The
Latest Updates to SymiVisitor.comOff to Bruges next week with 44 kids for our traditional visit to the Christmas market there. As we have done for the last couple of foreign trips it has all been arranged independently, which makes everything so much less expensive. I find it hard to see why anyone should want to use a travel company for any sort of holiday in this internet age; it took us twenty minutes, a couple of emails and one phone call to set the whole thing up. A travel firm would have effectively charged us a thousand pounds or more for doing exactly the same thing. Next February we are off to Barcelona for five days, can't wait!
I've been really busy at work just lately; not my favourite time of the year by any means. We have twelve trainee teachers in school from various training institutions at the moment, which means lots of lesson observations, mentor sessions and paperwork. I've a seminar to deliver to trainee language teachers at Manchester University next week and there's still all the primary school language teaching to sort out.
Anyway, here's what's new:
Wallpaper and lots of it When I get obsessed with an idea for the website, I get obsessed. Plenty there already, plenty to come.
Symi-property.com Buy your dream house on Symi.
Symi Weddings Romantic settings.
Symi Animal Welfare October's vet visit.
Anyone spot Joe in this month's 'Symi Visitor' newspaper?
All the best,,
Mike x
My computer packed in a fortnight ago. The on-off switch on the front had been dodgy for a while, in fact I was having real problems starting it up, until it got to the stage where I didn't dare switch it off in case it never powered up again. So I didn't-switch it off that is-until after about a month I started to be woken in the night by random and rather disturbing beeping noises. Eventually, stumbling out of bed at three in the morning, I realised the noise was coming from my computer. Checking for causes on the internet, I discovered that the machine was probably complaining of overheating - and who could blame it really. Now, being woken by a screaming infant in the early hours (I vaguely remember) is bad enough, but I draw the line at noisy motherboards. So, early one morning, I switched it off. Guess what; I couldn't switch it on again. I took the thing to pieces, replaced the power switch, soldered various bits to various other bits, trawled the Net, asked round the local computer fairs and shops but nothing would bring it back to life. Why am I telling you all this? As a vain attempt to cover up the fact that I haven't updated this 'What's New' page for weeks...
Anyway, I have been writing the site on my gorgeous, silver dream machine of a laptop since the old desktop died; unfortunately there were four years of files, photos and ideas on there which I can't get at. And yes, I know you should always back up everything vital at various intervals and I did, mainly, but there was a lot of new stuff I'd been writing for the site lately which I hadn't saved. There were also a lot of photos people had sent me for inclusion on the 'Visitors' Photos' page which I just hadn't had time to put up. So here's one of Glen Beestone's to be going on with; you can download it and set it as your desktop wallpaper: 1024x767 or 800x600.
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Meanwhile, I've worked another half-term; planned a school trip to Bruges at Christmas, started writing a website for a new primary languages teaching project in Bolton, been to the match most weeks, been to the gym most days, been sliding into my usual seasonal affective disordered winter gloom as the days shorten and the memories of the blue Aegean slowly fade... I've also been lucky enough to watch our grandson Joe grow up into a bouncing, healthy and demonstrative baby-as we can't get over to Scarborough as often as we'd like to, the change in him in a few weeks when we do get there is always amazing. |
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Back to work tomorrow and counting the days again until the next holiday..
Hope you're all well,
Mike :-)
I suppose I could change the title of this page to 'What's Reasonably New', otherwise I could just hold my hand up and admit that I've been too busy being on holiday to update the site much for the last six weeks. We were in Greece for just about five weeks; most of the time spent on Symi with a few days on Patmos, a night in Rhodes and a day in Athens mixed in. I know we usually spread our wings and island-hop all summer, but to be honest I think we've been everywhere worth going over the last ten years or so. We've come to realise that we can travel as much as we like round the Greek islands but there isn't really anywhere else like Symi. As a friend of ours said looking from our balcony over the harbour at twilight; 'There can't be many places like this left on earth'.
Received two CDs today packed with photos taken by Iaan Burgon on his nifty new digital camera. Here's four of my wife Jo and myself.
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| Another late night in
Chorio...
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| Taxi boat to Nanou
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 The Symi Visitor crew
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 Early evening drink in Chorio.. |
I'll sort the rest of Iaan's photos out plus some I took and put them up on the 'Visitors' Photos' page (eventually). If you have any photos you'd like to share, don't be shy and send them to us; mike-gadd@ntlworld.com The sun's come out; I'm going to make the most of it. Mike x |
Oh well; haven't been
away for several days so it's time to pack again as we're off to Greece
tomorrow. 
Got back on Tuesday
after a great trip to Germany; It was the most well-behaved, pleasant and
polite group of children I've ever taken away in the 20 years I've
been running school holidays. Booking it independently really paid off as
well-we'll never use a company again. Bruges next at Christmas and maybe
Brussels in November and Holland in October. Barcelona next Feb. is also on.
