The last couple of blog posts have been a little bit rantish (a word I just made up) and have been fuelled by the refugee crisis and some people’s reaction to it. So today we are returning to Symi and, in a moment, going for a ramble up a hillside. And talking of rambles:
I should apologise, as I endlessly do, for the typos and mistakes you read in my blogs; there are two reason for this. 1) Although I do read things back, I don’t always see my own mistakes. Here’s something I found: “The reason typos get through isn’t because we’re stupid or careless, it’s because what we’re doing is actually very smart”, explains psychologist Tom Stafford, who studies typos of the University of Sheffield in the UK.” (I like Tom.) “We don’t catch every detail, we’re not like computers or NSA databases,” said Stafford. “Rather, we take in sensory information and combine it with what we expect, and we extract meaning.” (I really like Tom.) The full article is here: http://www.wired.com/2014/08/wuwt-typos/
And, 2) I am so inaccurate at typing, though I do use all five fingers on one hand and three on the other, I’ve never been taught to touch type and I rattle off around 100 words a minute when up to full steam, but my fingers aren’t designed for keyboards so I hit the wrong letters. This gets so bad that I then go to autocorrect and change my most common ones, and so sometimes autocorrect corrects a word incorrectly and I read what should be there not what actually is there. So, sorry about that but really, ‘if thine eyes offend thee, pluck them out’ (which I always thought was extreme advice) and if my typos offend thee, pluck off. Back to our walk.
This was days ago now but, as you read this I am journeying back from Rhodes with mother, all being well, I went out for a ramble on Thursday afternoon as I’d missed my early morning walk/jog. I thought I’d climb up to the top of the ridge and have a look at Panagia Hamon. Three in the afternoon is probably not the best time to go walking when it’s 35 degrees, but I like a good sweat and I had plenty of water, a phone in case of emergencies, and I was wearing a bright orange t-shirt so it would be easy for the air sea rescue to spot me should I need them. Seriously, if you’re going to ramble up hillsides always take precautions and I don’t mean… well, you know what I don’t mean.
Through the village, up to the top and then down the Ag Marina cemetery – Habib and his brother passed me on their moped and asked if I wanted a lift down into the village. I thanked and declined and then wondered how we would all fit on it anyway, and headed for the barking dog. Not only is he bonkers but he also barks a lot. Here, at the big gates, you turn right and follow the arrow, it’s a bit faded now, and then follow the red dots until they run out…
It didn’t take long for me to lose the path and go off piste, but I went carefully and knew roughly were I was heading – for the top of course, it’s easy really. But there’s actually quite a lot of scree on them there hills so you have to be careful. My training came back to me, the lessons learned when 16 and climbing Snowdon with the school: If in doubt, test the rock before you put all your weight on it, go sideways when coming down scree and zigzag rather then head straight down, always expect that every footstep is going to lead to a slide so you’re always prepared, and if there’s a tourist train to the top, take that.
I reached around 300 metres I guess and then decided that, as I’d been climbing hard for around an hour since leaving home, I’d had enough exercise. There are great views from up there, so I stopped to have some water and a look around and then carefully slid my way back down again. If you’re heading up that hill make sure you wear proper boots and, if you can bear it, long trousers. There are lots of dry herb bushes around at the moment and they don’t half scratch. More Photos tomorrow.
