Notos best of Corfu

Terrace Pension Elenor and lovely and friendly waitress there.  Owner kissed Julian on both cheeks.

We are on little plastic seat and table sets on the covered deck of the ferry, leaving Corfu after our 8 day stay.   The ferry leaves from the South, Lefkimi to Igoumenitsa on the mainland and the group next to us are coughing and spluttering having finished their strong cigarettes. We cycled through Leftimi this morning. A long straggling village or town with many churches, shops and food sellers. Ruins half built concrete villas and comfortable town houses cascading with flowers. Also a Riverside area with boats and cafes.

Chickens Notos Village

We felt very lucky to have chosen the village of Notos and Pension Eleanor for our last two nights. Such a friendly place, the people the garden Taverna Panorama, and the unspoiled countryside with paths through a little fertile area of vegetable gardens with the clutching of chickens never far off.  We heard an Otis Scops owl calling at night, and in the morning we enjoyed acsoper breakfast in the terrace with an assortment of cats never far off when there was food around.

The Panorama taverna was a paradise and we spent a relaxing afternoon in prime position at a table at the end of a pier where seven yatchs had moored in the still waters surrounding us.

We swam and relaxed and then had our supper there. A long table had been set for the yacht gathering.  We ate our meal whilst watching them come up in dribs and drabs from their boats and take their seats.

Panorama

Terrace Panorama

Jetty with hire motor yachts Taverna Panorama

Old houses in nearby village

Little 'traditional' house in nearby village

Photos of our trip down the East coast to the South.

As we travelled from Corfu Town down the East Coast we were pleased to see that the coast was not too developed with high rise blocks, mainly because the mountains rise behind a fairly narrow coastal strip.

It was a picturesque ride on a fairly main road until after Messonghi, after that the road was a lot more unmade and everything became less developed and the landscape more natural with olive groves as well as lush green woods with ferns.

Corfu Supermarket

Bay looking back on Corfu on road leading South

View from Mermaid Tavern south of Messonghi

Boukari beach taverna

Petritis - fishing port with tavernas

The coast road becomes a lovely small winding road between sea and woods

Petritis from near Notos

Petritis with Notos round the corner of the bay

Notos bay from our window. We saw the butterfly in these Olive groves and scrub

Swallowtail Butterfly - missing a bit of one tail

Beaches and places on Corfu

 This is the beach near Pelekos on the Mid Wed of Corfu.  It's got lovely clear waters as have all the beaches we have seen, but a bit spoilt by a large development of new ugly appartments on one side close to the beach.

Beach near Pelekos. West side of Island.  Many beaches here have very steep road down - an up! 

Road down to beach

View of beach from Road

View from village of Pelekos

Taverna Agnes in Pelekos

Ipsos beach, North of Corfu Town is lovely with no high rise blocks, unlike Dasia it's neighbour which completely different.  When we cycled through Dasia there was a lot of building work going on so we cycled through the dust and traffic to Ipsos that we had been recommended by a Greek couple who chatted to us at traffic lights.

Next beach North of Ipsos where we swam

The beach near Ipsos

Alfs Taverna was great at the far end of Ipsos.

Nice spot South of Corfu Town with monastery on a little Island.  You could get a boat to Mouse Island nearby

Just South of Corfu Old Town, lovely spot with good Taverna and swimming from the pier.  Waters looked so inviting but it was not quite warm enough for a swim. Photo does not do it justice.

The Nautilus Taverna where we had lunch next to above windmill

Paleokastritsia beach and the following photos same

We did not do justice to this area as we set out late and it was quite a strenuous ride.  There were monasteries and castle that we could have explored and a Porto Timoni beach and nearby village of Afionas which we did not get to, just too far, roads too windy and hills too high.

Habits of the Corfuiots

Drivers in Corfu fall into one of two categories, they can be overly considerate like the man who slowed down so that the small puddle he was driving through would not splash me, to others who look completely normal until they get into their cars right beside you.  They then screech off as if they are auditioning for a part as a get away driver in a Bond movie, and you ask yourself, 'was that for my benefit?'

