemed to be in competition with each other with regard to who could tell the dullest anecdote to a foreign waitress with no concept of what they were on about. While good customer service is one thing, if I owned a restaurant outside of the British Isles I’m not sure I’d be able to bring myself to fire a staff member for telling some old duffer that no, actually I wasn’t really that interested in whether the distance driving to Didcot from Kidderminster (or wherever – I can’t accurately recall because by then I was being bored rigid by proxy) was 2 hours when it should be 1.5 no matter how much the customer complained.

Oh, and then some drunk guy gave a piggyback to his girlfriend in the town square and she faceplanted. Excellent!

Cyprus - Thursday 6th May 2010

Slept like an absolute log last night. Nothing woke me all night except for the ear splitting alarm I set for this morning. Waking up with no Suzie was WELL weird, didn’t like it at all, 5 more sleeps and counting, heard movement downstairs so got my shabby ass out of bed, quick shower and went down to investigate.

There is a need to get up this morning as “The Man” from James Villas is coming over to (in all certainty) sell us stuff like days out etc.

Jane is up and the Kettle is on, good times. I’m probably going to forego a shower this morning in favour of an outside shower and swim in a bit. I might have to wait for the sun to come over the house though and start warming the pool.

Good coffee Jane.

“The Man” also known as Paul came round and didn’t actually try to sell us anything surprisingly. He did mention that if we said “Paul sent us” in a couple of tavernas then there would be free wine. In reality we don’t feel confident in the coolness of Paul. It seems that he may have some outstanding bar bills so I think we might try and blag some wine anyway. Paul sported a nice line in nylon slacks. I suspect on hot days he’d generate enough static electricity to power his own villa. He probably treats himself to a nice pair every few months with the cash raised from backhanders from his recommended restaurants. Obviously the local Irish pub hasn’t got in on this scam as he was quite damning with faint praise about it being a place for stereotypical ex-pats. Quite ironic coming from a stereotypical ex-pat. Maybe they’d just laughed at his slacks once too often and he’d taken offence. Or he may have accidentally electrocuted the bartender’s dog.

Today we went out to the end of the road intending to go to Polis for the day. In stead of turning left to Polis, Goldy suggested we go right, so we did. We took a coastal road east and got as far as Pachyammas before we decided to stop and head back as there was nothing really going on at all. In hindsight, using the force on this occasion seemed rather crap as there was less than nothing that way, however…..

I checked my Geocaching App on my iBore and there were a few on the way back so we gave them a try. This did lead me to finding out about Geocaching which is a bit like pokemon with regards to finding something that someone else has put there, marking that we’ve found it and then going to the next one, and catching them all and it’s awesome.

The first was at Pomos marina. It is a lovely little cove, close to the town with a good size restaurant serving local fish and all the typical Greek dishes, more on that later. Disappointingly, Pomos looked like “Pornos” on the map, but wasn’t actually called that. I was expecting a town built on the sale and distribution of VHS copies of lewd films like the ones Five used to show when it was still called Channel 5 and had no money. It was, though, a really nice little place.

We had a gander at the marina, lots of little fishing boats with nets and ropes and stuff, there was a big dead fish floating in the water and a shouty kitty living in the rocks which shouted at us, then on to find the cache. We had a short walk along the beach, then up a rockface and doubled back on ourselves. Typically, it was under a stone near to the cliff. The cache itself was a bit worrying. It was cylindrical about eight inches long and about and inch in diameter, who knows where it had been *shudders*.

Opened, signed and replaced with no muggle interference. Which whilst in the right area (read on the cliff not down by the sea) I had in fact walked right past it, but not knowing what to look for it was a bit meh but good that we got it, my first Geocache, Suzie’s gonna love this as it means we can go walking lots J

The restaurant was our next stop. We had a simple meal of Halloumi (squeaky) cheese in pitas, a spot of Tzatziki and a round or two of water to replenish the reserves. Didn’t come to a great deal of cash so we paid and left quickly, just in case it was an error. Please note, I’d just had a can of pepsi, the rest are the dishonest scumbags :op though I’ve no idea how they came to that price on the bill

I dropped a 2 euro coin over the balcony, which Simon kindly retrieved for me, finding a small dice along the way. Prizes! Also, at this point some very religious looking people arrived at the restaurant. And by that I mean they were wearing Orthodox garb, not that they were crucified or doing miracles or anything. There were some splendid beards on display, which seem to be compulsory for being a Greek-style vicar. In fact, their entire theology may be based around amount and length of facial hair rather than piousness. Not necessarily a good system as that’d make Hitler a higher rank than, say, a clean-shaven deity type such as Buddha. Still, you’ve got to start somewhere I suppose and at least Hitler would be a lot lower down the pecking order than Santa. But then again ZZ Top would be equivalent to a whole squad of Jesuses (Jesii?).

