Issy joins the Rembrandts for a morning of drawing on the hotel terrace, while I head off on what I think I‘m entitled to call a pilgrimage. Amorgos Pilgrimage Route Number 5 should lead me to the Stavros Holy Church which is near the north-eastern end of the island. The track starts off as a wide concrete path, but it seems that was only put there to lull us prospective pilgrims into a false sense of security. I’m not far out of Lagada when the route turns off the main path and deteriorates into a steep, narrow, windy, rocky goat track. For the first time since we arrived here there aren’t any clouds swirling around the peaks; the sky’s clear and it’s hot. The views down over Lagada, Aegiali and across to some of the neighbouring ... read more

I sleep a little restlessly. I don’t think I was too worried about us getting broken into, mugged and robbed. Our host Mikail told us last night that it’s so safe here that the crime rate is negative. I’m not quite sure what that actually means. I haven’t noticed any criminal types wandering the streets handing out money. I think what I was probably a little concerned about were hazards of the natural variety. Just before I turned the light off I was reading that there was a 7.7 magnitude earthquake here in 1956 that generated a thirty metre high tsunami. Fifty-three people died and more than a hundred were injured. I’m fairly sure we’re high enough up in the mountains to avoid a tsunami, but the cliffs towering above us didn’t look all that stable ... read more

Today the Rembrandts and I are swapping places; they’re heading off up into the mountains in the middle of the island, while I head across the water to the neighbouring island of Paros. No one seems to be too sure about the details of the Rembrandt’s itinerary. I hope they’re not planning on trying to scale Mount Zas. My body’s gone on strike this morning after yesterday’s climb, and I think its message to me is something along the lines of “you’re not twenty-one any more, what the f**k were you thinking”. I’m trying to put the pain out of my mind, but I’m now forced to remember - four hours spent scrambling up and down hundreds of metres of near vertical rock faces on my hands and knees in searing heat. What was I thinking? ... read more

Today we head across to the island of Naxos where we start our twenty day art tour of the South Aegean, or should I say Issy’s twenty day art tour. As I think I might have mentioned previously, I couldn’t draw a stick figure if my life depended on it, so I’ve come along purely for the ride. Issy on the other hand is a very talented artist, something she of course denies, and when she reads this I’ll probably be in trouble. So if these blog entries suddenly stop appearing …. We think the party’s probably about twenty strong. Issy knows a handful of them; other than my beloved I know precisely one. As we wait to board our flight it’s a bit hard not to notice a group of ten or so Aussies who ... read more

The plan for today is to take a trip to the town of Matera which is around 80 kms inland from Monopoli. It seems to come up pretty regularly on lists of must-see places in Italy, so why then do they seem to have made it so hard to get to? Maybe the plan is to stop it getting overrun with tourists? If that’s the case why haven’t they tried something similar in places that are already overrun, like say Venice - surely it wouldn’t be that hard to blow up the only bridge and make people swim there. Anyway, back to the real world … My ever-reliable app that shows us how we can get from anywhere to anywhere else in the world tells me that I can get there on a bus …. in ... read more