Rüdesheim: river Rhein in the
background. And yes; I do always
wear the same jacket...
Got paid for my exam marking today: good timing. Let's go and spend what's left!
Hope to see some of you in Symi in the next month or so.
All the best,
Mike x
Finished my marking at last; now I can start to look forward to the end of term and our summer trip to Greece. Before that I'm off with 42 kids to the Rheinland for five days-in fact three weeks today we'll be there.
I've
just been on a flying visit to the Basque country and have arranged
for a couple of Spanish students training to teach English in primary
schools to come over and work with us for six weeks. I learnt a lot
about Basque language and culture and managed to find time to sample
some of the local food and drink; well actually quite a lot. 
Photo taken at Mondragon University. |
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Anyway, here's what's new on this site:
I've put two new submissions on our 'Visitors' Photos' section which is up to twenty seven pages now.
There are plenty of new photos on the 'Out & About page', our island photo diary.
I've added the Taverna Neraida to our restaurant listings.
I scanned the June edition of 'The Symi Visitor' newspaper's front page yesterday and put it online, plus a photo of the winners of the 2004 Symi holiday competition arriving on the island.
Oh and I put a new photo of Adriana at the top of her bi-weekly news and recipe column.
That's it for now; it's late and I'm off to bed.
All the best,
Mike x
I'm well over two-thirds of the way through my marking and on the strength of this have spent my examiner's fees already ( a month before I get paid).
Half of them have gone on this:
A four-week flight for 180
pounds each, can't be bad; we'll get a flight down to Rhodes or maybe Leros
when we get to Athens. Unless we do something else entirely. 
Maybe
we'll try to get some tickets for the early rounds of the Olympic athletics
before we fly back.
The other half and a bit more has gone on this:
It's been half term this week; I haven't had much time to do much apart from mark, but we did get over to Scarborough last Thursday to see our son Matt, partner Anna and grandson Joe. He's changed so much in six weeks; his eyes have turned blue (like mine) and he's much more animated and smiley (see photo on the left).
| I went out for a meal in Manchester last night for a Modern Languages' birthday celebration-in retrospect the crème de menthe and Baileys shots to finish the night off were probably a bad idea; nearly finished me off.. Good night though. |  |
I'm going to Bilbao on Thursday for a couple of days to meet some people at the university and to build some language-learning links-beats working for a living. I'll no doubt find time in my busy itinerary to visit the Guggenheim and the odd restaurant and bar.
We're also taking 43 kids to Germany in 5 weeks time-St. Goarshausen on the Rhein. We're there for four days and we have booked it all independently for the first time; I've been running school trips for nearly twenty years and this is the first time we've gone it alone, saving nearly three thousand pounds in the process. I love Germany and can't wait to go..
Meanwhile on the website, here's what's new:
Villa Laza; a new listing on our accommodation page, complete with indoor pool!
I finally got round to updating the desktop wallpaper-my original intention to renew it every week was a touch optimistic. Still, the current version featuring Pedi Bay was worth waiting for. I've installed it on my laptop at work and it cheers me up every time I see it.
I've put the ANES ferry timetables from Rhodes to Symi and vice-versa until the end of August up-in English and Greek.
I'm sure there's lots more updates to tell you about but I really need to get back to the marking. This time next week I will be virtually finished and ready to start counting down to our next Greek holiday.
Hope you're all well,
Mike x
Here I go again; just
got back from an examiners' meeting in Manchester which means that for the
next three weeks I'll be spending most of my spare time marking German
speaking tests. 
As
always I console myself with the thought that I will earn enough money to
pay for my season ticket and our flights to Greece this summer.
As a result, I won't be able to spend as much time updating this site as I
normally can; speaking of which, here's what's new:
I put some photos of this year's VE celebrations on Symi on our 'Out & About' page today, earlier in the week Jean (&Tonic) Manship's birthday party was featured on the same page.
I've updated the Visitors' Photos page with a couple of new galleries this month.
There's a new property for rent on our Accommodation page; Sofia's House at Harani.
This month's 'Symi Visitor' front page went up online last night.
A new house for sale went up on our Real-Estate page and promptly sold..
I've been sprucing up our sister site HalkiVisitor.com and putting some new visitor photos on the site's galleries. The webcam's worth a look too.
Meanwhile, our grandson Joe continues to thrive after his difficult early days; he's now doubled his birth-weight. As you can see from the latest photo, he's looking practically chubby!
