Just now in Crete Feb 2010

[paulh]

it is cold , very windy and my birthday (which I actually celebrated last Saturday)

[Carolina]

Happy Birthday!

Yes, it was very windy. Here's a photo of Kalathas beach with waves washing right up the beach yesterday.



I've posted a couple more here

[Jean]

Here is another one of the storm at Kalathas http://www.west-crete.com/dailypics/cre ... 2-3-10.php

Happy birthday too Paul. Did you go for a swim to celebrate?

[Carolina]

Didn't see you there Jean! Did you nearly get blown away too?

[paulh]

Yeah I did go looking for a swim but it was all so placid and lacked all sense of adventure so I gave it a miss.

see what I mean http://farm1.static.flickr.com/169/391939420_3374bfb4b8_o.jpg

(bottom left is Nikitas caravan when it used to be in the middle of the beach)

we actually get some pretty interesting waves around here

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/160/391968949_ab35a1761e_b.jpg

and you can see things in the "frozen moment" photographs that pass to quickly to register in real life

[Eleni13]

Fantastic pictures, all of them. They remind me of Cornwall, where I spent very many happy hours on a surfboard (old fashioned variety) as a kid. I suspect that Cornwall was safer than Kalathas in these conditions though.

A belated Happy Birthday, Paul.

[Brian c]

happy belated birthday paul ..and fantastic photos everyone
p.s. still a darn sight warmer than Britain, .. though i notice you do have the odd slightly chilly day

brian

[Phaedra]

I also spent a lot of time in Cornwall when I was a child - not surfing but "mucking around" in seas that would now scare the hell out of me! Not to mention the cold!

Anyway - very belated birthday Paul.

Jan

[Clio]

The shops are piled with kites, masks and funny hats, and the streets are full of excited small princesses, Batmen and pirates. The weather looks like being kind for Sunday’s carnivals, with the forecast for overcast but mild and dry. Today is like a dress rehearsal for a perfect Clean Monday – pleasant enough (20° on a southern beach at midday) for a picnic, with a warm buffeting wind. The sea, horizontally banded in the greens of verdigris and peridot, looks (almost) ready to splash in. Only the heavy white shawl on the distant mountains reminds us that this is still the middle of winter, that the driftwood we gathered this morning may still come in handy for the fire.

[Clio]

In our village cafeneio, this mild pre carnival evening, it’s possible to imagine ourselves back into a rural England of the middle ages. At one table: a cleric, an alderman, a shepherd and a hospitaller, soaking up their liquor with wild mushrooms and the lupin beans of Lent. Elsewhere a carpenter, a baker, a charcoal burner’s son, and a rude mechanical. (These trades are all real).

Enter a pedlar bearing exotica from the Orient, in the shape of a Chinese lass with a basket full of cheap tat: solar lights, lumberjack shirts, torches, and toys. The alderman’s wife, of a certain age - all bleached bouffant and impressive chest - falls for a tacky green-eyed battery-operated cat, its mangy fur and plangent ‘miaow’ a little too realistic.

Enter the second, a band of mummers, μασκαράδες, identities completely concealed by their costumes. They shake hands, bash the odd head with a priapic balloon and swig a complimentary raki, all in unsettling total silence. The disguises are modern – a soldier in camouflage, a Munch Scream, a Cabbage Patch doll – but they carry with them an age-old air of revelry, anarchy and not entirely good-natured mischief. The Lord of Misrule rules, ok.

[paulh]

Just now in Crete its 6 years to the day since we had the heavy snow all over Crete. (only it was a Friday)

[Jean]

6 years to the day since we had the heavy snow all over Crete

Fondly remembered at http://www.west-crete.com/crete-photos- ... y-2004.htm

[filippos]

Remember it well. We had a Syrian bricklayer and his labourer working for us at the time. The day started clear and bright but by 11:00 they decided further work was impossible. The bricklayer fetched his car and sat warming up while his sidekick cleaned the tools, betoniera, and barrow and, unbelievably, his hair; he spent at least three minutes with his head under the hosepipe. I froze just watching.

Next morning we were knee deep in snow but the sun was shining in a lovely blue sky with just a few fluffy clouds. Villagers tried to convince us that it was just like England and didn't believe that, in our part of England we hadn't seen a snowstorm like it for at least ten years.

The Saturday morning was great, with local farmers, with their tractors, clearing roads and digging cars out of drifts and everybody trying to help everybody else.

[Carolina]

Yes I remember the snow well and being cut off for 2 days in our village.

Today is Clean Monday, the first day of Lent.

Stavros mountain in the snow in Jean's link above(bottom right photo) and today kite flying at Stavros mountain:

[paulh]

A few more of the same location (yes I did go home for my camera Carol)

this gives an idea of how busy it was (and usually is on Clean Monday)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2762/435 ... 72dc_b.jpg


and it's not only kids flying kites

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4053/435 ... 39d1_b.jpg

kites are mere dots way up in the sky (there is a prize for the highest)

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4044/435 ... 93a7_b.jpg

and then back to the meal

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2770/435 ... f1d9_b.jpg

a mixture of Cretan and northern Greek dishes

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2747/436 ... e942_b.jpg

and it's more, an afternoon of eating, drinking and talking with people wandering in and out to greet and eat as it pleased them