We have decided to stay at Preveza Marina for the rest of June now, with plans to see more of the area by bike, find good places to swim/snorkel and do a few boat jobs at a nice, slow pace. It’s good to know Barberry is in a secure place and we do not need to weather-watch on a daily basis.
In terms of boat jobs one of our priorities was Dingleberry, our dinghy. She was tied up to the front of Barberry, but we could see other boats around us had huge colonies of mussels attached to their hulls.
We knew from experience that this could happen to Dingleberry and the longer we left her the worse they would be to remove. But that night, before we could retrieve Dingleberry, we were awoken in the early hours by strange noises. Maybe it was rain, maybe it was waves? We couldn’t work it out, so had to drag ourselves out of the forepeak to investigate. It was fish! Many fish. They were not in the water, as you normally expect with fish, but all over our deck, flapping like mad. That was the noise.
Some flapped their way back into the water, but the ones in Dingleberry were trapped and were flapping themselves to death. I reluctantly (and sleepily) climbed in off the bow of Barberry on a rescue mission. It took me a while to throw them all back, while Kerry removed the remaining ones from our deck. We both could not remove the smell of fish from our hands afterwards.
The next day, after a slow start, Dingleberry was brought around to the pontoon and lifted out. My feet were covered in fish scales after this exercise.
We had to do a thorough job. It’s surprising how fish scales can stick to surfaces, and the tiny baby mussels were starting to grow on the underside.
At last we were finished, with the final job to move Dingleberry back onto the bow of Barberry for storage. Not easy in the heat, as inflatable boats are surprisingly heavy.
Since we had the hose out we also took the opportunity to give Barberry a good clean and fill the water tanks. The only good thing about this is that Kerry would accidentally spray me with the cold hose water and it’s quite refreshing. I still complained a lot though!
On one of our big cycles we planned to visit some hilltop ruins that looked to be well off the beaten track. Google maps is great for this sort of thing. We even brought a little picnic. It also going to be good for my triathlon training (I’m entered an event in August at Donaghadee), as I do plenty of swimming and running, but hardly ever cycle.
We made a few wrong turns and found a few unexpected hills, but at least the roads were quiet. Kerry was doing well on her electric Brompton, with the power-assist helping her up the hills, but I was struggling on my old Brompton, with only three gears. I zig-zagged up the hills, determined not to stop and telling myself it was good training! Finally we made it to the start of the track to the ruins, which was definitely going to be an on-foot scramble, not a cycle.
Disaster. As I pushed my way through the overgrowth at the start of the uphill walk, I realised there were spider’s webs everywhere. Not wanting to be put off, I picked up a stick and used this to wave in front of me. We only got about 20 metres in before realising that there were many large spiders attached to the webs and waving the stick just caused them to land on my head.
Reluctantly we sounded the retreat. This was not just the occasional spider. They were everywhere. We had never seen so many. Probably millions in that small area. We jumped on our bikes and headed back to find somewhere nice for our packed lunch. We first carefully checked each other out for any stowaway eight-legged friends.
Kerry will tell you more about our cycling adventures next week. Our maybe we will hire a car with air-conditioning. That would be something!