Holiday memories.

When we got up this morning the sun was shining, the sky was blue and we were planning a good long walk. Then our friend Kay knocked on the door to see if we were walking and if we would like to walk with her. Which we did. About a mile from home, it started raining. Then it got heavier so we returned home and dried out.

So instead of a few pictures of our walk this morning, I thought I would post a few of our recent trip to the Greek island of Zakinthos. We went there in October and were extremely lucky with the weather which was sunny and warm for the whole two weeks.We were not so fortunate with the accommodation however which was appalling. After complaining, we discovered that accommodation in Greece is almost all like that so we had to 'put up with it'. The best bit about the apartment was the bougainvillea growing around the terrace.

Looking on the bright side, we had some wonderful walks around the south of the island, through the extensive olive groves.During the holiday we had a trip to the main town on the island - Zante Town and on the way had a wonderful view from a high point above the town.Looking around the town we visited the large church of St. Dennis. The church was beautiful and the decoration, as you would expect of a Greek Orthodox church, was stunning.The Church was right on the sea-front and as the sun went down it took on a quiet and rather magical quality.

Back to our base around Laganas, we walked around the small harbour area every day looking for Loggerhead Turtles (Caretta caretta). We were lucky enough to see a few of these magnificent creatures swimming around the harbour. Please click on this link to see a short video of one. We were also lucky to see several Kingfishers chasing each other around the harbour and particularly around this rocky outcrop which seemed to be their home.Close by this rock was the small island of Agios Sostis and the wooden walkway across to it from where you could see many colourful fish and hundreds of black, spiky sea urchins.Walking 'the other way' from where we were staying, we came to Kalamaki beach. This beach is a protected environment where the turtles lay their eggs. Again we were very fortunate and actually got to see a few hatchling turtles making their way to the sea. I probably shouldn't have done it but one of the tiny, exhausted little hatchlings was finding it impossible to get past the breaking waves and into calmer water, so I picked it up and waded out beyond the breakers to give it a 'helping hand'. Well, I couldn't see the poor thing struggling could I?

The beach was wide and quiet and beautiful and towards the end there were cliffs and rocky outcrops.

The cliffs were made of several different rocks and a large amount of what looked like alabaster crystals which sparkled in the sunshine.Atop the cliffs was an old look-out post which had seen better days and looked about ready to fall on the sunbathers below. Given that frequent earthquakes rock the island it is amazing that it's still there at all!