I slept really well last
night. Jane was very surprised and commented that Bulgaria must be a very noisy
place. Children had been cycling past shouting until very late. Two boys had
rigged their bikes to sound like motorcycles and were tearing up and down until
nearly midnight. Close by there was loud music and cars had been driving past
into the early hours. She also thought that most Bulgarians were hard of hearing as they shouted even when seated adjacent to each other.
The laundry at Camping
Sikia was a long walk from our pitch and there were better ways of spending our
time than washing - like lying on the beach. A bit of a backlog had accumulated
and Jane spent the early part of the morning putting two loads through the
machines situated nearby. She was very pleased these were fast top loading
machines unlike the front loader that was still chundering away after 3 hours
at Ioannina. While the machines cost €4 a pop, and that at Ioannina was free,
it was well worth paying for a quick and hassle free wash. Jane strung a line
between lampposts and trees and it wasn’t very long before Mable was surrounded
by washing drying in the sun. While a lot of tasks on our trip are shared, Jane
alone has been doing a great job ensuring we have clean clothes and bedding.
While I am the only one that tends to our toilette cassette, that is far less
time consuming than the laundry.
Jane also wanted to do
some cooking in the relative cool of early morning when temperatures are in the
low twenties. She prepared a dish of rice, egg, and salmon with a white sauce
for our evening meal.
It was gone 10:00 by the
time we walked the couple of hundred metres to the beach. Much to our surprise
all the loungers were taken, but most were occupied only by towels. We made a
note to do the same first thing tomorrow and installed ourselves on two ‘beds’
complete with vinyl covered mattresses and pillows on the deck under shade
cloth outside the bar. It wasn’t clear to us whether there was an expectation
we bought something from the bar to be able to use the beds so I ordered a
cappuccino and iced coffee that came with a small bottle of water for each of
us. All the voices around us were speaking in an eastern European language that
we assumed was Bulgarian. We had spotted signs in the camp were in Greek,
English and Bulgarian. We heard no-one speaking English and few Greek, it
seemed nearly everyone in the camping ground was Bulgarian.
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| Our Possie For The Day |
The morning was spent
lying and reading with the occasional swim for Jane and dunk for me to cool
off. There was wi-fi in the bar area and Jane used it to catch up with what was
happening in the world on her iPad. I finished reading the 10th Roy
Grace novel and decided that was enough, they were becoming formulaic and I
felt the ending was particularly weak. (DO NOT READ THE REMAINDER OF THIS
PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW HOW THE BOOK ENDS). The wife of the hero
who disappeared over 10 years ago to start a new life in Germany is bowled by a
taxi in Munich when she looked the wrong way crossing the street after spending
a long weekend in Brighton. The arsonist villain getting his comeuppance by
a fellow prisoner pouring petrol into his cell and igniting it by tossing in a
cigarette containing a magnesium strip because a cigarette alone won’t ignite
petrol. How likely is that! At Jane’s suggestion I started reading Gerald
Durrel’s ‘My Family and Other Animals’ which she had re-read recently with the
exploits of the family in Corfu causing tears to frequently roll down her face.
The towels on loungers
were gradually replaced by people as the morning progressed. A man took a jet
ski out for a test run hooning around we thought dangerously close to the beach.
Then a man, his wife and son took the thing out more sedately before
disappearing round a headland at a rate of knots. Groups of scuba divers headed
out in boats, others, presumably novices, ducked their heads under water by a
jetty.
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| Seen On The Beach |
We took a half hour break
for lunch at Mabel of the remainder of the potato and veggie dish with bread and cheese.
We would have taken longer, but Jane was concerned our towels weren’t
sufficient to guarantee our places at the bar. It turned out there was no need
to worry on that account.
The afternoon was a
repeat of the morning. I tired of Gerald Durrel’s writing. While the antics of
his family were hilarious, his verbose, flowery descriptions of Corfu’s flora
and fauna were getting to me. There was only so much ‘the sea smooth and opalescent, kingfisher-blue, jade-green, with here
and there a pleat or two in its sleek surface’ I could take. If only he
could have stuck to the family's antics. I gave up and started on Ken Follett’s ‘Hornet
Moth’ set in Denmark during the second world war, much more my cup of tea.
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| The Hare And The Tortoise |
As the afternoon wore on
boats and jet skis were being taken out of the water. Most boats were flying
the Greek and Bulgarian flags. We wondered whether the owners were there just
for the weekend?
Over a G and T for Jane
and a Camperdoodle for me we watched the comings and goings on the busy path
next to us. Two young boys rode past on their bikes that were rigged to sound
like motorcycles. I commented to Jane that I used to do that at their age by
folding a cigarette packet and fixing it to the forks such that it whirred on
the spokes. Later, while looking out the window of Mabel’s kitchen I noticed
that the bikes making the noise belonged to two lads in a Bulgarian camper van
parked next to us. They were busy refitting their noise makers – each had a
disposable plastic ‘glass’ that they were wedging between their bike frames and
rear tyres. Not a lot had changed over the years!
We ate the first
instalment of Jane’s rice dish for our evening meal. The camping ground was a
lot less busy and much quieter than last night.
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