A Quart in a Pint Pot

As we firmly believe in the principle that small is beautiful, we were surprised to find big brother island Kalamos, so busy after the tranquillity of Kastos.

The harbour at Kalamos was heaving when we arrived, and we were later to discover, after many more arrivals, that this was only about half full. Local restauranteur George, doubles as the harbour master and is clearly a dab hand at squeezing boats in.

Our Sailing Holidays lead crew did their bit as well. They wanted us all at the end of the harbour wall, as this was a good location for the punch party we were having that evening.

I sat on my boat roof and supervised the mooring process. Eight boats can take up surprisingly little space especially when moored up 4 abreast. We all managed to maintain our privacy though, as we tied up head to tail and everyone observed the golden rule of crossing at the front of the boat. We actually had 2 lead boats with us, as a spare crew had come over with parts to assist with a couple of repairs that were needed (but not to our boat).

This was the view of the Sailing Holidays contingent from the far side of the harbour. George (harbourmaster, not bear) is in the launch, supervising operations.

George was an experienced pro so we left him in charge and went off to explore. After a steep climb up to the town we found this abandoned vehicle who had clearly found the ascent just too much.

Louis is playing 'Where's Bear?' in this photo, but if you look hard you should find him.

Following time honoured tradition, that evening's punch party on the harbour wall was a great success. The punch was wonderful, the nibbles and special Sailing Holidays recipe dips were scrumptious, and the company was very good. I took the opportunity to get to know hostie Pip a bit better and helped her ensure that everyones' glass stayed charged.

When we'd all had as much punch as we thought advisable to consume, we all went to George's taverna for a meal. There were tables everywhere, and he and his team were serving huge numbers of people. George certainly doesn't adhere to the Greek 'manana' philosophy and runs an efficient operation. As a result we didn't have to wait too long and the food had not suffered from being served in such vast quantities.

It was a good evening, but we still prefer Kastos.

Lots of love Eddie and crew xxx

Paradise Invaded

We said goodbye to Nidri and headed for a wonderful pair of lesser known islands, Kastos and Kalamos. Kastos is the smaller island and we went there first, for another first, our first visit. This made it especially exciting. What a choice it was. There was plenty of space in the harbour and just 100 yards away, in a spectacular headland location, was the excellent Windmill taverna.

Our evening in Kastos had given us a really good feel for this island, so we were all up early the next morning to have a good look round before it was time to weigh anchor and leave. We decided we'd get to see more if we went running, and we'd get some good exercise at the same time, so running shoes on, we headed out.

We followed a dirt road along the coast. It was very peaceful and the views were superb. The only drawback was that it was so little used, that spiders had built built webs between the trees on each side of the road and then taken up residence in the middle of the webs. At running speed, we were moving too fast to see them with enough time to take evasive action. Spiders in the face is not our favourite thing, so we did an efficient emergency stop.

We turned round and found a spider free track with the sea on our right and goats grazing amongst the olive trees on our left. We also shared the path with a harmless looking brown snake.

We discovered a beautiful, and very secluded, bay on our travels ...

... just 5 minutes walk from the harbour. We decided to take our minders there after breakfast. We got there first and again, it was completed deserted and just perfect for a morning swim. We splashed about happily, until we heard the throb of big engines. We looked over our shoulders and were surprised to see a huge landing craft heading straight for us. We had to swim out the way quickly when it became clear the craft wasn't going to moor offshore, but was going to drive right up the beach.

The ramp was lowered and a huge lorry drove off and across the beach. At this point a minder turned up and couldn't see why we'd described the beach as idyllic - it's all in the timing though! 

It was time to leave anyway and set sail for the big brother island of Kalamos. 

Lots of Love Eddie and the crew of Analipsi

A Special Menu at 'No Menu'

After a beautiful evening on Meganisi, some strong winds up to force 6, were forecast to blow up the next day.

Sensibly, our lead crew opted for the safe option and a short hop to a sheltered mooring at Nidri on Lefkas Island. That way, no-one would be forced to be out battling the elements if they didn't want to.

We were happy with this decision, as we fancied a visit to Nidri which we had not visited with a flotilla before.  As it happened, we had strong winds for a a brief 15 minutes, then it went very calm and hot.

Our mooring that night was on the Sailing Holidays pontoon. It exists because Nidri is an additional base to Sivota, used by a small number of flotillas. It was a fine mooring and it was a luxury to have a water point right at our bows.

