Skinny and Isabella decided upon an early outing at 04:00 as one of them had a pressing reason to venture outside. I stood waiting for them to come back which they did quite promptly. We all went back to sleep until the alarm at 05:45.
It was another clear, bright but slightly windy morning so quite light as well. We could easily see before we made it to the end of the Promontory.
I made a point of calling Skinny to me at frequent intervals to discourage him from disappearing. In fact, he willingly kept within distance all of the time. Only [tail-end] Charlie was a little slow at returning at the end of the walk. A periodic biscuit round tends to keep them more focussed.
I set off for Krios to see Gregory but bumped into Dimitris who had recently arrived and was chatting to Tony outside of the workshop. Apparently, he tells me they are here from now until the end of the season. There’s talk of opening the bar for the middle of May depending on the number of visitors.
It was a lot breezier at Krios but still sunny so it wasn’t quite as enjoyable as the past couple of days. I told Gregory about the possibility of the peripatetic vets coming to Kalamos on Monday and Tuesday so I’m trying to arrange for his dog to be sterilised and picked up from Grammeno with the cats.
It was a little later when I came back and I was quite distracted from my normal routine which was interrupted with collecting money from the Austrian couple who have decided to stay through until Sunday. They have now been joined by a German couple who have paid for two nights. They are in need of Internet access, some hot water and use of the washing machine.
I spent a large amount of my day messing around with Mr Lawrence’s home NAS which is used to provide an off-site backup of the office setup. The idea being that if the office burns down there will still be a copy of all their documents. Having checked through the router’s configuration, I suspect the NAS has been plugged into the port intended for WAN use which would indicate a connection but not to the internal network. I have yet to receive confirmation from Simon.
Maria contacted me to take photos of one of the larger cabins and the bathroom which I’ve now sent to her. I was joined by one of the cats who stood or sat posing for my photos.
I baked the dough which I made yesterday and stored all night in the fridge. I brought it out to warm up when we got up and simply plonked the dough onto the baking tray on a load of flour. Not terribly elegant as the dough spread out. It would have been a better plan to put the dough into the silicone mould. This time, I had both elements on full for the first half-hour and the underneath one for the last half-hour. This has produced a loaf with a good crust and is not burned at the bottom.
I knocked up some other dough, this time chucking all of the ingredients in together at the beginning. I kneaded the dough for a little while before putting it into my glass bowl with a lid. I put most of the starter into the dough so have recharged that and left the jar on top of the dough which can sit in the fridge all night. The remains of yesterday’s loaf was donated to the dogs who received only a very small piece each.
Mountain Warehouse has refunded me for the boots I ordered from them back in February and have yet to arrive. I left it a while before getting in touch as I know the courier services are backed up with deliveries especially in Attica and the Athens area. I’m told the order was lost in transit which explains the tracking logs. I shall see what special offers are available and make a different order. My old boots are still holding out.
When I went to the office, I found a docket from ELTA informing me there is something for collection at the post office. I shall go there in the morning to see what it is. I made an AliExpress order a while ago: one item delivered from Spain and others from China. It will be interesting to see which arrives first. Recently, orders from China took an age which is why I’ve not used AliExpress for a while. They keep bombarding me with offers and commercials so I thought I give them another try. Orderers from China used to take around thirty days to arrive until the pandemic which turned that into three months!
There are now nine customers in the camping so we’re bursting at the seams! Considering it’s April… This time last year, the camping was closed with all the gates locked. We didn’t open up until the end of May. This year, we seem to be getting ahead of the game. I understand the government is considering allowing travel for the Easter Period at the end of April. This might be a foolhardy move considering the number of cases in some areas.
The UK government is not preventing people from coming to some of the Greek islands of which Crete is one. Tourism officially begins in mid-May…
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