My iphone will not do the view justice

Conversely, Corfuiots are very relaxed about certain things.  Meal times for instance, and this is a bit of a shock to Julian and I who have been trained in the French way of doing things and eat small breakfasts in anticipation of lunch that is eaten very much at lunchtime.  If you turn up in a French cafe or restaurant after 1pm, you are late, after 2pm forget it.  Here, they will cheerfully serve anything and everything at whatever time you arrive.

I have never given Greek salads much thought.  You sometimes see 'Greek Salad' advertised but as I'm not a great fan of cheese in salads it has never appealed.  Now I am becoming educated about what a 'Greek Salad' actually is.  Lots of delicious and fresh cucumber, tomatoes, red onion or spring onion, lovely soft feta, (not hard and salty) bits of fresh lettuce or anything really that is crunchy except the tomatoes which are beautifully smooth and delicious.

In fact the Greeks, or am I generalising, and should say on Corfuiots,  offer a lot of vegetables in restaurants; courgette fritters and stuffed aubergines to name but two as well as all the various salads. This is in contrast to what we find in French restaurants where vegetables are largely absent from menus, although prolific in markets.

I am trying very hard to stop myself taking photos of overflowing wheeley bins and their environs, only because I know that as soon as I find the most disgusting overflowing set of bins with accompanying fly-tipped builders rubbish plus a few fridges microwaves and TV's thrown in, I will find the mother of all rubbish heaps a few km down the road, which will require an updated photo.

Plateau which looks fine from a distance but there are shanty town and rubbish dumps along the sides of the roads and in the ditches

It's funny how difficult it is when you book somewhere to stay to get a sense of exactly what it is like.  Many could unsuspectingly end up on this plateau near all the rubbish.  If you look at a potential B&B on the internet, the rooms may look OK in the photos, but it is hard to get a feel of the setting.  In Corfu there are some nice villages with truly spectacular views, and I would feel cheated if I booked somewhere with no nice outlook.  Pelekas is an old town in central Corfu near the West coast.  High up and facing South East it overlooks craggy hills, pine woods, lush valleys, olive groves and gardens towards Corfu town.  You you can see the fortresses and over to the mainland beyond.  In the middle distance are blue seas with boats and the bays and beaches of Corfu all laid out before you, it is a view that is ever changing and completely satisfying.  A view that has everything.

Part of the fabulous view, but my iphone could not capture the sea and mountains beyond

Corfiots are well used to the habits of the Brits and black tea taken with cold milk it something they are completely familiar with.  Almost everyone we met spoke some English although I'm afraid that I only picked up one Greek word, 'Kalimera' which means hello, which I used liberally.

'Facilities' at the Villa

As I have mentioned before, we are living in a 'country chic villa' (air B&B description not mine) where there is no bath plug and no shower holder making baths impossible and showers a bit uncomfortable.  By far outweighing these little inconveniences are the fact that we have a wonderful view through our wild garden, cypresses and olives down to the sea with the hills of mainland Greece and Albania over the water and snow capped peaks in the far distance. To be honest, a view does not get much better than that, although we have had to wait almost a week for the Sahara dust to leave us to be able to appreciate it.  Added to all this we have the cheerful chatter of a flock of sparrow in the bushes by the terrace.

Back to the bath with no plug.  Julian likes his baths and we thought it would be an excellent plan to buy a plug at a local hardware shop, allowing us to have baths and improving the facilities at the villa.  We duely bought the plug and enjoyed our bath.  Only one bath, of course, and me going in first, of course. After I had enjoyed a good soak Julian went in there and fell asleep, snoring rather loudly which put me off the book that I was listening too in bed.

The next thing that happened was Julian, unclothed!, outside the bathroom with mop swishing around and lots of squeezing out mop in bucket, and emptying bucket outside (he couldn't exactly pour it down the sink could he!). Possibly a little too much information for my readers (or reader), but the fact was that Julian, having pulled the plug from the bath and flushed the loo had overloaded the system and was faced with water coming over the top of the loo and also out of cracks in the tiles at the base of the bath. Coming out faster than he could mop it all up. (We now knew why no plug in bath). I will spare you a photo.  I'm sure that Mrs Durrell would have taken the whole thing in her stride.  Mrs Edwards, pretended to be asleep!