All the best,
Mike :-)
| Spent May Day in the Lakes; came up last night with some friends from work and spent the night in a hotel on the edge of Derwentwater. Woke up this morning to the most perfect day imaginable and went out for a reasonably strenuous four-hour walk. Forgot to pack the suntan cream though; the back of my neck is very red. We're lucky living as we do in the north west of England to be able to get away to such a beautiful part of the country so easily; an hour's drive and you're in a different world. |
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As far as SymiVisitor.com is concerned, I've just put some software on the home page which can translate the whole site into Greek, French, German, Italian and Dutch (have a look near the bottom of the page). It's obviously not perfect; nobody has yet come up with a foolproof machine translation system, but it gets close enough. It's still in a test phase: if people find it useful I'll make it permanent. I've also put a new page on the Visitors' Photos section and some new photos on the Out & About page. I occasionally put photos of my grandson Joe up on the left-hand side of this page; the latest one features his first football-related item of clothing and doesn't he look excited about it... He already has a full baby-sized strip, but needs to grow into it.
This morning's walk is catching up with me (or maybe it's the red wine); I'm off to bed. Mike x |
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| Well
you know what they say: a picture paints a thousand words, so here is
a photo record of our holiday to Symi over Easter. We were blessed by
glorious, almost summer-like weather; makes up for last year!
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| Spring flowers at Nos | |
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| The newly-painted police station at dawn | |
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| Boat repair at Harani | |
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| Good Friday morning | |
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| Jo checks the latest news in 'The Symi Visitor'! | |
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| The harbour at dusk; Easter Saturday | |
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| Taken at the same time as the
above; this time looking towards the road to Chorio |
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| A quiet Ag. Nikolaos' beach | |
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| Spring flowers on the Kali Strata | |
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| Path to swimming rocks just past Nos beach | |
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| Nos beach & Taverna | |
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| Cat in Chorio | |
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| Jo at Paco's | |
| I've
been really busy over the last couple of weeks: school mainly and
primary school languages especially. I am in the process of setting up
a new website which will hopefully one day link all the primary
schools in Bolton together and will encourage foreign language
learning. Ironic really; the government has recently disapplied
languages from the compulsory KS4 (14-16) syllabus which has already
led to a situation where modern languages teachers are being made
redundant. Speaking to Manchester University PGCE students last week,
it's obvious that there are just not any jobs around for languages
teachers. I don't think the Whitehall mandarins who made this decision
quite realise what they've set in train. Oh well; what they take from
one end of the educational spectrum, I'll try to put back in at the
other: Bolton-KS2langs.co.uk
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| No doubt you've noticed the new webcam picture on this page; I've been setting up a live link to my son Matt and grandson Joe and thought I could test the settings out here. If you can't see the picture top left, try refreshing the page. That's Joe aged 20 days; he's growing rapidly and we'll be going over to Scarborough to see him again on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we're off to Symi for a week to take in the Easter celebrations. I'm intending to take a digital video camera and making the results available on CD for anyone that's interested. |  |
| As far as the website is concerned, I've slightly changed the home page to include links to some of the write-ups we've received recently in the Rough Guides, Lonely Planet and Frommer's Guides, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Observer. I've put the new ferry timetables up in Greek as well as English and added the Greek public holiday dates to the name-day page. | |
| I'm
writing this at about 9.30pm; we were supposed to be going to the
cinema to see '24 Grams' later but my wife Jo was out at a Greek
restaurant in Liverpool last night and didn't get back until 3.30am:
I've just been downstairs and she's asleep. We'll go tomorrow
instead.. |
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| It was a non-uniform charity day at school yesterday to raise money for Pendlebury Children's Hospital in memory of one of our pupils who died recently from cancer aged just eleven. Our department did our bit by dressing up Spanish style; we raised a lot of money and got ourselves onto the front page of next Monday's Bolton Evening News (apparently). Yesterday was also the day we broke up for Easter; as I mentioned above, we're off on Wednesday morning. Very civilised flight: arriving early afternoon in time for the evening boat to Symi. |  |
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That's it; I'm going to bed. Look out for plenty of Easter photos next week! All the best, Mike :-) |
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| Well my grandson is a whole week old already; he finally came out of hospital on Monday after a few worries because of his low birth weight: 5 pounds 4 ounces. In the photo taken at Scarborough General last Saturday are three generations of Gadds: my son Matt, myself and Joe. The missing generation is my father, currently on holiday in Spain. Joe is, of course, the most beautiful baby ever born; I'm afraid you'll have to put up with me boring you to death with photos and updates of his progress here! |  |
Having realised a while back
that western and eastern Easter coincide this year and never having
experienced the celebrations at first hand, I've been keeping my eye on the
cheap flight websites. Last night I found a deal I couldn't resist, so my
wife Jo and myself are off to Symi again on April 7th for a week. Well, we
haven't been since last October. Stand by for my traditional packing list,
no doubt including earplugs as protection from the celebratory dynamite. 
