Basil has opened all his windows, raised his skylights, extended his awning and we’ve thrown off our bedclothes: it’s officially hot. Hot is of course a relative term. We haven’t been in any Greek towns today, but they probably still have their woolies on. But for us north Europeans it is HOT. I guess it is around 27C, but there is also no wind.

View from our pitch at Camping Iria. We’ve been seeing a lot of this!!

It’s a good job then that we are just lazing around doing nothing. Sarah has started doing some drawing and has of course been on long walks with the dogs. I have roughly fixed our itinerary for northern Greece. I’ve even started reading about Bulgaria and Romania and got myself all excited. There doesn’t look as if there are so many things of interest in northern Greece as there has been on the Peloponnese, so we may start heading north through Bulgaria a week or two earlier than I had originally planned, because it looks as if there is plenty of interest there.

The most excitement we have had today is watching the world’s cheekiest sparrows hop about inches from Mable and Melek’s noses picking up crumbs. It is interesting to observe that sparrows don’t trigger the chase instinct in Mabel. As a spaniel she has been bred to flush birds out of cover. As a result and as I have indicated in earlier posts, she has a tendency to chase anything that moves. At first I thought that perhaps sparrows were too small to be of interest, but that doesn’t hold water because she’ll chase lizards until she’s blue in the face. So her lack of interest has me foxed. Collared doves, on the other hand, that’s another story. They also like picking up crumbs, but Mabel will not let them get close!

Cheeky Sparrow

Camping Iria Beach has been a birding disappointment. It is not ornithologically diverse, to say the least. Sparrows, magpies, wood pigeons, collared doves and hundreds of swallows in the sky, and that’s your lot. The birding lens came out today, but my heart wasn’t in it. So after a few fruitless attempts and capturing a flying swallow, which is not going to be possible, it went away again.

I mentioned yesterday that we walked down to our nearest taverna and we were thinking of going there tonight. Luckily I walked down to check whether a) it did vegetarian food and b) it was open tonight. The answer to b) was no – so I’ll have to get my apron on after all! I’m going to attempt home made pizza. It is the first time I’ve made dough in Basil and the top temperature in our oven is about 20 degrees above ambient, so the result could be interesting.

I hope I have more of interest tomorrow, but I doubt it, because it looks like we are here for another day of lazing about.