SMUGGLERS COVE

Camping Elizabeth for peace and quiet ...

I'm not doing nearly enough walking and this was brought home to me when our son arrived for a week's holiday and said that he had not been down to the little cove – which is about a 4 minute drive but a 15 minute walk from our house. We decided to set off early before the sun got too hot and took our swimming things with us. We trudged along farm tracks and past hidden gardens, the odd newbuild house that hadn't been finished (there are LOADS of these in Crete) and small farmsteads high up in the hills and cliff tops on the way. We talked to a herd of goats who were inquisitively looking over the fence and avoided loud barking dogs who, although were just doing their job, sounded too ferocious to be on talking terms with. We also found the donkey who I had heard for two or three months hee-hawing in the distance, but could not work out his location. Eventually after a fair trudge which was uphill nearly all the way we hit the path down from the cliff and took a look over the edge, way down to the cove. The surround-sounds of the sea and the birdsong among the long, dry herbs and grasses made us stop for quite a while, just to enjoy the atmosphere. About 20 or 30 multi-coloured butterflies danced over the bushes and it was like being transported to a different world. Sadly I did not take my camera, so we had to take a memory snap-shot and make do.

Sketch of the Cove from January 2012

At the corner of the bend, I nearly turned tail because there had been large rockfalls all the way down the steep zigzagging path to the foaming sea, but Leo was made of sterner stuff and set off down hill clambering over the huge rocks which had been loosened by the heavy rains of last winter and I gingerly followed him. The beach was a geologist or fossil hunter's paradise. The combinations of tortured volcanic rocks turned up the most amazing piles of stones, some of which looked like liquorice all-sorts. I was fossiking around glumly looking at flotsam and jetsam and wondering if I could pair up all the sad collection of shoes, trainers and flip-flops amongst the driftwood, seaweed and sponges. I am sure that simply taking young people beach-combing early in the year would give them some idea of all the horrible pollution we are causing to our world. It is hard to resist doing a litter pick on many of the small beaches on the coast. After the winter storms, the biggest beach at Panormo is a dump of plastic bowls, water bottles, oil and paint drums, old lilos, shoes and plastic bags before the season starts and the beach is cleaned. Seeing all that debris in such a beauty spot would be a lesson to anyone.

Sunday's visit to Panormo for kayaking!  The beach is now clean and tidy!

However, I digress. Getting down to the village beach was much, much easier than climbing back up. The sea on Tuesday was much too rough to risk swimming and having to walk back in wet clothes. It was the sort of place where you pick up a sense of history – not only for 19^th century yarns like Jamaica Inn, but back in the mists of time when all these rock formations and layers of different lava had flowed, hardened and been twisted and turned by deep, primeval movement of the earth. Taking all this in, Leo kept a few unusual pebbles with circular markings. On a more practical train of thought, I found two pieces of driftwood which I thought could be treated to make a pair of rustic shelves and busied my brain wondering what on earth could be croziered from piles and piles of sea-washed shoes, but without inspiration. Thus burdened, we scrambled back over the fallen rocks and I really puffed like Thomas the Tank Engine getting to the top of the cliff. Leo was in much better shape, thanks to lots of walking and golf but we were relieved to be walking downhill back to the village as the sun got really hot and I began to turn a nasty shade of lobster.

Walking around Margaritas

We have done a lot of tourist trail things with Leo so that he has had the chance to visit places he has not seen before so I will not ramble on again about the pottery village or Camping Elizabeth because Croziers blog has been there before. However, K was bursting with Greek enthusiasm for Zorba dancing and found a Dutch twin at the campsite who shared his razzamatazz!  So much for peace and quiet!

E-viva!

Whoppers and Weightwatchers

It was a noisy start to the day as the “I have whoppers straight from the thalassa” fish van obviously had a good catch on the morning tide and roared round to the village at 7.00 am to sell his wares. It was far too early for us and we do wish he would turn his loudspeaker down! One day I will go out and investigate what whoppers actually are … but in the meantime, we live in amused ignorance of the “I have Whoppers and a very Loud Megaphone Fish Truck Ltd”.

Last week, we had friends staying with us which was fun – also slightly alarming as Croziers Aloft is not really geared up for a proper B & B clientèle being one floor short of a bathroom and our friends running an English Tourist Board approved … proper B & B in the UK. However, they were very adaptable, it was a good week and we explored all that our local coastline had to offer in Panormo and Bali. On Tuesday we drove up to Margerites to look at the ceramics and see the potters at work but it was a little quieter than usual. Eleni, our favourite restaurateur, raki maker, post mistress and general good egg treated us to a lovely home-cooked lunch … (I would really like her yemistes - stuffed tomato recipe) … and we wandered around looking for small items which could be packed easily. On Wednesday, we set off for Spilli with a bucket full of empty water bottles to fill up at the lion's head fountains in the centre of the town. The water was deliciously cool and we enjoyed a surreptitious ice cream when no one else was looking! The traders in the town had lots of hand crafted and embroidered items for sale and having lived through the worst winter in Crete for 50 years, I could fully understand why the Cretan folk would need to have such skills and crafts to keep them occupied while holed up away from the winter rains.

Spilli for Icecream.  The bucket was a bit of a giveaway!

