We wandered into the start of the Evia
channel on a pleasant enough day, with the sun shining on the water and the
wind blowing gently for a change. The
Express Pegasus inter-island ferry passed us again showing as going astern at
17knots on the AIS. Somebody on board
has programmed the Heading and the GPS heading as a reciprocal, so they show as
heading 180 from where they are actually
heading. On day one it was simply
amusing but it still hadn’t been corrected on day 2 and I also saw it on the
screen on day 3, still going backwards.
You would think someone would wake up.
We wandered into Orei and looked around the harbour – an elderly chappy waved us over to a spot on the outer dock and took our lines, then gave us some restaurant and supermarket pamphlets. We used the first restaurant pamphlet (photo on the front) to locate the Nautica and wandered off for a late lunch.
Having no cooking gas is becoming
tiresome, so we tried to locate a gas fittings place. No luck, not in Oreis, which doesn’t even
have an ATM. It is a holiday destination
for mainland Greeks who mostly come over in their cars, so they can drive in to
Istaia, 6km away, if they need cash.
We found out the bus timetable (1 ½
hours to wait) and eventually headed off into town. We found an EU gas regulator for our bottle
but unfortunately, wrong one. Didn’t
fit. Still no gas.
This wouldn’t be the Med if it was short
on castles and Oreis does have one. It’s
not remarkable in any way, and is largely run down but there was a Geocache up
there so I had to go. An easy find and
one more logged in.
From the Castle of Oreis
Some of the well-travelled in this readership will no doubt be aware of the 6-ton marble lion in the British Museum, taken from King Mausolos’ tomb in Bodrum. (The Mausoleum). It’s the one that the Fisherman of Halicarnassus tried to have returned to Turkey, using the argument that it wasn’t meant to spend its days under grey and leaden English skies. The British Museum wrote back and told him they agreed and painted the ceiling blue. Well, Oreis has a marble bull, also 6-ton. It is not in the British Museum, it simply sits in a glass case in town alongside the main church. Bit hard to nick, it being 6-ton and all but it is a wonderful specimen. It was washed ashore in a very heavy storm in the late 50’s or maybe the early 70’s? Don’t remember.
We met a lovely couple of cruisers, Sue
and Brian on Dawn Surprise, who keep their boat in a nearby hard-standing area
over winter. They were just about to
relaunch and unfortunately the list of jobs kept them away from a later
catch-up for a drink or dinner. They
live in Poole and we hope to catch up again when we get to the UK in a couple
of years. They live very close to one of
the oldest pubs in England so that’s another drawcard as Brian’s promised me a
beer there.
Swimming in Orei takes a bit of a leap
of faith. Within 10 metres of the beach
(30’, 10 yards, not very far) the water plunges down to 70’ – 100’. We could sail up to the shore and throw an
anchor out and wouldn’t touch bottom.
They also have a simple Beach Bar, which generally has as its clientele
a group of men who don’t seem to have much else to do except sit around and
smoke all day.
They're in 100' of water
We went over at sunset one night and
enjoyed the company of two young mothers and their children plus a few Amstel
beers (€1.5 each). I made faces at a bub
in a pram, which he thought highly entertaining, so he did it too. This kept us both amused for a while but he
was short of a beer and his mum didn’t seem to want to buy him one, so he
decided to have a little sleep instead.
There is a geocache in the tree we were
sitting under but with so many Muggles around we couldn’t locate it with
anything resembling stealth so it has gone unlogged by us. Frustrating knowing it was within about 1m
but that’s Geocaching for you. Another Mediterranean sunset picture follows:
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