Lucky to be here book

Wind is strange thing, you can feel it but you cannot really see it, you can only see its affect on water surface, trees, etc. It can cool you on a hot summer’s day, or cut you like a knife in the middle of winter.. In fact, the Greeks talk about “lazy winds”. They do not go around you but go straight through you! Those are the chilling winds. Wind can also provide you with so much pleasure on the sea, but can also stir the sea up to become an extremely dangerous place. I never really thought much about wind until I learned to windsurf and sail. It was then that I found this wonderful place between the wind and the water, where with your skill (& good equipment, but mostly skill), you could spend a hugely enjoyable time scudding across the water.

The light in Greece is amazing. We do not get very many “grey days” as you do in UK & Holland, because there are very few days with complete cloud cover (& then it is usually raining like hell!). After strong west winds, it is possible to see over 60 miles (100 Ks) north over the sea to Mount Athos, “The Holy Mountain”. In the winter, it is covered with snow, and if you get a clear day with a sunset, it appears to be a pink fairy wonderland emerging out of the sea. The light is constantly changing in Greece, and the sea reflects the colours, making almost no two days the same. Artists have come to Greece for hundreds of years to capture and paint that special light. Strangely enough, there are very few well know Greek painters, only “El Greco”, who lived in Spain! However, Greeks are very tactile (they love to touch), and have been tremendous sculptors and woodcarvers. During the summer months, with the almost eternal blue sky, the light doesn’t change so much. Just at sunrise and sunset. But in the winter, spring, and autumn, you can get tremendous sunrises and sunsets, as the sun plays peek a boo with the clouds. Some sunsets will go on for well over an hour with the colours changing from a strong red, through pink and vermilion to dark clouds tinged with threads of purple. The west end of the island, Banana and Eleni Beaches are the best place to see the sunsets, but also Vromolimnos Beach, which faces west, gets some stunning sunsets too. During the day the sea changes from the classic “wine dark sea” to clear bright blue, where sand lies underneath, and to an incredible turquoise as the sun dips towards the horizon. The colours on the land in Greece are also amazing. We have a thousand different shades of green, from the dark leaves of Arbutus (Strawberry tree) and citrus fruits, to the ever-changing silver green of the olive trees. We don’t have many deciduous trees, so we don’t get huge swathes of autumn colours, but the grape vines, the plane trees, the various varieties of poplar trees, and the fruit trees provide enough contrast to delight the eye. The ubiquitous pine tree, which covers most of the island, provides a green backdrop to everything. But even these, in the spring, acquire a yellowy orange tinge as the baby pine cones form.
Greece is a place of extremes, especially where weather is concerned. We don’t get drizzly grey weather in Greece, it is either full on sun, or full on storm. The locals (and we are now considered as locals as well) leap from shade patch to shade patch in the summer. The idea of spread-eagling oneself to bake for hours at a time, just seems crazy to us. However, when you come from sun starved Northern Europe, I can imagine that you want as much sun as you can get in the (usually too short) vacation time that you have. We who must work in the heat, avoid the sun as much as possible. When it storms in Greece, IT STORMS! We have thunderstorms that can sometimes seem to come from nowhere, where the lighting is all over the place and often crashes into the sea, and winds which whip up the sea in no time. Sailing here can sometimes be “interesting”. Usually the thunder and lightning are followed by torrential downpours, but these are usually (thankfully) short lived. In the winter however, the rain can piss down for a few days at a time, and our streambed becomes unpassable for a day or two! We also get snow. Always on the highest point of Skiathos (some 440 metres), but every few years we will get a dump even down to the beaches.

Here is one winter when Zoi was just 3 and Mara not even a year old. Liesbeth, Lida’s sister, is on the left.

Here is another, more recent, picture as the snow fell on The Barn and the Pool area.

We love the summer, the autumn, the winter, and the amazing renewal of life in the spring. I don’t know of any other place where you get these definite different seasons, and we love the contrasts. Having spent now over 40 years in one place on the Earth, being involved with growing plants and trees and harvesting everything from lettuce to olives, we definitely see a change in the weather. The sun is much hotter than it was, the storms ae often more severe, the plants are often confused as temperatures vary wildly, and in general, it is quite disturbing. We all know (though many deny) that our consumerist lifestyle and our over consumption of carbon-based energy, is changing the planet, and making things harder for the next generations, but we seem to be at a loss as to what to do about it. Well, we all can make a difference. I am not going to list here all the things we can do to make a change, you can find it all on the Internet. The main thing is that you have to accept that we must change our ways, and then research it, and then get on with it.