Meanwhile I've been updating the website as usual; Adriana's latest news twice weekly; her Symi recipes weekly. The office webcam is back up and updating regularly but there seems to be a problem with the Pedi Bay camera at the moment. The Chat Page is particularly lively at the moment; currently featuring a competition to find nicknames for the Symi taxi-drivers, and if you have a question about any aspect of the island you can always find an answer on our Noticeboard.
That's it; I have a pile of year 10 reports to write by Friday and this isn't getting them done.
All the best,
Mike x
Joe Morgan Gadd
Back to work after a week's half-term holiday. Amazing the difference seven days makes; it was light and sunny when I got up about 7.30 this morning and still light when I came out of the gym at 6.00 this evening. The seasons here in the UK seem to be gradually merging; the spring bulbs are up everywhere-daffodils and snowdrops-people are mowing their lawns and yet it is freezing tonight with snow forecast for tomorrow. Global warming, I suppose.
| Jo and I went over to
Scarborough last Thursday to see our son Matthew, partner Anna
(both teachers) and impending
grandson; due in three weeks he seems intent on an early arrival...
As you can see from the photo, I took the opportunity to check up on this site while I was there on Matt's new laptop-obsessed, me?! |
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Meanwhile on SymiVisitor.com, I put some new photos of the Carnival celebrations on the Out & About pages tonight which Nik sent me this morning. I've just realised that I haven't put this month's Symi Visitor newspaper front page online, so I've made a mental note to take the original to school tomorrow to scan.
More soon(ish).
Mike :-)
THURSDAY,
FEBRUARY 5th 2004
| The Symi
Visitor is moving premises this summer!
The photo on the right shows the soon to be renovated top two floors of the building known as the 'Red House'. It's by the new ferry quay on the far side of the harbour opposite the clock tower. I'll keep you up to date on here with how the renovation work is going. It apparently has a lot of the original interior features still intact, including traditional painted ceilings. Watch this space... |
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We (well Nik mainly) got the webcam back up at the weekend; sorted the date and time stamp on the photo out earlier in the week so barring software incompatabilities, viruses, lightning strikes etc, it should give us all our daily dose of Symi for the forseeable future. Can't wait to get a webcam set up in the new office..
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I put some new photos on our 'Out & About' section the other day, prompting some comments on the chat page about how strange it was to see Symiots wrapped up against the chill. If you missed the Symi snow last week, click on the snowman! |
Well, it's 10.30 pm; my wife Jo is out for a drink with the other members of the Greek night class she goes to and I'm on my own with our fourteen year old cat Pulford who, by the sound of it, has fallen off the chair downstairs again. He did this last week and knocked himself cold, so I'd better go and check he's OK.
Have a nice weekend,
Mike X
P.S. I found this photo:
Me on a 'big boat' leaving Symi, Red
House arrowed
THURSDAY, JANUARY 29th 2004
Well I'm back.. Thanks to the weather gods who kindly dumped enough snow on this particular corner of Lancashire to shut our school for a day and a half, I finally have some spare time to turn my attention to this part of the website :-)
New visitors to SymiVisitor.com who are slightly surprised to discover that a website about a Greek island is actually written in Bolton in the UK might like to click on the Archive links to the left of this page to find out more. In fact the two locations currently have at least the cold weather in common!
Regular visitors will obviously have noticed the redesign of this page; my original plan was to turn it into a weblog and I've adapted a template from Blogger.com for the redesign but it isn't hosted there. Hang on; just let me google 'blog':
"A weblog, or blog, is a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first Typically, weblogs are published by individuals and their style is personal and informal."
So
there you go; I suppose this is a blog after all!
As well as regularly updating this site-more on that in a minute-I've also been very busy writing two new websites, one to support a bid I'm helping to write to form a Bolton Teacher Training Consortium, the other to build links between local primary school language teachers. I've been going into schools recently to help teachers of French & German; doing taster lessons, providing materials, lesson plans and ideas. Standing up in front of a group of 30 surly teenagers doesn't faze me at all but 30 five year-olds is another matter-they're scary!!
Latest updates on this site include the ongoing process of adding new properties for rent on our Accommodation Pages and revising (or not) the existing prices for 2004. I'm adding a listing for Villa Papanikola at the moment, which many of our regular visitors will be familiar with through travel companies but which will be now taking independent bookings.
By popular request I put up a list of Greek Name Days at the turn of the year and also two Symi calendars for sale.
The latest ferry timetables until the end of March have just arrived via the Symi Visitor from ANES (the Symi ferry company) so I'll be writing those up tonight. I hate doing it as it means converting an Excel file into a webpage which in theory is quite easy, but somehow never quite works out like that..
I've done it! Ferry Timetables until March 25th.
Back to work tomorrow unfortunately, but at least it's Friday.
I'll try and update this page as often as possible (I know you've heard that one before), and if anyone wants to contact me please send email
All the best,
Mike