Poor Mr Edwards, he is very good with mop and bucket and is an equally talented photographer always managing to capture the best of me.

Corfu - Poverty in Paradise

My mind wanders when cycling - which is quite dangerous as there are great potholes and open drains and culverts jutting onto the edge of the road exactly where you ride a bike! 

Little shrine and Piaggio outskirts of Corfu Town

We get close to everything on a bike seeing details and sense ordinary people going about their business.  Men in battered cars assiduously going through wheely bins, cats living in or on those same bins surrounded by rubbish of every description that never gets taken away even when the bins are emptied.

Supermarket

Lots of old cars that struggle up the hills, many English voices, not much begging, I don't know how they have managed to curb that.  We saw two policemen on bikes in the Old Town yesterday.

Places survive if commercial - although how the hundreds of tourist shops in the old town make a living I don't know - but we are early in the season.  Lots of fur shops exist here and the windows carry large photos of exotic fur clad women. Ferries do a good trade and there are many ferry ticket booths, and there are lots of small independent supermarkets which are what we would think of as corner shops. Even the larger supermarkets seem to be independent.  There are no chains like Tesco or Sainsburys, although there are Lidl's.

The Archaeological museum closed years ago, The museum of Asian Arts is open. Private funding or coach tours? - when we rode past there were coaches outside, they have to have somewhere to go! Mon Repose, birthplace of Prince Philip looks very shabby and the house is locked up.  Archaeological sights are behind locked gates and there is no tourist information centre in Corfu Town.  Information on the internet is often misleading as things have changed so much since the financial crisis so information on the internet is often years out of date. Like the non existent trains - but that is another story which had had a rather dramatic effect on our plans - good job they are fluid!

We are in a beautiful wild paradise here on the hills in Poulades, where everything is lush and green.  Each day we run the gauntlet of the dog down the road and we feel a bit vulnerable on our bikes.  This leads down to a fairly main road and we are trying to find roads that are not too busy, but not the ones that lead past villas with dogs snarling and jumping at us from behind fences and sometimes running after us, cycling thought the back lanes is anything but peaceful!

There are many villas in the hills and everything depends on getting around by car.  The resorts like Gouvia and even Palaiocastritsa (which is supposed to be posh) remind me of Paignton but in a heat haze. There are simply masses of tavernas and bike (scooter) hire and little shops selling this and that, mainly souvenier shops.  Everything for the masses, except there are not masses of people yet as it's only mid April.

Villa Corfu - living like the Durrells?

First evening and a lady on a moped arrives at the edge of a main road to take us up to the villa.  All we have so far is this main road supermarket car park to indicate the general area of the villa, but we know it must be up in the hills somewhere because reviews on air B&B talk about the views of the sea.

Garden

We arrive up the rutted track, sometimes tarmac must mostly stony.  We pass other villas and I wonder where the lady in front of us on the moped will stop.  The air is scented with orange and lemon blossoms,  the occasional aeroplane hum as Corfu has an airport.

A final push and we arrive at what I think I expected.  It is definitely a villa rather than an apartment and it is the kind of wild, slightly unkempt but beautiful place that I had hoped for.  Inside it is cool and calm, with comfortable old furniture - and a good wifi signal. There is a bath with no plug and a shower above with no hook to hang it on.  But we're not complaining but ready to embrace any idiosyncrasies as well as the charm that we find here.

Outside the garden has not seen a gardener in a while and the paths are not swept.  On the plus side, there are nooks and crannies and paths ending in little tables and seating to explore.  Olive trees, lemon tree with ripe lemons - I don't know why some citrus trees can be in blossom and others in fruit at the same time? Irises in full bloom and the wisteria heavy with pale mauve blooms but just going over so there is a thick carpet of of flowers at that end of the terrace.

We have the ground floor and the terrace.  We hear from the lady on the moped that an English couple rent the top floor from Georgio who built the villa and who lives in Athens.

The air is warm air, no wind the sea is as still as a lake and looks like a lake because the Greek mainland and other islands are so close.  But, we cannot see the view! Sand from Africa hangs over the Island and although we see the lights of the mainland and Corfu town, everything is a blur.