A Dog in Drapetsona

 

A dog was barking in Drapetsona. It had been barking for a few hours. It was evening, and I could also hear the neighbours’ television through the walls, and the engines and announcements of the ferries.

I’d searched on Airbnb for a place to stay overnight in Piraeus before taking the ferry home to Tilos. I was delighted to find a dog-friendly house within walking distance of gate E1, the dock for Blue Star ferries to the Dodecanese. And it was on St Fanourios Street: my favourite saint, the finder of lost things. I booked it, and Savvas arranged a transfer from the airport with Mr George.

The plane had been delayed a little, and on arrival in Athens there was a vast queue for non-EU passport holders. I felt anxious thinking of Lisa waiting in her crate. I eventually made it through, released Lisa and dragged all our things outside. My backpack was heavy with the winter clothes I’d taken to Romania. Now it was Easter.

Mr George had been circling the pickup area for a while. He turned out to be driving a very small car, and with an attendant trying to move us on, I didn’t have time to dismantle the crate. We somehow squeezed everything in, then Lisa sat happily at my feet with her nose out of the window, and an hour later I was thrilled to see blue sea. Finally, we arrived at a terraced house in Drapetsona, on a small hill above the port.  

Savvas welcomed me and showed me around the house which he’d described as ‘old-style’ and ‘homely’; it had been his grandparents’ house and was now his. Like all the houses on the street, it was a two-up-two-down terrace with a little garden in the front and the back. Savvas said there were lots of cats. It smelled a bit smoky but I knew I was back in Greece when I found in the kitchen cupboard a small water bottled filled with aromatic olive oil.

I was excited to spend the afternoon exploring Piraeus. Drapetsona didn’t seem the easiest neighbourhood to navigate, though, at least with a dog. The pavements were a bit smelly and broken, and I was abruptly reminded that in Greece pedestrian crossings are meaningless, seen by some drivers as a challenge to speed up and mow you down. I was tired from a few days of travelling and I needed to adjust to the city after six weeks away in a rural, mountainous area of Transylvania.

 

There, we’d been staying in a wooden cabin at the end of a steep-sided, forested valley with a monastery above and a river below that gushed out of a cave. Any livestock in the area were kept behind fences or protected by shepherds because of the threat of wolves. With no roaming goats or sheep, Lisa could be off the lead all the time. Seeing her racing around the hills was a joy for me as much as for her.

Someone told us that in Romania, ‘a village isn’t a village without dogs’. In our area, some had owners and some were strays, but they all wandered freely and had tight little communities which they organised along their own lines. We’d often be joined on walks by the two strays we fed, but just as often by dogs with owners that just fancied a walk with company. Lisa thrived on it. People seemed to love animals and the few cars around slowed down when the drivers saw dogs on the road.

Ian had discovered the place as a new refuge for his extra-Schengen adventures. For his first month there, the water in the pipes was frozen and had to be brought from the spring or the river. Lisa had loved the deep snow when we got there in March. By mid-April, the days were warm enough that I took a very fast dip in the cold river, I’d started learning a bit of Romanian and those empty hills and rural places were beginning to feel like another home. But it was time to leave Romania for now – Lisa and I to Greece, Ian for now to Bulgaria.

Dogs are welcome to travel on trains in Romania for a half-price ticket, which costs barely anything. It was around two hours to lovely Sighisoara, where we stayed in a historic building on the edge of the citadel and I found a ‘cabinet veterinar’ where a very gentle vet stamped Lisa’s passport saying she was fit to travel.

We continued for a long six hours by train to Bucharest, yet in comfort and with views of lovely farmland and snowy mountains. Back in March we’d stayed at Old City NF Palace in a vast room with a chandelier. The exceptional young staff had organised to keep Lisa’s airline crate in the left luggage of the hotel until the next month, which meant we could travel across the country unencumbered. Now we were reunited with it and had one last night there. I almost wished we could stay longer but was excited to get home.

Because it's not so easy or pleasant to travel by train with a dog in Greece, we were flying. Checking in for the flight to Athens, I met a Romanian woman who was travelling with her dog back to Greece where she lived – and speaking to her dog in Greek as he was from there, like Lisa. They met with much tail-wagging, and hopped in their airline crates together. I remember how much trouble Lisa used to give me getting in there. Now she knows it’s OK, and although I still worry for her, I know she’ll be OK too.

