Preparing for Prague

This January, myself and my friends Katie and Dominic are hitchhiking to Prague. We are doing this not only for the shits and giggles but also to raise money for charity. The event is organised by the St Andrews Charities Campaign, which supports MSF and Macmillan among other great charities. Race2 raises thousands and thousands of pounds towards this every year and we each have a minimum sponsorship amount of £120 to raise.

This is our fantastic logo, designed by Katie's sister. Our team name is The Inconspicuous Gryphons, named in part after the Fringe show we were all involved in this August where we cemented our friendship! And inconspicuous because... it's a cool adjective. There are a number of things on our checklist to complete before we head off into the abyss of the Edinburgh motorways this winter...

1. Plan a vague route.
   Of course we'll be relying on strangers driving in the right direction to take us, but we at least need to know which countries we'll be passing through!
2. Learn some languages.
   A basic knowledge of the language of each country we'll pass through seems like an obvious thing to acquire. We get a little book which explains our charity mission in a variety of languages, but I hate travelling places without speaking even a bit of the local language.
3. Make our costumes.
   I feel like three twenty-somethings with wings and friendly-looking masks are more likely to hitch a ride than three twenty-somethings. 
4. Book our return flights.

A few things to sort out still, and roughly three months to sort it out in! Will keep you updated.

If you'd like to donate (and I haven't already bothered you on facebook) here is the link to our JustGiving page:

http://www.justgiving.com/inconspicuousgryphons

Next time... more Greece diary!

Greece Diary, Part Six: A Grand Day Out

Or, Attacked by Mosquitoes in Skyros Town.

After a week, me and Ben were awarded a day off. Fortunately for us, Amanda and Stathis' flat in Skyros Town hadn't been let for the summer (sadly and unfortunately for them) so we got to spend two nights there. While it was wonderful to experience a bit of Skyros beyond the farm, to be honest, we had a bad day. How is it possible to have a bad day in a beautiful Greek island town? You may ask. Well, here are the reasons.

1. We are Cumbrians.
What this means is, me and Ben are used to poor weather. Cold, grey. We don't deal with the heat so well. We had only just adjusted to the temperatures out on the farm, where there was an almost constant wind coming in and cooling us down. In the town, there was no breeze. We really struggled with this. Skyros Town is built on one side of a hill (facing away from the sea, to protect it from pirates) like many Greek towns and we forgot the directions Amanda had given us so spent a whole morning traipsing up and down looking for the town centre. You'd think it'd be easy to find... not so. Especially when all you can think about is how you're sweating like crazy.

Finally reaching the summit

2. The sand... it burns!
It seemed like after such a sweaty adventure, a nice relaxing lie-down on the beach would be the perfect antidote. We kicked off our shoes and ran onto the sand... and then shrieked (on my part at least, manly yells on Ben's part) as the heat of the sand scorched out feet. Really, scorched. I have never stood on something so hot in my life. We had to race into the sea. Then, we decided to swim out to these not-too-distant rocks which the locals were swarming over - it couldn't be too hard to get there, surely! Neither of us are brilliant swimmers... very average, in fact. It was quite far. I've never swum far out of my depth before, and certainly not in the sea. It was both terrifying and incredible to see the sea bed so far beneath me, and we made it, but we had to cling to each other on a tiny piece of rock that wasn't covered in sea urchins. Clearly the locals knew a trick we didn't. Personally, I was exhausted, but there was nothing for it but to swim back! A tough experience, but also one I'm proud of (as a poor swimmer).

The rocks we swam out to

3. The mosquitoes.
When we tried to get to sleep the first night, we... well, we failed, epically. We couldn't find the little stand that holds up the incense coils that keep away mosquitoes and it was too hot not to have the door open a crack so we were plagued by mosquitoes all night. At 4am we were still fending them off. Every time we would turn out the lights and lie down, we'd hear that dreaded humming noise and have to get up again. Despite finding the stand the second night, I still managed to get bitten about 10 times on my legs. Fortunately Amanda introduced me to Anthisan... I can still remember the relief. Sigh.

BUT!
There were of course many good points.
a) we ate all our meals in the local taverna, where the stuffed tomatoes were absolutely gorgeous and we were practically on the beach, looking out over the sea. The first night, Coleen and Amanda also joined us for dinner, and we had a great meal and drank lots of wine.
b) there was a mini supermarket which sold Special K and ice cream and all sorts of glorious goodies.
c) we were staying in an amazing flat overlooking the Aegean Ocean.
d) an enoooormous wild cat lived outside the flat who was very friendly
e) we went into a ceramics shop and looked around, and the moment we mentioned Amanda and Stathis the guy knew exactly who we meant and showed us around the workshop and let us choose from there! I bought a little patterned jug where I keep the stones and shells I collected from the beach.

What a view.

