The whale-watching was called off because of strong winds unfortunately; went for a walk on the beach instead and sampled some Murphy's in the pub later.

Spent three restful days in Ireland; the weather wasn't great, unlike yesterday when we finally got round to seeing Antony Gormley's now permanent installation 'Other Place' on Crosby beach in Liverpool. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, in fact not the best time to view the statues, or so I've been told; apparently they look their best in the rain. There's one of the hundred below!



Off to Scarborough to see the family tomorrow, probably walking in the Lakes again at the weekend, depends on the weather. Liverpool-Arsenal on Sunday.

Mike x

Ace start to the weekend!

Off to watch whales and drink Guiness.

Mike x

...another Wainwright. Back up to the Lakes this morning in more typical Cumbrian weather: wet and foggy. Looked like Cat Bells was going to be murky, but luckily escaped the surrounding rain.

Big event this week as a new webcam was installed in the Symi Visitor office. One of the first things I wanted to do back in 1999 when this website was created was to get a webcam up and running to show a live picture of the harbour. I came out to Symi in Easter 2000 to try and get the project off the ground, but was frustrated by the then primitive internet access facilities. Over the next few years we did intermittently get a working webcam to show photos from the old office, over the bakers' in the harbour (photo below). Dial-up internet access was never conducive to running a successful webcam however and it is only with the advent of ADSL on
the island that we have been able to think about running a 24 hour constantly updated 'cam. Thanks to the efforts of Allan and Glen, we now have such a webcam-certainly one of the most viewed in the whole of Greece and further afield as well, as visitors from the US, Japan, Australia regularly log in to see the current view from the Symi Visitor offices. That is the current live view below right; you can see the larger version here. Updated every 30 seconds, 24 hours a day: enjoy!

Half-term next week and we are off to Cork for a few days to do some walking and whale-watching. Will post some photos up here when I get back.

All the best,

Mike x

As the weather was so gorgeous today, decided on a spur of the moment drive up to the Lakes. Takes us only an hour from home to get to Windermere so we go quite often. Parked in Ambleside about 11.00, had a bacon butty and a pot of tea and decided to walk up Red Screes. Not a summit I would want to tackle in bad weather-you'd likely be knee-deep in snow-but today it was just perfect. Hard work at 2,546 ft but worth it for the 'Oh my god' views down to the Kirkstone pass from the top. And the first pint in the 'Golden Rule' at the bottom!

Just in case you missed this on the chat page:

Labels: Greece, Symi