Greece 2013 – Ermones – The Scottish Beekeeping Appreciation Society

We had decided to take part in one of the organised activities this morning – a walk to a local bee producers. About a dozen people including ourselves turned up to be taken by the tour guide just a short distance to the factory where the owner was on hand to show us round and answer any questions we might have.

What neither he nor us had bargained for was the gentleman from Scotland who was an amateur beekeeper whose eyes must have lit up when he saw that the tour was taking place. What followed was a boring dissection of the trials and tribulations of beekeeping. Most normal people would have been able to detect that this was clearly a discussion that wasn’t interesting to the rest of the party and that others were, in fact, laughing at him. I was surprised that his wife didn’t stop him but no he ploughed on regardless such that I am now an expert in the differences in treatment for the vine weevil between Scotland and Corfu… At least I will now have something to talk about at future dinner parties.

There are many things that one goes on holiday to avoid and in my case rain is pretty high up on that list. Leading up to us going away there had been rain predicted for the day we were due in Santorini but fortunately the forecasters were spectacularly wrong and we had a beautiful day. Rain was also forecast for this week but until late this afternoon we had been pretty lucky and then the heavens opened. Of course I have seen rain in the volume that landed here today before, I live in the UK after all, but there was a lot of rain in a very short space of time. In a traditional hotel this wouldn’t have been too much of an issue as you could walk down the corridors to reach the restaurant but not here where all the rooms are separate units with a long walk to the main buildings.

To make matters worse we had booked a special meal at the al a carte fish restaurant by the beach at the bottom of the hill and the funicular lift was out of order. Fortunately the hotel laid on cars to take people from their rooms to either the top or the bottom restaurants. Of course all the water was running down the hill and there were rivers of it across the entrance of the restaurant on its way back to the sea. None of this detracted from the meal, which was excellent.