under another sun

Last three days, after Saturday's excitements were spent close to our hotel on Skala Potamia. The resort seemed less busy in the last week.  Annoyingly I developed a summer cold, which became a chest infection.  However as our days were spent underneath beach umbrellas reading and going for the occasional snorkel it didn't spoil anything and we were winding down very well by now, dreaming on our sunbeds and with the wooded arms of the land stretching out either side of the bay, and the mountains behind. Reprehensibly, we managed to put on several kilos. Not a great place for keeping to a diet. We also got to know some of the new guests, a likeable couple called Dave and Jeanette knew my old school friend Mike Longman. Dave and Mike had been in the police together. Another was a recently-widowed woman in her 40s who worked in education called Penny. Fell in with these a bit and sat in the hotel bar with them from time to time, being served by a pleasant Englishwoman called Su...

Having been working till late the night before, then packing, Lorraine and I sprang up at 4:15. Rather an appalling time. We dragged our cases, thunderously, down the roads to London Road station and got a train to Gatwick. Slightly delayed flight, but all good on the journey, apart from being charged an outrageous 8 euros on the plane for two cups of tea. That familiar wall of heat as we stepped from the plane in Kavala airport. A transfer to a minibus, then to a ferry boat where we sat in the air-conditioned cabin and there I enjoyed a can of cold lager, followed by another can of cold lager. Off in Thassos Town back into the minibus and off to Skala Potamia. It had been many years since I'd been to Thassos, and apart from its greenness, I recognised little. Our hotel, was opposite the sea. Not a particularly warm welcome there, but it was clean and functional. A quick swim too to cool down made us feel much better. The sea feeling bathtub warm almost, and a beer in the bar the...