The studios we had been given, were so close to the town that we wandered up for a coffee and a croissant before packing up. We went to Natasha’s coffee shop (5 stars, especially after the sausages in a roll yesterday). We had checked the opening times of both Natasha’s (7 am) and the supermarket (only closed between 2 am and 7.30 am allegedly), last night, but only the coffee shop was open at 7.45. We had to have two coffees as the croissants weren’t quite ready on our first visit. Between us we tried the whole range of plain, chocolate and pistachio croissants.

After breakfast we headed off, initally through the streets of Lefkimmi and eventually reaching the countryside. The first part was flat walking was along wide tracks through a variety of olive groves, some smaller well cultivated groves and others where the older trees had grown huge. I would have thought these “forests” are well beyond harvesting. The walk continued through the flat lands with just the occasional small solar farm to break up the landscape.

Near Vitalades, the path started to climb up through more olive groves and small vineyards, upto high point of about 120 metres above sea level. There were great views of the coast heading north and our direction of travel.

We dropped right down to the sandy beach. We found the best place to walk was the recently exposed sand, between the impossibly fine sand of the beach, and the water line of the receding tide. This resulted in an occasional wet foot, but progress was good. As we had been doing so well, and it was almost too early to finish, we stopped at Santa Barbara for lunch at a beach bar – for a very good vegetable omelette.

We carried along on the beach, where at times we were very over dressed, compared to the occasional aged nudist. There was a difficult scramble up a ravine to the path at the top of the low cliffs and we were soon into Agios Georgios and our accomdation.

We must have been expected, as with no words exchanged we were shown to our apartment. We could have been anyone! Later I found an email on how to access the apartment, which would have been simpler than just looking bemused at a random man in the building.

A swim in the Ionian Sea, then a few beers in a nice beach bar and it really began to feel like a holiday. I’ll stop writing now as we need to see it we can get Traitors on the TV!