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 - 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 - 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.