Greek weather

As I left you yesterday, we had arrived safely on Corfu.

We are actually going to Paxos where, as my itinerary points out, we are due to collect our hire car five minutes before the plane lands on an entirely different island. Does anyone ever read these things before they send them out?

Anyway, we have survived the dreaded volcanic ash cloud and even the flight on Shitijet- just - so they take us to the nearest port and shove us on to a "sea taxi". This is a small high-speed motor vessel which takes 12 people and luggage - again, just. It is rather noisy and somewhat uncomfortable.

Off we go across to Paxos which takes about 90 minutes on a calm day. Thankfully, we get a calm day and only one passenger reaches for the vomit bag. All is well. We land, collect hire car, and head of for what turns out to be rather nice villa - although it is about a mile from anywhere.

As I write this, we have been here about a week. I have a great view across to the Greek mainland and have been watching for a while what happens when it's not a calm day! I'm praying for a calm day for the return trip to Corfu.

There is some debate here as to whether the prevailing wind is the Melteme or the Mistral. I simply refer to it as the bloody great force nine gale! It was sufficiently strong this morning for us to abandon a circular walk along a clifftop for fear of being blown onto the rocks below. We retraced our steps to the village where we didn't stop for a beer as it had started to rain.

So, my conclusion is that is that, when the sun is out, it is lovely. But the reasonably reliable weather I remember seems to have gone. This appears to be the case everywhere these days and Greece is far from unique. Irritating, but that's life. Global warming, my arse!

And it seems to change at short notice too. For the first few days we were sleeping with covers off the bed and sweating; but the last few nights we've curled up under a blanket. 20 minutes ago, the sea was rough, but now it looks quite calm again. It is overcast but give it 10 minutes and the sun will come out for an hour or so, then the gale will start again or it will rain or even both!

What's life coming to when you can't predict the weather in Greece?

(Just to add insult to injury, when we got off the plane at Gatwick yesterday it was 6° hotter here than it was in Paxos!)