On the short flight, in Aegean’s in-flight magazine Blue I was pleased to find a feature on Piraeus. I jotted down the addresses of interesting-sounding shops and eateries. There was an ‘art hub’, someone making furniture from reclaimed marble, someone making furniture out of recycling plastic nets and other plastic waste from the sea. When I got online again and looked up BlueCycle, alas, I was sad to see a coffee table cost 650 euros.

Nice idea, but unlikely to have a big impact.

 

So, by the afternoon, I was in Piraeus.

There was something in the name of the district, Drapetsona, that sounded like something else and made me wonder about its history. I looked it up and found what might be a link to Trebizond, now Trabzon, in north-eastern Turkey on the Black Sea. Founded by the Greeks in the eighth century BC as Trapezunda.

I tried figuring out the best route to take to the ferry the next day. One way the pavements were narrow and the roads busy, which would make it impossible to trundle a huge crate and hold a dog safely on a lead. The other way went past an archaeological site and an abandoned building along a road so quiet that it seemed to be used exclusively by driving schools, but at the end was a system of roundabouts where even the drivers seem unsure which way to go, and when I attempted a trial run with Lisa, aggressive stray dogs dashed in front of juggernauts to snap at our heels.

It was a bit intense. Being tired wasn’t helping. Deciding to leave the discovery of the interesting shops and art hubs and eateries for now, I did some shopping at the supermarket around the corner.

I tried taking Lisa for another walk later but she got spooked by some almighty bang that sounded like a very loud gun. It was already Easter week, and everything from firecrackers to dynamite is deployed in the Greek celebrations, making it a time of misery for many dogs and their owners. I left her in the house to snooze, and went for a wander down side streets for half an hour until I reached, amidst some abandoned industrial buildings, a park that ran down to the sea. It would be a perfect place to take Lisa tomorrow. I returned feeling curious about the area again, opened a bottle of wine and studied the map.

It was a little later when a message came through from Savva, my host, telling me that the neighbourhood was one of the poor neighbourhoods of Piraeus, ‘where our grandparents came from Turkey from where they were kicked off in 1922’. Of course – these were some of the prosfygika, houses built for Greeks from Asia Minor who came here as refugees.

It was a hundred years ago that the complex and terrible events of war between Turkey and Greece led to what is known as the Asia Minor Catastrophe, when many lost their lives in Smyrna and other cities with Greek populations. This was followed by the population exchanges along religious lines, ending thousands of years of Greek Orthodox presence in Asia Minor, as well as Muslim presence in Greece. It made refugees of many thousands of people, who had to leave behind all they had, as so many Ukrainians are doing today.

The people who came from Asia Minor a hundred years ago doubled the populations of Athens and Thessaloniki. As Auguste Corteau wrote in The Book of Katerina:

‘… in Samsun, Turkey … at the beginning of the 1920s the Konstantinidis pack is practically well-off: the girls at a good school with piano lessons and foreign languages, meat on the table every day, and thanks be to God. And then the Asia Minor Catastrophe happens and they suddenly find themselves in Upper Town, Thessaloniki, without two pennies to rub together. Gentleman and businessman Dimitrós is overnight a spawn of the Turk, and young Irini, who used to be at the top of her class, is suddenly cast amongst smart Greek girls who look down on her and whisper behind her back: “Her family lives in a shack. Can you imagine?”’

Savvas sent me another message.

‘Nowadays the area is still poor but authentic persons are living there.’ He said the people who came from Turkey were given small temporary houses and in 1974 the state gave them the opportunity to live in these houses – I guessed he meant to keep them.

‘In this neighbourhood is born the rebetiko,’ he said, referring to the underground blues-type tradition of music. And the film that made Melina Mercouri a star, Never on Sunday, in which she plays a happy, romantic prostitute, was set here. The song in which she sings of the magic of her favourite port was ‘Ta Pedia tou Pirea’, the Children of Piraeus.

 

Next morning in the sunshine, workmen were painting next door and neighbours passing one another calling Easter greetings, ‘Kali anastasi na echoume!’