We got back into the car and drove west, to the abandoned Paradise Taverna for the next cache, struck out on this one. It wasn’t so bad, it was nice and hot, the cache didn’t seem to exist though. I even looked in an abandoned commercial dishwasher and under some pallets that I think something was living under. Bit scary.

I got a seed stuck to my shoe here that looked like a tiny conker. Excellent.

The next cache was towards Polis and it was at a beach (if you could call it that). Limni Jetty is in the middle of nowhere and used to be used as a local copper mine which was closed in the 70’s. The buildings had fallen into disrepair and looked more home to tramps than anything at all useful. Loads of odd graffiti, like the now legendary “put your Nazis in the bin” slogan and advertising for the Low Bap society – perhaps a self help group for ladies with saggy boobs? I don’t know. Cache-fail, couldn’t find it anywhere. I don’t know where it was. Looking at the log on the iBore I think it may have been moved a number of times or even washed out to sea. Boo hiss…..

The graffiti also featured the tags of 91Boom, who seems to have written on literally most things on the island along with his chum 93Panic. Rather than being skilled street artists though, they just rudely scrawl their names on like obsessive flatmates labelling Tupperware containers in the fridge. Slackers – they could at least draw the occasional rude picture or write “If you read this you are gay”.

We continued on to Polis and parked up. We had a wander round in the now very arid early afternoon so we stopped off for a round of drinks and ice cream at a place called Savvas in the town square. If you need wi-fi, it is free here with the password DIMITRIS30. And good wifi it is too, emailed Suzie, she’s got a lovely dress for our trip to Spain woop woop

I had a pint of iced coffee, which was quite literally ice (cream) in a coffee. Not quite what I expected but surprisingly pleasant.

Polis has one geocache at a campsite. We had a wander round, Goldy found it and by this point he had the Geocaching bug. This was AWESOME !! with this little app I’d downloaded at the café I had the radar thingee and distance thingee, it was so cool we we’re trying to find it, found the rough area and we were trying to triangulate with Andy, Gaz and myself with our little apps on our phone, all 5 of us were searching and it all came back to the point where we’d almost started, so I climbed back up this little slope and had a look about and bingo a glimpse of white “container” was to be seen, of course I’m not going to tell you where it is exactly, that’s not the point of the game but I’d found my first one myself, most awesome. Inside were two travel bugs which Andy now has and a frog who wants to go island hopping… the UK is an island so I’ve grabbed that one and will be planting it in my first cache back home.

On the way to find it we saw a rat, he was actually quite cute.

On the way home we stopped off for supplies and then drove back to the villa for a coke float and a dip in the pool.

Oh, before I forget, I got hit with a water balloon as we drove along the main strip. Next time, I will stop and throttle the little bastard, BIG SENSE OF HUMOUR FAILURE!

In spite of this, we had a lovely, relaxing afternoon. Personally I thought the silver lining here was that all it was was a water balloon, it could have been a lot worse…

Well, we assume it was water anyway…

At the moment, I’m sitting on a sun bed, the sun is dropping in front of me and everything is well in the world.

Tonight, we have Liza’s for a mézé dinner.

2231hrs, just got in from Liza’s, crikey, €14 per head for more food than you could shake a stick at. It was a lovely meal but just tasted a bit ‘mute’. It was a perfectly good meal and very enjoyable but I don’t really know how to describe it. I’ll leave it to Gaz. Meal was nice, not to the level of Stavros’s (in Chlorakas from last year) maybe I can see if we can pop there on Sunday or Monday depending on the mood of the squad.

I’d describe the meal as “relentless”, given the conveyor belt of mostly meat that the waitress kept topping up. Most of it was quite nice, but all a wee bit bland – the sausage of death had us all stumped as to what was in it (red wine, it turned out – and most likely some less than prime cut meat if I’m honest), but prize for oddest dish was the one that looked like someone had dismantled an omelette and swept it into a small, greasy pile. Got some free wine without even having to drop Paul’s name. Unfortunately, soon realised why it was given away free.

Now coffee and I think soon to bed. Surgery (Trauma Centre on his DS) and Coffee and see what movies I have and speak to my Suzie and then to sleep to count one more off the 5 till I have her again, “have her”, yuk, bad turn of phrase,  wondering if we can sort out a Geocache now for next field trip J

Cyprus - Wednesday 5th May 2010

Today is the start of our holiday to Cyprus, at 0250hrs my alarm goes and I head to the bathroom in a daze.

The last few months have been pretty manic what with moving from our pokey little flat to a house just up the road. With work, DIY and other things on the horizon I didn’t feel very well prepared, but longing for, this holiday. It has been a cold and snowy winter and I think two weeks in the blazing heat is very much in order.