At the shore end of the pontoon was a hotel with a lovely pool which we could use if we bought a drink. However, we opted for a walk into town and a swim from the town beach.

In the evening we went, with the lead crew, to a restaurant with a difference, which the lead crew had heard about and wanted to try. It was the 'No Menu' restaurant, which really did have no menu.

As the Chef is not constrained by a menu he is free to concoct the most amazing dishes from seasonal and fresh produce. You get to say whether you want meat, fish or veggie dishes or a mixture, and if you don't like a dish that comes to your table, you can send it back. 

It didn't sound as if we could go wrong and as it happened we didn't. We dined exceptionally well on some truly delicious dishes and it was great that every dish that arrived was a complete surprise. Some of the highlights were the bean salad, fresh tuna steaks, mussels and veggie lasagne. The sheeps' milk ice cream was also very good. 

We walked home via the waterfront. We always enjoy walking alongside waterfronts at night, as it can be very atmospheric. We thought this boat looked especially charming lit up like this.

Nidri definitely got the paw of approval.

Lots of love Eddie and crew xxx

On With the Show

It's happened at last. Talking about Greece, and it's lovely hot climate, has inspired the British weather to come up the goods, and we have enjoyed some really hot weather this weekend. Hoorah! - even if I (gardening Bear, Tommy) have had to be busy watering the garden tonight.

It was a great week to have our County Show, The Royal Norfolk Show. We're proud to say that our fine county of Norfolk does it show rather well and the Norfolk, is one of the biggest, if not the biggest in the country.

We like to have a Bears Unlimited Company holiday on one of the 2 show days. This year we chose to go on the first day, Wednesday.

It is too big to see everything and we tend to find that we all have our own particular interests. For example, action bear, Chelmer, tends to zoom off to the quad bikes and see the show at high speed, never stopping long enough to take a photo.

Being the Gardening Bear, I like to take things at a more leisurely pace. I simply love the wonderful floral displays and they give me great ideas for the Bear Cave garden.

I'm never too sure about artificial grass though. There's nothing like the real thing, even though it does take quite some time and effort to keep it lush and green.

I did, however, really like this fabulous rhino, cleverly coated with artificial grass. Patch climbed aboard  for my photo and reported that it was quite comfortable, but not as soft as real grass (probably softer than a hairy and wrinkled rhino hide though!)

One thing I completely approve of is the animal displays. They all fascinate me, especially the fine show cattle, but none were as cute as  ...

... this brood of tiny chicks. They were adorable and fitted perfectly into my rather small paw.

If Oakley's roasts weren't so delectable, it was almost enough to make me contemplate going vegetarian - but not for long though!

Lots of love Tommy and all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Marvellous Meganisi

Preparing to leave harbour for the first time on a flotilla holiday, is always a thrilling moment; we can't imagine that it could ever be otherwise. There is a massive sense of anticipation. Now that we have a few flotillas under our belt, it's less the excitement of venturing into the unknown, and more about the excitement of returning to some of our favourite places.

Our destination for our first day's sail was the town quay at Little Vathi on the island of Meganisi. It's tempting to keep the delights of Meganisi a secret, but we simply can't, we have to extol it's virtues as it' s probably our favourite Greek island.

It was a lovely first day, with a great sail and a fine swim from anchor in secluded bay, round the headland from Vathi town. On reaching the harbour, our lead crew expertly moored us in a fine spot on the town quay, and Louis soon had us ashore and exploring.

It's only a small town, but the essentials are there, namely lots of tavernas and a fine bakery. It doesn't take many minutes to get out into the quiet Greek countryside among the stone walls and the olive trees. It's such a peaceful spot ...

Lois took us to one of Meganisi's tourist attractions - a sunken aeroplane on the sea bed. The water was lovely and still and beautifully clear, as it tends to be in Greece, so we could see the plane really well and enjoyed swimming and diving round it.

We dined that night at a fine waterfront taverna where customers got a free shower - and very fine showers they were too. At the end of our meal we watched a fishing boat come in and unload it's catch of tuna, but we'd eaten too well to want to buy any.

Sheer bliss!

Lots of love, Eddie, Louis and crew xxx

Pre Departure Checks

Later in the afternoon of our arrival, we had our first briefing, and also a walk through the boat with our engineer Jamie, taking us through all the technical aspects. I hung onto Jamie's every word as I know there is a lot that can potentially go wrong on a boat. 