Feeling happy to have learned a little more about the history of the area, I walked Lisa all the way along Ethnikis Antistaseos (‘National Resistance’) Street, past nice neighbourhood shops selling bougatsa or wine from barrels, to the park covered in wildflowers that led down to the open sea. There were rusty ships in a harbour, and an abandoned factory. I’d noticed the name of the area was Lipasmata – ‘Fertilizers’. It was the site of a fertilizer factory, part of Piraeus’ industrial past, and in recent years the land has been allowed to re-wild and turned into a park with a couple of cafes looking out to the big blue and the islands.

Lisa was desperate to find a way into the water – and she did. An attendant said, ‘All the animals do the same!’ People of all ages were strolling and enjoying the sun and sea breeze. Dogs had to be on leads, another attendant told me later, but you can't have everything. By then at least she'd had a run around. She'd be more relaxed for our onward journey to our island home. What a wonderful adventure we'd both had.

Onions to Arki, Watermelons to Marathi

 

‘Manoli?’ I ask.

‘Jennifer,’ he says. ‘The girl with the dog.’ The girl with the dog has had breakfast and is doing a bit of work and a bit of planning.

I tell Manolis, the owner of Trypas taverna where I’m staying, that I’m thinking of taking the boat to Samos tomorrow to get cash and dog food and a notebook, none of which is available here on the little island of Arki. Manolis is very laid back, a man of few words, completely belied by the way he dresses: flip-flops, board shorts, panama-style hat, scarf around his neck and a different, brightly patterned, well-pressed shirt at least once a day. I asked him earlier how many shirts he owned, and he just laughed.

I arrived on Arki in the north of the Dodecanese four days ago, with the intention of staying two or three days. I stayed a little longer to do my research, because the local people are less talkative than in some other places. But I have, truth be told, found out all I really need to know about this island with about forty permanent residents and an area of about two and a half square miles. The thing is, every time I think I might leave, I find myself sitting on a beach, mesmerised by the sea. It’s such a quiet, easy place to like, with its little stone huts around the harbour where the fishermen sit, its gently undulating hills covered in green bushes and golden yellow grasses, the sound of goat bells above the village where the fantastic local cheese is produced, which the tavernas put in their salads.

The lack of cash is not really a problem yet, as everything is on the ‘pay later’ system. Paying on the same day is generally seen as a bit over the top. As Stephanos told me last night, ‘We are Greeks. Real Greeks.’ But eventually I’ll have to settle my bill. The lack of dog food to buy has been somewhat expensive, although Lisa has been perfectly happy eating tinned ham, chicken souvlaki or meat balls. She’s made it clear that she’d rather go hungry than eat the Purina dry food I brought. If I’m sampling the good local food, so will she. The diet starts tomorrow...

Anyway, Manolis asks, ‘Why don’t you take the boat to Lipsi today, the Lampi? You have one hour there to do what you need to do and come back.’

I didn’t know there was a boat to Lipsi today. Another thing that doesn’t exist on Arki is a boat schedule, except by asking a local; perhaps because most people arrive by their own boat anyway. I scribbled down the surprisingly extensive schedule in the back of my notebook listening to Manolis the other day, and it didn’t feature this one. I ask him when it leaves, and it’s in twenty minutes. I thank him and dash to my room to grab my bank card, then hurry down to the port.

It’s rather confusing but there is the old harbour and the new ‘port’, a small concrete dock, which according to a sign for a taverna there is a seven-minute walk. Next to it is the lovely main beach where I swam this morning, where residents have sprayed onto a boulder, ‘No Camping’ and underneath, ‘Sorry.’ At the taverna on the port I find my new friends from Athens with their lovely dog and we get chatting. They check with the lady from the taverna if they will sell dog food on Lipsi.

‘I think so.’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it’s a big island.’ Then I laugh. When I stayed on Lipsi almost three decades ago, I couldn’t imagine a quieter, tinier place. Now, it feels like going to the big city. But the lady realises that I’m planning to go today.

‘The Lampi doesn’t go today – the only boat was this morning.’

There is certainly no one else waiting for it, and no sign of it coming. It seemed too good to be true. I continue chatting with the couple from Athens about this and that.

