August
2024
I write this on holiday in Corfu. The sun is beating
down and too hot to be outside at ten thirty in the morning. Corfu is 5 degrees
hotter than expected. I am staying with the family in an AirBnB on the north of
the island near Astrakeri. A splendid family home with swimming pool included
and enough dappled shade from ancient trees creating a very pleasant place to
sit and while away the heat of the day. I have been tracking the weather in
Hayes quietly smug for the cool days and needed rain that will keep the pots
and hanging baskets alive until we return home. We spent a couple days in Corfu
town before heading off to Paxos and stayed at the delightful Bathas hotel then
headed off to Antipaxos for a day trip by water taxi where I slipped on a
concrete causeway between jetty and beach and quite badly hurt my right knee.
<Paxos Antipaxos>
When back in Corfu we rented cars to
get to Astrakeri. Two little Fiat Pandas just right for these narrow country
roads. I dream of whizzing along them on two wheels, a 125 would be adequate,
cruising, enjoying the sun, scenery and wind in my hair. I wonder if we could
do a club excursion to explore the island? The holiday season starts at the
beginning of May and ends in October. May or October would be the better months
not being too hot. This brings me round to Observed Sunday at the beginning of
the month. There was a reasonable turn out for holiday time. I was on the
Kawasaki again as the Buell is still being sorted.
It is nice to have the El Cid back home then drove
it to Bristol to see my brother Adrian to show off the all the new hood and
fittings and on the car theme news of progress with the van. Developments and
manufactured drive shaft from Louis Barbour sent to Ric Pembro who then posted
them to me. Ric had to post the parts as timings with holiday and his
commitments meant he was unable to deliver them so posting was the only option
and I received them in a couple of days. I get so many parcels from that
delivery service I am getting to know the delivery lady from Evri quite well.
I have an 18
kg propane cylinder given to me in an exchange for a 5kg cylinder when the
supplier had nothing else. It was so big and heavy it was fine for a static
barbeque but too awkward for a mobile gas blow torch. It lasted for years. So
long the supplier no longer supplied and FloGas had become computerised and had
no record of me. From that experience I have now become a registered customer
of FloGas and have an 18kg cylinder on my account. I have now returned an empty
cylinder and was provided with some valuable information. The lightweight
composite cylinder that I have with a clipfit regulator also contains propane
and is available from Home Base has changed my way of thinking about gas
cylinders. No longer will I require different fittings for each appliance just
change them all to clipfit. This is the modified one for 6mm pipe.
It was the cost of filling the 18kg cylinder about
£50 or buying a new 5kg and filling that about £80 or converting everything
about £25. It was an easy decision to make.Having
fun with the Pandas unfortunately I was unable to drive as I was unable to
apply enough pressure to the
brake pedal to stop. Gita did all the driving around the north part of the island.
I must admit I found balancing on pebble and shingle beaches
challenging but necessary to get in the warm sea which was good therapy
for my damaged knee. Such luxury to go to a sandy beach at Agios Stephanos.
At
the Eclipse restaurant
overlooking the beach we had an excellent meal but our journey there on our own was exiting.
Missing
a turning at an early stage of phone navigation the resultant route correction turned out to be quite an
adventure. A left turn sent us down a deteriorating road where the potholed tarmac disappeared leaving a stoney
track. Narrowing to a degree that we were scraping bushes on each side twisting
and turning up through
olive groves. The track became rutted with rain water gullies. Stones were
hitting the underside of the
car. Only just enough ground clearance We were climbing still until faced with
a wall of lose stones to finally
climb off this track onto some tar. Loads of throttle. Front wheels spinning.
Stones thrown everywhere
as the Panda slowly climbed the wall. This shortcut took about twenty minutes,
also sent the pulse
racing. We later declined course corrections and preferred to turn back. It was
a shame I did not take a video
of this, it would have been good. Only a few days left of the holiday but more
adventures still to be had
but that is for September.