Safe Return Doubtful

We were just ready to depart from Papingo this morning when a green bus with a UK plate pulled up next to me. This was Nige, a climber from the Isle of Harris, and his wife from Sweden, and their two children, about 8 and 10 years old. Nige had bought the bus from eBay during the pandemic from the Wirral, from Merseyside Passenger Transport, and converted himself, and has been in the road coming up to two years. They will return to Falkirk in January.

They are big wild swimmers, and were heading to the rock pools just out of the village, but I ended up seeing them later, as they wanted to spend the night lower down, at the river at the bottom of the zig-zags, 400 metres lower. They arrived mid-afternoon, and their son, just 8 years old, spent the afternoon paddle boarding on the river in just his trunks, Greeks looking on amazed.. as they see it as being so cold, at around 16C.

Also down by the river was the Namibian lady I met yesterday. She is very interesting to chat to also. She is 69 years old, and lives in her van travelling Europe, and fortunately has a German passport.

I went to the local shop, which is actually called ‘the Local Shop’ a few kilometres away to pick up some bread for the weekend, and came away with a nice selection of local craft beer.

Just before midday Roja and I set out to walk a section of the Vikos Gorge. There was rain in the air, blustery drizzly showers, but a lot more on the way tonight and tomorrow we think. It was enough to make the trail difficult, and it was typically gorge terrain, tree roots, steep but short ups and downs on loose rock and mud. But it’s Roja’s favourite, as there are plenty of sticks, and plenty of swimming.

Midway through, we met an English guy and his Greek partner. Andrew was in a two week break from working for the EU in an advisory capacity on various aspects of the law relevant to the country being at war, and trying to chill our as much as possible. There can be few more potentially stressful posts. Initially we chatted for ten minutes or so, but we met again later back at the van. I asked him more about the sort of work he did, and he told me he had been a barrister, and worked in The Hague on war crime prosecutions following the Balkan War. I used to know someone very well who did that work, by coincidence also, an old cricketing friend from Lytham. It turns out that he, Martin, and Andrew, are good friends. Martin’s work now takes him all over areas affected by war, Ukraine, where they have worked together, Iraq, and the places that I was aware he worked, Kosovo and Bosnia.

There’s a severe weather warning out here for thunderstorms. It’s 8 pm as I write and 24C. Lightning lights up the peaks around every few seconds, but no rain yet. It’s supposed to last until tomorrow evening, so the two vans, and the green MPTE bus here are all prepared for an indoor day.