And then – a little ferry approaches fast that must be the Lampi. Great! But it goes straight past the dock and is undoubtedly heading at a fast pace for the old harbour. Confirming with the locals it is going mesa, inside to the harbour, I set off at a sprint. Lisa thinks this is a great game. I am soon out of breath – it seems that I am a little out of shape from being on a miniature island – but I have to keep running to catch it…

I arrive, panting, as some boxes are being loaded and unloaded, and Lisa and I make it onto the boat and it soon sets off. We cruise into the archipelago of tiny islets. The only other passenger, a nervous Eastern European girl with a suitcase, gets off at Marathi – I guess she is going to work at the taverna in the summer. Marathi is even smaller than Arki, with expensive yachts moored around the beach. From there on, I have a private cruise to Lipsi. We approach around the northwest of it, which seems mountainous and forbidding after Arki. I ask the young guy who is crew about the boat schedule, and he says today’s was a special service. About an hour after we set off, the town comes into view and it feels strange to see roads and street signs, and a petrol station – this must be where people from Arki get their petrol, if they need it (there are only a couple of cars).

We hop off the boat and I have one hour to do my errands. I put my plastic bottles into the famed recycling bin. I spot the Alpha Bank, one of the three branches that was almost closed down last year. I find a bakery and marvel wide-eyed over an array of products that includes wholegrain tahini and Lipsi wine and carob paximadia. I buy enough dog food to start my own specialised minimarket on Arki. Then, bags bulging, I make my way back to the boat, which is waiting with just one other passenger destined for Marathi. ‘Shall we go?’ the crew asks the captain. We are transporting a few boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables, wrapped up with tape and labelled by hand: onions for Arki, watermelons for Marathi.

 

A Dog from the Dodecanese (1)

So there I was, walking through Rhodes town, my left hand grasping my dog’s lead as she attempted to sniff every interesting urban aroma, while my right hand pulled a trolley on which was precariously balanced a giant dog crate, semi-secured in roughly improvised island style by a rope I usually used as her lead. 

It was late February, and although much of the month had been beautifully sunny, now the sky promised more rain. I’d spent over two hundred euros on this set-up and still had no idea, at this point, whether Lisa was going to get in the crate, or if it was exactly the right size, or how I was going to transport all of us to the airport when buses and taxis don’t allow dogs.

Lisa is actually a golden retriever crossed with a hunting dog, or so the vet guesses. She became mine when she was two months old, five years ago. Born on Rhodes, she’s lived mostly on Tilos and for a while on Karpathos. We travel together regularly by ferry around the Dodecanese islands. The big ferries have upper-deck cubicles for dogs, generally with one or two unhappily barking occupants. Lisa likes to sniff around them before declaring she’d rather sit outside and get to know the other passengers. I almost always give in, which is why I usually travel with a big rucksack stuffed with fleece blankets and sleeping bag.

I’d never considered taking her to England. During my brief trips to the UK someone usually pet-sits her, and we’ve made new friends through pet-sitting sites. This time, however, I planned to stay in England for a couple of months. I’d been under the impression that it cost a huge amount to fly with a dog to the UK, but David emailed me a link to the relevant sectionof the Aegean Air website, stating that a dog accompanying its owner can travel for 150 euros or less.

I was wary about the notion of putting my dog in the hold of a plane, but my friend Steven reasoned that it couldn’t be much worse than his commuter train. And at least she’d be happy when we arrived. Still unsure, I took Lisa to Rhodes to begin the procedure for a pet passport, which would need to be started at least a month before travel.

Lisa allowed me to lift her onto the vet’s table for her microchip and rabies injection and only tried jumping off once. Hari the vet was very gentle with her and she responded to the offer of treats afterwards with happy tail-wagging. Hari told me the earliest date we could travel and said that if necessary he could drive us to the airport in his jeep when the time came. Before we left, I asked his young assistant to show me the IATA-approved dog crates. Since we’d have to fly from Rhodes, I’d pick up the crate a couple of days before travel.

According to strict regulations, the crate (klouvi in Greek) must be 5–10 cm taller than the dog’s head when it’s standing normally, and the dog must have enough room to turn around and lie in a normal position. I tried to coax Lisa inside one of the larger models to check for size. She was a changed dog within seconds, resisting so vehemently with yelps and contortions and baring of teeth that I finally was forced to give up, afraid the vet’s assistant would think I was used to torturing my dog. I noted the crates’ dimensions and bought a tape measure, hoping it could be determined at home in relaxed conditions.

