First Snow of the winter

Well the first snow is now visible on the top of the mountains as you will be able to see in the picture taken from our balcony below but fortunately not down in Assos despite the fact the we are quite high up. In fact I'm sat outside writing this in the sun. Today is the first very warm day for nearly two weeks and on virtually every day we have had thunder and rain sometimes very hard rain. The people in the village say that this is very unusual and they can't remember the last time that they had so much rain over such a prolonged period. Our answer to that is that is because we are here but it's nothing that we can't cope with. Any water clears very quickly here and despite the fact that we have had so much there is very little sign of it on the land although we are on a steep slope so I suppose that's hardly surprising.





Here is another picture taken from the South side of the balcony


Had to buy another five gallons of heating oil this week because the last five has been used it's 61.5 cents per litre here that's about 55.7P /ltr at the current exchange rate so it's a wee bit more expensive than UK but of course you don't use that much of it. Having said that the houses have no insulation and once the heating goes off the heat escapes very quickly, we can put up with that though. Car fuel is cheaper than UK I'm currently buying diesel at 93.8 Cents a litre that's about 85P per litre and we use more of that than the heating oil so I'm pleased that it's that way around.

We are now preparing for going back to England for Christmas, we have found out that we can catch a bus to Athens from out Local town, Thesprotiko, which is about as far away as Newport from home, we need to change at Athens bus station and get the airport special.

Sandra sat out this morning reading her book in the sun.


Sandra spent half of yesterday Baking for the kafenion in the village they don't seem to be able to get enough of her baking. She did Apple pie, Quiche and Chocolate buns, paw, paw, paw, is all they say with a gleam in their eyes. Pastry in Greece is all flaky pastry not like we have in the UK the locals had never tried it before. Their English is beginning to improve as Sandra teaches them her version of it, "aye happen lad!" and our Greek is coming on a treat but perhaps not as fast as we would like. I am using a web site to translate written English to Greek and vice versa. In case anyone is interested here the web address it is very good. http://www.systranet.com

Oh well that's about it for this week we shall be going to Levkas on Saturday for some Christmas cards to leave for people here and probably stay over at Tony's if they are not too tied up with other things.