The was a slight panic yesterday when the Icelandic version of Mount Doom decided to spew another few hundred tons of ash into the air closing Scotland and Ireland’s air space.

After getting washed and changed, I pack up the last of the things while Anna dragged herself out of bed and gets ready.

It all seems like a bit of a dream and an eternity ago now, but we left, locked up tight and got in the car.

The trip to Gatwick was dark, and pretty quick. It was at least 15 minutes into the journey before we actually saw another car on the road.

We got to the car park and the bus took us to the North Terminal as soon as we were aboard.

Check in was pretty empty, security the same and everything was going without a hitch.

We found Goldy OHH Lies, I found you… (whose long suffering other half had given him a lift to the airport) and we went to grab a bite to eat at one of the many overly expensive ‘restaurants’ on the gallery. Well you did, I went and got my lovely “Eat” big breakfast bun that I’d been salivating over for a week.

We got called to our gate and a bus took us to a white, suspiciously unmarked small jet on the runway.

Once on board I was very surprised to see that it looked like an old GB Airways plane with blue leather seats and where we sat, on the bulkhead, I can safely say I had about 6ft of leg room. And 20ft for the mortals among us…..

We were delayed ½ an hour on the runway but we were soon in the air and jetting our way to Cyprus. Interesting note about the plane though, I think it needs a bit of a rest – as we took off, one of the oxygen mask panels a few rows from us came open, prompting a panicked shuffle around of the 3 people on that row to some other seats, all mid climb and a hasty announcement to the rest of us that everything was really ok. I’m quite glad we came prepared with our own food and drink as it turned out that the water on board for tea and coffee was heavily chlorinated and most people who bought one ended up getting a refund. I was either sleeping or really not paying attention at this point probably watching 24 or House J

The journey, of four hours, was spent swooning over the tiny babies on the plane, listening to sewer mouth gangster rap (and a bit of Glee) and eating our slightly overpriced Boots meal deal. Or as I said not paying attention to any of this, and eating my rather well priced boots meal deal and sipping my new tropical variety Berocca which in hindsight I should have put in two into a litre of water because it tasted and looked like weak piss, more on this later.

The four hours seemed a lot less when the tiredness crept in and sleep overcame us.

Also it’s worth pointing out that Simon is a naughty boy who didn’t keep hold of his drink bottle which, during landing and a bit of airbreaking about 5 mins out, flew straight off his armrest and under the seats in front of us and proceeded to dribble slowly out all over the floor, mmmm Berocca stains…

Well it’s better it did that than explode “piss” all over us J

We eventually landed at Paphos Airport and met with the first real frustration, getting our bags back. This was SO your fault, after jinxing us on the way going “it’s been a really smooth trip so far” yeah that was cosmic karma kicking us up the arse, so much so I swear my bag was put on the conveyor last….. For me, the frustration was slightly lessened by a large contingent of Canadian soldiers carrying their heavy metal flight cases through the arrivals hall with their big, tight t-shirt covered muscles, rippling alluringly in close proximity….oh I’m sorry, got a bit carried away there, carry on! It was a short wait but we soon got them and headed into arrivals to get our new ‘motor’.

In the lobby we met with a small Greek man who showed us to a lady who took us to a bronze Nissan Micra. Excellent I thought, we paid for this exact car. We had one in Crete a couple of years ago and it was perfect for us. Well, Goldy, Anna and I crammed our sorry assess into the car and the lady whisked us away from the airport along the access road. About half way along I could feel the mental local driver slowing and pulling over to the right. We shot onto a gravel path and sped along it for a couple of hundred meters towards a small hut. To be honest, a lot went through my mind in a short space of time. Where were we going, what would happen when we got there, do I need to ready myself for a back country shafting or would Goldy take one for the team first? Thank Christ Andy took the shot in the mouth, I certainly didn’t like the idea of it…..

We pulled up outside a small hut and the lady said in broken English “paperwork”. Right, we all got out and followed her to a cabin which from the outside was just a porta-cabin. Inside, thank God, were Budget signs, filing cabinets and other rental papers. PHEW! Goldy’s ass was saved, at least for the time being. Cheers dude, I owe you one J

We were sat with a middle aged cheeky Greek man as we filled in the papers, added Goldy to the policy and then he asked us “did we want to upgrade our car?”

After discovering we could get a Chevrolet Lacette or a Honda HRV for an extra €2 a day we soon said yes. After the Chevrolet appeared on BBC’S Top Gear we decided that it would be an AWESOME car to have for two weeks, the lure of a high wheel base HRV though was too much to overcome. We booked it.

The car (which from now on shall be referred to as the Pimp-Mobile) rolled up with a small rugged looking man driving blaring out JLS from the stereo. Okay, JLS slightly ruined the drug dealer image but the white paint job and blacked out windows made this motor a force to be reckoned with.

