The Gorge Walk

Monday 11 May

This morning we walked to the nearby gorge.  There's a stream fed by a spring and it creates a magical environment, quite different from the often dry, ploughed olive groves around it.  The light was just right this morning. 

It's been a few days since our last visit and the path
that was flanked by brash yellow flowers is now a delicate purple passage.

I have no idea what the flowers are, and however I try to photograph banks of flowers like these, the effect is lost.  You will just have to take my word for it - Crete has a reputation for a huge diversity of wild flowers and herbs.  Every walk reveals a new chapter in the spring story.  


Oh, was that very cheesy? 

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To go with the cheese, here's a very old olive tree.  They can live for hundreds of years, and this is one of the oldest I've seen with a beautiful 'woven' trunk.  It looks as though it's been left alone for some time, definitely no visits to the hairdressers.

A very old olive tree

 I'm often bent double studying ants. So interesting!  Take a look at what these ants are carrying!  I think I need to read up on ant behaviour. 

This blog is getting seriously out of control!

A Thought Experiment

Sit back and have a taste of the 1970s 

Now the thought experiment: the C-19 virus could be anytime, anyplace, anywhere, just like the ad.  Imagine you could see the virus.  Like invisible bloodstains shown up by a lumalite in a Jeffrey Deaver novel, there it is glowing bright yellow - at the supermarket checkout, on a plastic fiver, on the grab rail of the bus, on the hands of the person serving you in the fruit shop...  scary, isn't it?  But that's what we are facing now as we enter the potentially most dangerous phase of the pandemic. As the 'lockdown' is eased, it's human nature to relax.  Eased, lifted, free - all nice words that make us feel better.  It seems to me that we have just as much to fear now as we did in the first week of lockdown.  

Control the virus?  Hmm.  Of course the one thing you can control is your own behaviour and actions.  Put on a mask, insist on your 2m distance when in confined public spaces, on the street etc.  Right now, here in Crete, I feel as though we are in the eye of the storm.  For non-sailors, that means a big bash has just happened, and that another one is about to happen as the storm passes over us.  The back edge of a weather system can be just as nasty as the front edge.  There's no reason I can see that a 'second peak' of infection would be any lower than the first. Maybe the truth of the situation is just too hard to face.  

Try another thought experiment: create a roulette wheel with 100 slots.  Let's say 8 are yellow (catch Covid and make some sort of recovery), 2 are red (grim reaper comes for you) and the other 90 are black (no infection, live to play again).  Do you play?  

COMING SOON: Our first foray into Greek bureaucracy as we open a bank account and attempt to get temporary residency.