I was still getting my ear attuned to all the exciting noises Analipsi makes - my favourite being water lapping against the hull - when I heard 2 noises I wasn't expecting coming from the heads (boating name for the bathroom!) following a visit by one of my minders. 

Firstly the water pump roared like an aircraft engine being fired up, and then when all was quiet again, I heard what sounded like rain. I didn't think I'd brought the English bad weather with me. I hadn't, it was coming from the panel beside the toilet. 

I called Jamie over for a consultation, and minutes later he was hard at work replacing a section of pipe which had a small leak. As tends to happen, one thing leads to another and our water pump also turned out to be faulty. 

We took up quite a bit of Jamie's time before we set sail the next morning, but it did seem a good idea to get everything just so before we left base, where all the kit and spares are, and also the Chief Engineer. 

I find boats so interesting that I offered my services as engineer's mate. There isn't a lot of space on boats for working, so I thought my small and flexible paws might be useful for getting into tight spaces. 

In our first photo you can see our new pump on the floor, ready to go in. 

I'd quite like to have stayed to see the job through, but Patrick and Louis insisted I left Jamie in peace and quiet and joined them for our first taverna evening. When I heard they planned to go to the Ionian taverna, scene of many a happy meal in the past, when the Jaguar flotillas used to moor outside, I couldn't resist the pull. 

Amazingly the proprietor,Yannis, remembered us - perhaps he doesn't get too many bear visitors. We had a lovely waterside table and a beautiful meal and it was great to be with John and Emily again and catch up with all the news from Northern Ireland. 

Louis introduced Patrick to Plomari ouzo, in his opinion (and he's not alone in this opinion) the finest ouzo there is. As you can see, Louis couldn't wait to get to it. Rather unusually Patrick approached it with some caution, which may have been due to the pungent aroma, but it soon got his paw of approval. I prefer to stick to beer and I'm especially partial to the Greek beer, Mythos and anyway, I wanted a clear head for leaving harbour for the first time in the morning. 

Lots of love, Eddie and the crew of Analipsi xxx

A Life on The Ocean Wave

We’re back in more ways than one: we’re back blogging (sorry for the lack of posts recently) and we’re back from a wonderful maritime adventure with those great people at Sailing Holidays.

This is Boating Bear Eddie picking up the tale of our sailing adventure which has lasted two weeks and taken us to many of the wonderful islands of the South Ionian seas of Greece.

Readers with a long memory will know that flotilla sailing with Sailing Holidays is probably our favourite type of adventure, so good that it simply has to be repeated, and this was in fact our fourth trip with Sailing Holidays in the last 8 years.  Our first trip pre-dated this blog, but the other two have been reported in full and can be found in the archives of 2010 and 2007.

The trips are so popular with B.U. members that we set a new record for the biggest contingent travelling abroad – 7 of us. I was joined by travelling bears George and Yorkie (of course),  Irish bear Patrick, and our 3 members of Greek extraction: my fellow boating bear Louis (who joined us at the end of our last flotilla) and turtles Zak and Stavros (from Zachynthos).

Horse racing fan Patrick might seem like a strange choice of travelling companion for a boating adventure, but there was a lot of sense to his inclusion. He was there to be re-united with our good friends John and Emily from Northern Ireland, who we’d met on our first flotilla and were due to be sailing with us again. They had given Patrick to us when we visited them at their Irish home. Patrick was very excited at the thought of seeing them again.

We were all very excited when we arrived at the Sailing Holidays base at Sivota on the island of Lefkas. We set off along the harbour searching all the many Sailing Holidays moored boats for one with the exciting name of Analipsi, which was to be ours.

We soon found her ... 

... and there was a mad scramble aboard to check her out and admire her fine lines and her internal space. She instantly got the paw of approval. We couldn’t spend long though as we had an even more important job to do, to meet our lead crew.

We didn’t have to look hard as they were a friendly bunch and as keen to meet us as we were to meet them. Our lead crew were Skipper Liz, Hostie Pip and engineer Jamie. We liked them from our first meeting and thankfully they seemed to like us too.

We felt very privileged to have a female skipper as they are a rare breed. Liz is the only one this season, and in our opinion,  better than many of her male colleagues. The whole crew was a class act and, as a good lead crew are the key to the best flotillas, we knew we had a great two weeks ahead of us.

We’ll be telling you lots more about these great folk and all our new boating experiences in the days to come.

Back soon

Love Eddie and the crew of Analipsi