I decided to book a ‘Flexi’ flight to London in case of difficulties, and emailed Aegean Air to check some details. I received a helpful email back, detailing what I had already learned, plus one paragraph right at the end that said it would cost 890 euros for the dog.

WHAT?

It turned out that 'Transportation of dogs, cats and ferrets to the UK is only permitted for flights to London Heathrow and only to be sent as cargo,' charged according to weight.

The friendly person at Aegean confirmed that flying to any other European destination with Aegean, there would be no such extra charge. Only the UK. 

I considered alternatives. If we went by trains, buses and ferries, we would save on airfares but might still have to buy the crate. I found a couple of useful sites online, such as The Man in Seat 61. Each section of the route, it seemed, would have its own guidelines and challenges, and Lisa could well be cooped up for much longer, in more difficult conditions. I remembered my experience in Crete when I was told that to travel by bus, she’d have to go in a crate among the suitcases in the unventilated space underneath… Other countries might have far worse regulations and I wouldn’t be able to communicate so well.

Driving would make for a good adventure, but I don’t have a car and my driving experience is mostly limited to quiet roads and small towns. For a brief moment I considered doing an Ishbel ‘World Bike Girl’ and cycling it; but soon ruled that one out. However, it did give me the idea of asking Ishbel for advice, since we work together and she was at that moment fundraising to fly two rescue dogs from Brazil to the UK. She confirmed most people taking their dogs to the UK have to fly to France or Holland, then drive or take trains and ferries from there – though I should be careful as some ferries only allow pets inside a vehicle. 

Short of brute force, how would I get Lisa inside the crate? I asked Ishbel.

'Chicken,' she replied. 'Chicken always works.'

I emailed a couple of ferry companies and confirmed that the one ferry that would allow me to travel as a foot passenger with a dog was the Dieppe–Newhaven Transmanche. I’d been to Newhaven before so was comfortable arriving there. So I just needed to figure out the section from Paris to Dieppe.

David lives in Paris but he travels to Greece often, and I sometimes travel to Paris. When I told him the new plan, he said – as I had hoped – he would meet me and Lisa at Charles de Gaulle airport and travel with us for fun to Dieppe.

It was time to make one more effort to measure Lisa. She was extremely suspicious of the tape measure and lay unhelpfully on her back with her legs in the air each time I went near her to determine her ‘natural standing position’ height. But finally, affection and treats prevailed, and I found that she wasn’t going to fit into the crates I’d looked at.

It seemed absurd: she isn’t even a full-sized golden retriever. I called the vet’s office and spoke in Greek with one of the assistants, asking her to tell me the measurements of the biggest crate they had. There was a giant-looking one that I’d originally dismissed. The assistant was convinced that it was a metre high, which I was pretty sure couldn’t be true (maybe for a small giraffe rather than a dog), but I struggled to explain… I just had to hope it was the one I’d found online, and that it was a metre long. I’d keep my fingers crossed that it would be the correct fit.

We took a few days' trip to Nisyros, research for something I'm writing. Back home, with all that needed to be done for the UK trip, I found I couldn’t focus on anything else. Thinking about it more was only making me anxious: packing, closing up the house, all the time not really knowing... But either it would work out or it wouldn’t. It was time to go for it, look upon the whole thing as an adventure and enjoy it.

I decided to go out for a quiet dinner with friends at the kafeneio in Megalo Horio, then perhaps take the ferry the next morning and take things step by step. It was apokries, and the quiet dinner turned into dancing until 2 a.m… I made it to the ferry ticket office just moments before it closed, and suddenly we were off – on the first stage of our epic journey.

Happy Holidays...

Bet you thought I'd be frolicking on an Australian beach and preparing to throw another shrimp on the barbie, mate. Well, so did I, but here on the south coast of New South Wales, the weather's a little patchy. Cloudy. I did go for an extremely swift swim in a very cold ocean, but I thought we'd all prefer to see some sunshine from around this time last year back in Tilos...

 My heartfelt thanks to all of you for continuing to support the Octopus in my Ouzo and Falling in Honey this year. I've been using my time away to write a lot. I've also been having plenty of fun with pet-sitting adventures off the beaten track in New South Wales. I'll leave you with photos of some of the new friends I've made in the last few months. 

Warm wishes for the holidays, wherever you are!