This was like a bad day in Paradise. It's still pretty darn good!

Greece Diary, Part Five: Seventeen Cats

There were a lot of cats on the farm in Skyros. Seventeen, to be exact. I never learned all their names but we had nicknames for a lot of them. Above is Mary (pictured left), Ben (centre...) and Hunter. Mary was our special favourite.

Look how pretty she is! And she was so smart too. Whenever we went near the kitchen she'd run over and try to climb into the fridge when we opened it. What for, who knows. The milk was very odd (I supposed she would have appreciated it anyway) but it wasn't fresh, something I've never had before. We also kept plenty of bottles of water in there and some leftovers from meals to snack on. Coleen also had a supply of oranges. She loves oranges. Anyway, Mary was the cat who joined us on our first morning, and from then on she would climb through our window in the middle of the night to join us in bed.

Let's talk some more about Hunter. We got to know this guy because every time we'd come into our room during the day we'd find him asleep on our bed. We took to calling him 'Sleepy McSleeperson'. Then, surprise of all surprises, we were driving along in the white van one day when Amanda saw him sitting at the side of the road and said, 'there's my Hunter'. 'Hunter?' I repeated, incredulous. 'Oh yes, he's my best little hunter...' Amanda replied. Apparently this sleepy, laid-back guy is a killing machine by night. Who knew?

Then we have the kittens: Max (orange) and Sisi. These two would not stop playing all day long, wrestling each other from dawn till dusk. They were so freaking adorable even I couldn't resist picking them up and cooing over them. Unfortunately they weren't at that stage of cat development where they start to appreciate human contact... they just wanted to get back to playing. The only way I could sustain their attention was to wiggle a piece of hay on the ground for them to chase.

I brought Max into the room once but he wasn't too keen to be there. He had to get back outside and play with Sisi. Big surprise.

This here's Hyena. We were calling her One-Eye until we learned her name - as you can see, she only had one working eye at the time. An infection was going round the cats that comes and goes every year. It closes up one or both of their eyes but eventually the gunk clears away and they can see again. Unfortunately for one little darling, its eyes were permanently crossed as a result of the infection. One-Eye above had just about regained her sight by the time we left thanks to some attention from Amanda and Coleen. 

There was another cat with one eye closed - Other One-Eye, whose name we never learned. This cat was very sweet but was so affectionate that it actually started to bug me. I wish I'd got a picture of her. Whenever she clambered off me (or I pushed her away) there'd be dirty paw prints all over my clothes. I don't know how the other cats didn't manage to have dirty paws but they never got me so mucky so I got pretty annoyed at Other One-Eye about it. She was also just so hairy. But I appreciate that she was just very full of love...

And this is the time the rooster kept trying to eat the cats' food. It was pretty amusing to watch Dimos chasing him away!

And that concludes this episode. Oh, how I miss Mary... :'(

Greece Diary, Part Four: The Dreaded Bales

Before we arrived, straw had been cut in one of the fields. A couple of days into our trip, a neighbour came to bale it up. This was fairly amusing/terrifying for me as he sent me running around the field moving already-baled hay out of the way, but we had no shared language which would have made his instructions easier. Then came our task: bringing the bales from the field to the barn.

It was pretty clear from the outset that I was the weakest of the three of us. I'm not weak but I'm not very strong either. And what this task required of us was taking out a wheelbarrow, loading it up with three straw bales - two on the bottom and one on top - and wheeling them into the barn. Let me just put this out there: some bales are relatively light. These were not. Oat straw is pretty bloody heavy. They must have been maybe 20 kilos each.

I knew we were lucky to be there and was happy to be earning my keep, but man was this hard work! Fortunately we were asked to bring in maybe three loads a day, each. We got the task done gradually over time. Mostly I worked in the barn (out of the Greek heat, thank God, but in with the Greek spiders) stacking the bales.

It started out small but soon I was lugging these 20 kilo bales up to the top of a high stack, then rolling them across while trying to avoid the leggy spiders dangling from the ceiling. At least I wasn't doing this:

I consider myself lucky. Coleen and Ben, you have my eternal respect. On one afternoon however we were all put to shame when Stathis appeared at noon, loaded up a wheelbarrow with eight bales (so the legend goes - I wasn't actually present) and brought them in without breaking a sweat.

I found that where I had bounced the straw off my bare legs (shorts) and arms I was covered in scratches and cuts. I was very proud of these - evidence of my hard work! Regardless, after 102 bales of straw, much sweat and a few tears, the barn was full.

It was the hardest work we did at the farm but it was work that needed to be done (before it could get rained on, and with 40+ ponies to look after this isn't the sort of job there's always time for) so I was proud of us all for doing it. I felt like we were earning our keep! But good GOD am I glad that it's over.

Signing off for today.

Next time: Greece Diary, Part Five: 17 Cats.