Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Have been on holiday for 10 days now and popped over to Bruges last week for a couple of days. I always take a large group of pupils from school there every December to the Christmas market and have wanted to go back -without the children- for ages. So we booked the ferry from Hull overnight to Zeebrugge and spent two days exploring the parts of Bruges I had never seen. That's me in the photo outside the oldest pub in the town; Café Vlissinghe. It was a nice break, although the weather wasn't the best; we came home to snow and a reminder just how early western Easter is this year. It's not Orthodox Easter for another month so we couldn't get out to Symi this year for the celebrations, but to compensate, have booked flights for May half-term! We've never been at that time of year before so are looking forward to seeing the island in early season; will certainly be doing some walking. Will be nice to see how our house in Chorio, the Lemon Tree is doing and how the extension is coming along. This is how it looked last week; maybe should have waited before buying the microwave!
Plenty of work to do before that though; it's eight weeks until half-term and have speaking tests, coursework moderation etc. to go through and against my better judgement I'm marking the AQA German speaking tests again this year. Hell on earth but it pays for things like flights to Greece in May, maybe even to Moscow this year; fingers crossed!Hope all OK with you,
Friday, February 15, 2008
..was the reason why we didn't get to Valencia from Liverpool last Sunday. The inward flight was diverted to East Midlands Airport; we got our refund and went home again. That's me in the photo (and that is a yellow submarine in the background) putting a brave face on the situation.Didn't bother unpacking, apart from taking the t-shirts out (which in hindsight was a mistake) and booked a couple of days away in the Lake District. As it happened, we coincided with the most glorious period of fine weather you could imagine so spent three days walking round Ambleside, Ullswater and Grasmere. Will try and book for Valencia again at Easter.
All the best,
Mike x
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Only three months since I last posted on here-never seem to find the time somehow.. Been busy on the website of course; adding new accommodation and updating existing details mainly. Our webcam has been pretty stable recently, apart from the odd power-cut. It's curiously addictive watching the bus leave on the hour or the hydrofoil arrive from Rhodes. For new readers I should explain that I write the website from the UK, so I'm as interested as anyone in having a live view of the harbour on my laptop! In the clip below the 'Aegli' leaves for Rhodes in a mix of sun and rain.
Took a group of 44 pupils on our traditional visit to the Christmas market in Bruges last December: a good trip as always.
For New Year my wife Jo and I went to Budapest-a beautiful city with the bonus that was snowing constantly while we were there.
The video below is a view of Pest from Buda late on New Year's eve.
Can't get enough of Ryanair's cheap flights from Liverpool at the moment: off to Valencia at half-term for a few days. Cost a penny out and thirty pounds return-even with taxes etc it's still cheap and the four-star hotel we're staying it costs less than a B&B in the Lakes. Discovered quite by chance (no, honestly) that Valencia are at home on the day we arrive, so will be adding the Estadio Mestalla to the list of football grounds I have visited! Can't wait..
Will post some video up when I get back.
Mike x
Will post some video up when I get back.
Mike x
Thursday, October 25, 2007
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
Saturday, October 13, 2007
...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 onthe 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
Saturday, October 6, 2007
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!
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