Corfu, 2022 - Life's A Beach

 

Kalispera! We're home after a glorious ten night stay on Corfu, the beautiful Greek island I fell in love with after reading Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals as an eleven-year old schoolgirl,which we visited in 2017 and again in 2019. As you know, we're not bucket list travellers, if we find a place we love we're happy to return.

Once again we stayed in the mountain village of Paleokastrítsa (or Paleo, for short) described by many as the most beautiful spot on Corfu and by some, in the whole of Europe.  One of the first to fall for its charms was Sir Frederick Adam, British High Commissioner to the Ionian islands in the early 19th century. Paleo's appeal lay in her deep wooded slopes, blue sea and bathing beaches but the problem was the relative inaccessibility so Sir Frederick had a road built to the village, with the ostensible purpose of erecting a military convalescent home there. It was never built but Sir Frederick found it a lot easier to take his regular picnics in Paleokastrítsa.

In Prospero's Cell, Lawrence Durrell described Paleokastrítsa as being drenched in the slither of olives on the north-west coast. The little bay lies in a trance, drugged by its own ordinary perfection - a conspiracy of light, air, blue sea and cypresses. The rock faces splinter the light and reflect it both upward and downward; so that, staring through the broken dazzle of the Ionian sun, the quiet bather in his boat can at the same time look down into three fathoms of water with neither rock nor weed to interrupt the play of imagination and, almost eighty years later, its breathtaking natural beauty remained unchanged.

Halfway up the slope, guarded by a group of tall, slim, cypress-trees, nestled a small strawberry-pink villa, like some exotic fruit lying in the greenery. The cypress-trees undulated gently in the breeze, as if they were busily painting the sky a still brighter blue for our arrival.The villa was small and square, standing in its tiny garden with an air of pink-faced determination. Its shutters had been faded by the sun to a delicate creamy-green, cracked and bubbled in places. The warm air was thick with the scent of a hundred dying flowers, and full of the gentle, soothing whisper and murmur of insects. - Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals 

Identified as the Homeric city of Scheria, where Odysseus was washed ashore and escorted by Nausicaa to the palace of her father, Alcinous, King of the Phaeacians. You'll find references to these tales in the names of the bars and tavernas all over Paleokastrítsa. The iconic Kolovri Rock (above) is said to be Odysseus's ship, turned to stone by Poseidon in a fit of rage.

Anyway, let's get back to the beginning. On the morning of Tuesday 12th July, we walked into Walsall, caught a train to Birmingham International, checked in our baggage, passed through immigration and were sitting in Wetherspoons with a pint of lager less than an hour later. This was the third time we've flown to Europe this year and we've experienced none of the delays, chaos or disruption the media continue to bang on about. If I believed in such things, I'd almost think it was all a conspiracy to scare us into staying at home. We flew with Jet2, with whom we'd flown back in May. As a thank you for supporting the airline they'd given us £70 in discount vouchers and it seemed rude not to use them. The flight from the UK to Corfu takes around three hours and Paleo is 25km from the airport, a 40 minute ride away.

We stayed at River Studios, one of ten family-run studio apartments set within a shady olive grove with mountain views, we'd booked a few weeks earlier via Booking.com. Maria and Spiro (and their cat, Apollo) were, like all the Greeks we've ever had the pleasure to meet, wonderfully warm & welcoming. There was a complimentary bottle of wine on ice awaiting our arrival and almost every day there'd be organic produce freshly harvested from the garden left in our kitchenette. (Our room was on the first floor to the left of the River Studio sign.) The showers were hot, the kitchen well equipped, the bed comfy and - here's a first - the wardrobe was tall enough to accommodate my maxi dresses! There was AC but despite the nightly temperature being around 30°C we never used it, opting for an open window instead.

We didn't cook but took advantage of the kitchen (and the mini market conveniently situated across the road) by breakfasting on village-grown apricots, grapes, peaches and nectarines and Greek yogurt so thick it stuck to your spoon and, after our evening shower, a glass or two of the local red wine (a very reasonable 2.30€ per 2 litre bottle) served in the Greek way, ice cold with a wedge from a lemon (snaffled from a tree overhanging the road) accompanied by a bowl of chilli-infused Corfiot black olives.

Although there were beaches nearer, we spent many of our days basking on the sands of Paleo's harbour, a 4km walk from our apartment. We lay on striped cotton beach blankets bought in Crete in 2020, sheltered beneath a beach umbrella borrowed from River Studios and picnicked on local wholemeal bread dunked into tzatziki, with salty Feta cheese and huge misshapen village-grown tomatoes, bought from the mini market on the way there. Needless to say, after an eight kilometre round trip we'd pop into a bar on the way home for a restorative glass of Mythos beer.

With the temperature hovering at around 40°C throughout our ten day trip we spent a lot of our time playing in the crystal clear depths of the Ionian Sea - captured with an amazing waterproof digital camera, courtesy of our friend Kev.

We booked a trip aboard the Yellow Submarine (15€), spending half the voyage deep beneath the ocean as mesmerised as the children beside us by the shoals of colourful fish and deep sea divers and the other half expecting to glimpse the Hydra perched on the prehistoric rock formations or a gorgon lurking within a cave.

 

Occasionally we'd forgo the picnic and have late and lazy lunch in a taverna - usually a Greek salad.... 

Jon enjoyed village sausage with pitta, tzatziki and chips...

And I can recommend the vegetarian crepe with salad (mozzarella optional).

We also walked to the nearby mountain village of Liapedes, a 12km round trip - just as well we're fit!

We'd often walked past the signs for Acapulco on our previous visits (and read rave reviews online) and, as it was so close to River Studios, decided to give it a try, wandering through the olive groves towards the cliffs.

A Greek snack bar normally consists of a small swimming pool, a handful of sunbeds and a kiosk offering fast food & drinks but Acapulco was a cut above the norm, carved out of the mountainside with a succession of shady tree-lined terraces leading down to the sea, an immaculate 3m deep swimming pool, a laid-back cafe bar and a plethora of sun loungers, swing seats, hammocks and chairs. It was as popular with Greek families as the Italian, French, German and British holidaymakers.

They weren't wrong about the view, were they?

And remember me writing about my being a competent swimmer but not a confident one? Well....after fifty-five years I finally got over my fear of deep water and jumped off a rock into the sea (after much persuasion from Lord Jon!)

Thanks for reading! More to follow very soon.

Please accept my apologies for not replying to your kind comments and for being absent from all my favourite blogs. We arrived home yesterday and since then it's been a mad whirl of gardening, laundry and sleeping. Normal service will be resumed shortly.