Lasithiou Plateau - 28 December 2009

Eastern Crete has a high mountain plateau, which made a very pleasant circular drive from our base at Gournes. The drive started from Neapoli, over the mountains and through many small villages to the Lasithiou Plateau. This is an area where traditional stone based windmills have been used for centuries to grind corn. Today there are also many more of a more recent vintage, all over the plateau.
After leaving the plateau, we stopped to see a small 9th century church at a convent, which contains 15th century frescoes. This is near the only memorable village on the route – Krasi. This still has washing tubs by the spring, and it is easy to imagine the women gossiping as they worked in years gone by.

Knossos - 27 December 2009

Sundays in winter have free entry to all Museums, so we made our way to Knossos, to take advantage of this. The site was excavated in Victorian times by a museum curator from Oxford, and much of what you see, is his interpretation of what it could have looked like. Visiting on the free day, saved us from being too critical of his handiwork.

We followed the road from here further inland, as we had been told about the village of Archanes, which has won two awards - 2nd place for best restored village in Europe and 1st place for long term development prospects. Unfortunately we were rather underwhelmed here too, and were pleased we hadn't driven far out of our way to see it.

We should have known better, but for our third visit of the day, the best we can say is that our entrance fee was at least helping the local economy. It is some years since we have visited an aquarium, but although there were plenty of large, well arranged and stocked tanks, the overall impressions was of sterile clean artificial rocks.

Christmas on Crete - 25, 26 December 2009

The Zorbas hosts turned on an amazing Christmas dinner, they called it 16 courses, and I'm sure there were 16 different dishes to be enjoyed. Murray was suffering by a heavy cold by this stage (I think his body said, you have finished your work responsibilities, and take a few sick days now – so the cold he had been fighting off for several days, really took off), but managed to enjoy his dinner despite this.

On Boxing Day, Murray spent the day in bed, and Christine caught a bus to explore Heraklion. The most picturesque part is the harbour and Venetian Fortress. Most of the city was destroyed by heavy bombing in WWII.

Will we, won't we? – 24 December 2009

The airports around London were all affected by the heavy snowfalls so, with great concern, we followed the daily reports in the days leading up to Christmas.

Even the train service to Gatwick (the airport from which we flew to Crete) was suffering severe delays. So we set out extra early on Christmas Eve, to reach Gatwick airport. The trains by then were behaving perfectly, so we hoped the same was true of the airport.

After checking in, we watched the departures board with increasing anxiety, as all the flights before and after ours were delayed. The flight prior to ours was delayed by over 5 hours, and as ours just said 'Please wait', we were not sure what might happen. We had booked a flight with a 3-hour stopover in Athens (no direct flights in winter), but unfortunately, the airline had changed our outward flight, so we only had a 1-hour stopover. As our expected boarding time passed, we still only had 'Please wait' on the board. Finally a gate number appeared, and as we reached it, the PA system announced the sad saga of delays for another flight. We weren't assured of our connection though, as the departure time came and went, and we finally left 40 minutes late.

The flight landed 25 minutes late, but a hostess told us we could make it. She had obviously never tried herself, as we found we had to go through passport control and leave international and enter the domestic terminal. Then after finding our gate number and walking VERY briskly down seemingly never-ending corridors, we finally found ourselves at a security queue. A bit of creative queue jumping was called for, and we took off down more long corridors to find our gate, where the plane was just boarding, and it actually left a few minutes early.

As we waited hopefully for our luggage, we talked to another traveller we recognised from the London flight, to see it we had come the long way round, as we wondered if we had been misdirected, and there was actually a direct route to be taken for a transfer. He assured us he had done this trip many times before, and the only way was to go out and back in through security, just as we had done, which made us wonder how many on the London flight had failed to make the connection. We were extremely delighted to find our bags had also made it through to Heraklion, found our rental car, and made our way to Zorbas Beach, our accommodation for the 10 nights ahead.

Enjoying what was left of the snow - 20 December 2009

There was more snow overnight, so we did a 'countryside' walk at Osterley, which is a few train stops short of Heathrow. We had previously done the same walk in the summer of 2001, so it looked rather different today.

The fields were still covered in snow, and part of the walk was along the Grand Union Canal towpath, which was lined with snow, and sections of the canal were frozen. On such a lovely day, it was a perfect way to enjoy what was left of the snow.


The walk ended at Osterley Park, where the grand house was open, decorated for Christmas.

Dickens' Christmas - 19 December 2009

It really feels like the Christmas (brainwashed by the Christmas cards of my childhood), with a heavy snow fall two nights ago, and the snow still lying on the ground and our car. So it seemed a good time to do a Dickens Christmas walk, with a City of London guide. Starting at St Paul's, we were taken around parts of central London which were used by Dickens in his books, and especially A Christmas Carol. This interesting walk on a glorious crisp winter's morning was a good lead in to spending the afternoon in a warm theatre to watch the latest film adaption of of this enduring story.

Deck The Halls – 13 December 2009

After spending the night in Sheffield, we started the day in the very attractive city centre. The Winter Garden is the largest city centre glasshouse in Europe, and a really lovely place to enjoy.

There seemed to be a large percentage of New Zealand plants, and in fact we saw our first kauri outside New Zealand. (It is going to be a real problem to them in a few hundred years.) The Millennium Gallery can be entered from the gardens. This has an interesting history of the Sheffield Steel and Silver manufacturing history. Behind the Winter Garden is the Peace Square, another pleasant place on such a nice day, with the chateau-like backdrop of the town hall.

Leaving Sheffield, we headed for the Peak District again., this time to visit Haddon Hall. En-route we stopped in Bakewell to visit their markets and treat ourselves to a selection of Bakewell pies and puddings. The original Bakwell pudding was made by accident (as things so often are) and the derivative, the Bakewell tart, has become a UK-wide favourite.

Haddon Hall is an amazing place to visit at any time, but it really suited the Christmas treatment. The house was abandoned at the end of the 18th century, so totally avoided being 'improved and modernised'. The old hall was decked out with holly and other greenery. The Long Gallery had an excellent group of singers, giving new and old versions of Christmas carols, then there was a chance to listen to 'Charles Dickens' read from 'A Christmas Carol'. Christmas fare was on offer too and we tried a turkey cob with mulled wine, both of which were delicious.

No trip to the Peak District is complete without a stop in Hartington at the cheese factory, and after stocking up, we set off for London via Milldale, one of the Peak Districts best kept secrets.