Volos

Motoring towards Nísos Pithu

1020hrs seems to have become our standard departure time at the moment because we left Ormiskos Pigadhi at 1020hrs too. Our destination at the end of the day was Volos, 23 miles to the north but because the route was close to the beautiful island of Nísos Pithu we decided to stop there for a while on the way.

Anchored off Nísos Pithu

There was no wind so it was a motoring day. Even when we were anchored off Nísos Pithu there was barely a ripple in the water. The anchorage worked as a good place to stop for lunch and as a last swimming location for Charlotte and Sophie. We left at 1430hrs towing Charlotte and Sophie behind us for a brief, final fender surf.

By 1630hrs we were moored up in Volos. Charlotte and Sophie trotted off to buy their coach tickets for the morning trip back to Athens whilst Nicky and I exchanged a gas bottle for a full one and organised the makings of dinner.

It was a very pleasant evening but sadly Charlotte and Sophie’s last one on board for this year.  The early morning alarms worked and we all made our way up to the coach station for farewells. It seemed strange having BV back with just Nicky and me on board.

We decided to stay in Volos for a couple of extra nights to allow us to get the laundry done, restock the fridge with food and get the blog up to date. Doing the latter I made an important discovery: beer and laptop keyboards do not work well when mixed! After a brief period of letters and cursors going all over the screen (and some colouful language), the keyboard dried out after the beer spill and it now seems to work again except for 3 keys. On the plus side I can now blame these missing keys for any spelling mistakes in the blog.

Having said goodbye to 2 guests we also discovered that some time during the last 2 weeks we picked up a third, unwelcome guest. Somewhere on board is a mouse. Nicky emptied the food lockers and re-stowed with anything not already sealed in a tin or similar put into plastic boxes. She also bought an array of traps. Not knowing the Greek for mouse trap, apparently her acting out a squeaky mouse being squashed by a trap caused much hilarity in the shop but it worked and she walked away with half a dozen sticky mouse traps and a few of the traditional ones. Tom, Dick and Harry (the traditional style mouse traps) plus Sticky 1-5 have been strategically deployed with tempting pitta bread and Nutella or peanut butter morsels on them. Lets hope that Mr Mouse is not a pregnant Mrs Mouse, and that he meets his demise very soon.

A replica of Jason’s Argo

With all of the laundry, food shopping and anti-mouse activities there wasn’t much time left for sight-seeing. However we did notice that a replic of the Argo is now moored to the quay. Volos is very proud of the fact that Jason and the Argonaughts left from Volos for their quest to find the golden fleece. Even the lamp post and rubbish bins have images of the Argo cast into them.

We also noticed that one seafood restaurant nearby always seemed to be full. Choosing our restaurant base upon the assumption that the local crowd must know something we didn’t we gave it a try. It turned out to be a very good choice, the grilled prawns in particular were excellent. And so, slightly more full of food than we had intended, we turned in, hoping for a success on the overnight mouse-catching front to be followed, perhaps, by a burial at sea en route from Volos to the Evia Channel.

Volos, Greece