Something that will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. Most people have been saying that for years.
But actually, what I have been doing is to do with work. Here on the Island of Anxios, in the Sporadic Islands, Rosy (who owns the little hotel complex where we are staying) and her husband Nondas have bought a speedboat thing, and they will be offering it as an attraction for their clients next year.
Consequently they needed a few photos for their next-year’s holiday brochure and so Yours Truly was enrolled to do the honours.
Consequently everyone piled into the Makaira II and off it went like a ferret up a trouser leg.
The driver of the little power boat thing in which we were travelling had loads of fun doing some synchronised sailing to get into some really good positions, but we managed in the end to shoot off about 30 photos of which 4 or 5 made the cut.
Anxios is quite similar to parts of Québec and Labrador in the sense that the road to the south side of the island has only been made quite recently. Prior to that, all communication was by water, and you can understand why the locals would want to keep it all to themselves, because it really is something out of a photography album.
I’ve never seen a sea as clear as this round here and even though the water might be several metres deep, you can clearly see the bottom of the sea and the fish that are swimming around in it – something that you could never do in the north of Europe.
This afternoon I went for a wander around to that bay where I thought that I had recognised some Roman concrete. I managed to find the pathway down and went for a closer look.
The conclusion is that it’s not volcanic, and it’s not sand that is binding the stones together. Whatever it is has certainly set quite solid and doesn’t look as if it was ever intended to move. Of course, I’m no authority on anything but this is so different from anything else in the immediate vicinity and bears no relation whatever to the natural geology, and given its strategic position I could easily imagine this as having been constructed deliberately by a human agency.
ON the way back, I passed this monument in the church grounds. I can’t read what is written on it as my Greek isn’t good enough, but there is a date of “1821” clearly engraved.
Back in the early 19th Century Greece was part of the Turkish Empire, but all through that century, parts of “The Sick Man of Europe” were amputated and many historic nations in South-Eastern Europe came back into existence, Greece being one of them. It’s said that in 1821 the movement for Independent Greece used the island of Agkistri as its headquarters and so it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that this is to commemorate those islanders who achieved independence for their country.