On Thursday, we revisited Bali and spent the morning snorkelling around the rocky beach. Half way through the day K disappeared and we kept looking along the beach wondering where he had got to. Eventually, looking the picture of insouciance, he arrived by sea chugging along on a pedalo – fully clothed – and we all had a turn around the bay making a complete hash of steering, all shouting instructions at once and laughing like complete teenagers. If we thought getting ON the pedalo was difficult, this proved nothing like as difficult as GETTING OFF. Needless to say K's shirt and trousers got a good soaking and he had to spend another half an hour buying a dry T shirt before lunch. Still it gave a full morning's amusement to the other people on the beach who assured us they would give us a very wide berth and swim as far away in the opposite direction as possible. This was not easy to achieve either with our erratic efforts at steering! Meanwhile, out to sea, another couple had overturned their kayak and we watched them – slightly alarmed – trying to turn it over and get back in. Discretion being the better part of valour, I ran as fast as I could to the boat hire hut and persuaded the young man to take out a motor boat and rescue them as they were just out of his sight line. Thankfully, we all emerged unscathed from our nautical episodes on Thursday!

Pedalo-ing in Bali

Realising that we were running out of time before our friends had to get their flight home, we squeezed a trip to Camping Elizabeth where we met up with K's sister and made a quick visit to Rethymno in the evening. We just managed to have a quick wander through the old Venetian part of the town and walk around the harbour. We could not believe the week went so quickly and it was all too soon before the hire car had to be returned and K drove our pals back to Heraklion. They had never had as much red wine before and we had never eaten so much ice cream!

The Taverna at Panormo

The 13 May was the Red Cross Coffee and Cake Morning at our friends' Bob and Evvie's house at Maroulas. It is always a fixture of the CIC and about 100 people both Cretan and other English speakers turned up to this fundraiser. I nervously turned up with Apricot Muffins cooked with Cretan flour which never does what I expect it to do – but they all seemed to go!! The financial constraints are beginning to bite in Greece and people do not have so much ready cash, but we still raised over 1000 euros to support the Red Cross medical volunteers with much needed supplies, a portable defibrillator had been located from an English charity and there was still enough to make up food parcels for people in the big cities who had no means of support. It was LOADS of work for Bob and Ev but a wonderful opportunity to meet up and ... MOUNTAINS OF CAKE!!!!!

 There are a lot of people on strict diets this week as a result of everything we had last week!
 A-DI-OS for now.

A Crozier by any other name is Crazier.

Lots of people have asked about our Croziers title theme since it is not a family name at all and has little, if any relationship with the dictionary definition. Hereby hangs a bit of a tale which started on family camping holidays at least 20 years ago. Our three children were always a bit scathing about camping at all, the girls all too willing to complain about holidays taken without mod cons. On top of this, their mother embarrassed them completely by recalling all the woodcraft skills learned in the Girl Guides and making tripod stands and washing up racks and successions of awnings on every camping holiday with whatever was available nearby (usually sticks and string). It was too uncool for words. Our children's parents were dinosaurs of the first order.

One memorable holiday we remembered to take good books to read but forgot to take a fly swat and – as the book of choice at the time was about the Battle of Hastings where the combatants went into the fray armed only with their crosiers – this humble option for the front line stuck in my mind. With this in the back of my mind, I had tried to fashion a fly swat out of sticks and string which after a few hours of baffling construction still resembled a prehistoric tennis racket. It was of course completely useless as a fly swat;  the top flew off the handle at each swipe and would have killed a man at a hundred paces. For some weird reason the useless article earned the errant title of “my crozier”. Ever after this, the silly name stuck and was applied to ad hoc, make do and mend, somewhat pragmatic, often Heath Robinson solutions for day to day needs. Such is the stuff of family tradition in the making and since then, all of us try to find new ways to outdo one another by neatly solving problems and thinking outside the box. To constitute the definition of a true Crozier, it has to be creative, fun, cost nothing ... and its usually naff!

As time went on and many items around the family home were mended, redesigned or given a quick, cheap fix for the time being, the children would say – looking skywards - “Hmmmm another Crozier!” Eventually, as they grew old enough to take holidays on their own, we received post cards addressed to the 'Croziers', soon T-shirts were designed with a Crozier trademark and one Christmas after K and I had just moved house, by co-incidence, two of the three children separately had “Croziers” house name plates made for us as memorable and hilarious Christmas gifts. Thus Croziering had become completely detached from its original meaning and had taken on a new life of its own.

Little did we know that in the passage of time my work would bring me into contact with one or two important personages who carried proper Croziers (a large shepherd's crook) as a symbol of office. When the children realised the real meaning of a Crozier, we were a little worried that colleagues would think that I was harbouring ideas above my station with ambitions as a Woman Bishop! Help, Nothing could have been further from the truth!

I had one earnest discussion several years ago with a Clergyman who had previously served as a Royal Naval Chaplain and, as a born raconteur, was interested to hear the background to our Crozier history. He responded that he never did know why Bishops still carried such an anachronistic item around with them until he was standing talking to a Bishop in a cemetery one day while his small son who had accompanied him wandered round the grounds quite happily. Suddenly, the child accidentally fell into an open grave which was deep, wet and very muddy. Quick as a flash, the Bishop lowered his trusty crozier into the grave and hooked out the unhappy child restoring it to his red-faced Dad.

I don't think our children really did “get” the make do and mend thing until the time came for them to have children of their own … and would you guess it … they are beginning to devise a whole new generation of croziered items to deal with the mechanics of household make-do management.

Meanwhile, for K's 60^th birthday last year, his birthday present from me could not have been anything else than a sort of crozier – in Crete called a katsouna – carried by all the shepherds hereabouts and walkers in the mountains.

The top floor of our house in Crete is an open loft and was full of swallows and other birds when we first bought it. After installing windows and having a proper stone staircase built to replace the wooden ladder, we could not decide how to divide it up into separate rooms and needed to live in the house for a while before making any big or expensive decisions about it – therefore, the title for the blog was easy – Croziers – A Loft!