I was given a quick instruction as to the controls of the Pimp-Mobile and we packed out shiz into it and set off into the countryside.

The drive to Stavroulla took about an hour as we drove up to Polis and then across to Argaka. We stopped off for emergency noms too, just for bread and basic whatnots. Anyway I’m quite glad we got here mid afternoon, as if we’d had to find this villa in the dark at 2am or something, I don’t think we would have found it – not saying their instructions are a bit flaky, but they’re not a clear as perhaps they could be. Ah well, we found it after only a couple of missed turns! Flaky doesn’t do it justice, Anneka Rice would have had issues with this one and that’s WITH her chopper !!

The villa is FANTASTIC, 3 double rooms and a twin, massive living space, kidney shaped infinity pool and a great looking outdoor entertainment area. The place is quite awesome, pool looks awesome car is great, but by this time my body was going YOU’VE BEEN UP SINCE FOUR YOU NEED SLEEP !!! so with a bit of music on I lay upon the sofa and apparently snored, (see below) I think they’re just saying it to make me paranoid J

I’m sitting at the dining table, writing this looking at the sun slowly setting over the sea, waiting for the rest of the tribe to arrive.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand REST.

Goldy is snoring. Loudly. Yeah yeah, prove it

I would like to state at this point that Andrew Sweeney fully intends on showing me his cock on this holiday, I’m wondering if Gaz and Jane are aware of this *cough* “Tradition” or are they walking into this hell of terror, I’m wondering if it’s more supportive to tell them and let them fear the moment like I am or just let them walk into it… oh no hang on, they know of it already, the poor souls…….

It’s now like 10:30pm, which whilst it’s 8:30 in “real” time I’ve been up since 4 so leave me alone….. Signing off for day one J

2245hrs,… ooooooooooooooh Arab porn channels!,.. and what is this THE PENTAGON CHANNEL! I can’t wait for another episode of the Grill Sargeant!

Day one for myself and Janey was somewhat more relaxed. We were flying from the undelightful hangar stroke coffee shop that is Luton airport, ludicrously described as “London Luton” in the same geographical sense of proximity as Edinburgh is in Dorset, but as our flight was only leaving at 11.30 we had a reasonably pleasant 9 am start. In fact, things were entirely uneventful (aside from the torrent emerging from my nose as a result of hayfever, which I will spare you any further details of) until we arrived and attempted to locate the pickup point for our hire car. Turns out the chap we were supposed to meet had already met someone else and buggered off, so we were left hanging around and somewhat bewildered. Eventually we did locate the correct bloke, who drove us off to a shed in the middle of a wheat field whilst complaining about airport taxes for having an office on site. While initially alarming, as it appeared we might have accidentally hired a tractor, this turned out to be the same entirely legit rental gaff everyone else had been at earlier on. Unfortunately at this point though they were running out of cars, so we ended up with a Nissan Note with a large dent in the door rather than an SUV. Still, better than a Kia Piccanto, but then again a skateboard would have been better than a Kia Piccanto.

Once we’d had everything on the car explained to us (which I promptly forgot – the guy had said something about either turning the air conditioning on or off before starting the engine. Unfortunately I can’t recall which so I’ve just been alternating in the hope this will only half break things at worst) we headed off to the villa. This all went well until it started to get dark, as this meant that in the gloom we missed the fact that the slightly overgrown sign saying “Liza’s Tavern”, which was our clue for overshooting the villa turning, actually said “Liza’s Tavern, 3km”, meaning we still had a fair way to go. Some off-roading down entirely wrong turns and a few mildly panicky phone calls later and we finally located Andy and Goldy and followed them to the villa. At this point I was obviously too knackered to remember anything else, seeing as I can’t remember anything else. Either that or someone drugged me. I’ll assume the former though as I don’t seem to have had any organs removed for sale on the black market. Anyway, on to day two.

Happy New Year!

This New Year was spent in company with the regular crowd in Wales again. This time we were a little further into the Brecon Beacons just south of a village called Crai (Cray).

Our barn for the week was situated at the Happy Horse Retirement Home. It is a long barn, split into three cottages, Blue Brook - (sleeps 6 and seats 16 for dinner), Red Ridge and Green Gallop both sleep 4 a piece.

The place was rustic and aged, but new and fresh and no expence had been spared in its design and upkeep. It has a river running past it and it is within walking distance of a substantial resevoir.

It is excellent for walkers and is ideal for trips to Brecon and Merthyr for some town life and the Beacons for those that just want to go somewhere quiet and sit. Im not going to prattle on about it. It is wonderful and i fully intend to go back this year to see what it is like in the warm and without the snow!

http://www.happyhorsecottage.co.uk/

To see photos from the trip, visit the flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweenpole2001/sets .