 

  

 
 

Dog Days, Retirement, Food and Island Life on Tenerife - an interview with John Searancke

We're taking a virtual trip to another sunny island, with another dog, dear readers... A few years ago, John Searancke and his wife Sally retired to Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands, taking Freddie the dog with them – hence the title of his first book, DOG DAYS IN THE FORTUNATE ISLANDS. John and Sally had met in Lancashire, where they ran a business together for ten years.

John, how did you choose ‘The Fortunate Islands’ (an old name for the Canary Islands) as your new home?

The decision was mostly made for us in advance, because we had bought a holiday apartment years before we moved over there permanently. We had chosen the quieter, greener, northern part of the island, that less populated by mass tourism. The pressure of our business meant that we took more and more short breaks over there, and we realised that we did not want or need to look further. Our valley is just perfect for us, and we fell in love with it.

What things do you love best about your island home?

Well, we love the climate. Here in the north, there is not the unremitting sunshine that the holidaymakers so enjoy in the south. Between us lies El Teide, a dormant volcano, and the highest mountain in Spain. With its peak capped by winter snow, it creates a micro-climate here in the Orotava valley, giving sufficient cloud and rain to grow vines and bananas, so everywhere is green.

We love the people too. Perhaps because they are islanders, they have been so friendly and welcoming to us. Any tensions have been allayed as our grasp of the language has improved, such that we can now even dare to communicate with tortuous officialdom in government departments.

I was asked a couple of years ago, by Island Connections, the main English language newspaper for the Canary Islands, to become their restaurant reviewer (poshly titled “critico gastronomico” on my business card!) and this has led Sally and I to superb meals in out of the way restaurants that no casual visitor to the island would discover on their holiday. Wonderful seafood, in particular, is here in abundance: the combination of a sub-tropical island, the warm Atlantic ocean and the proximity of the coast of Africa less than 100 miles away, provides a rainbow of different coloured fish for our dinners.

You say it’s a book about ‘hidden Tenerife’. Can you explain?

We are hidden away from the mass tourism that the southern part of this island is so well known for by the majority of tourists in Europe who come here each year. Most never leave their hotel and beach complex in the south, and so therefore never discover the hidden north of the island.

We live in the quaintly named San Fernando area, our apartment surrounded by old whitewashed villas with terracotta roofs, and larger fincas, the centres of banana cultivation for this valley. We think that we have world class views – and so did the explorer Humboldt when he came here over a century ago.

Should I really be revealing the secrets of our valley?

How did Freddie take to the move?

Freddie is a RSPCA rescue dog. Born in Lancashire, from eight weeks old he lived the first six years of his life in our Victorian family home with the seaside on one side and a large wood on the other. It must have been doggy heaven, and perfect for socialising.

To be, then, one cold and frosty morning, crated into a travel box, hoisted onto a JCB before being dumped into the hold of an aircraft, must have given him some pause for thought! But no, at the other end, where I was anxiously awaiting him, he took to Canary Island life like the proverbial duck to water. So much so that he unwittingly became almost the central character in my book, in which his exploits and friendships with new canine friends are fully detailed. He has an amazing social life, and we love him to bits. I have had wonderful dogs all my life, but, if I had to choose a favourite…

What did you do before you moved to Tenerife? Did moving there help you adjust to retirement?

Sally and I married a little later in life. For the last ten years of our time in England, we started and built up a commercial legal services company, introducing professionals in the north-west to new opportunities and supporting them as they took our products on board. The company grew too large by 2009 to handle without taking on extra staff and premises, so we sold out.

We have never been so busy since we retired. I know, I know, everyone that we have met has said it  to us, but it is so true! We have had to learn a new language, integrate into the Spanish way of life, take on a role for the local newspaper, and a hundred other things, not least of which was to take a month travelling down from the English Midlands to this corner of our Atlantic island, in our 24 year old Mercedes 300 SL – the trip of a lifetime, and with the exploits included in my book!

Is it a typically Spanish way of life?

It could be if we let it. But we are just so busy with the things that we do. I think that our young next-door neighbours (just the ideal Spanish couple) think that we are the reincarnation of whirling Dervishes. But sometimes, it is the perfect relaxation to put our activities behind us and soak back into the wonderful Spanish way of life, where everything is “mañana.”

How have you integrated into the local community and made new friends?

Well, it started with a Swede! A lovely lady became our professora de idiomas and also took us under her wing to meet others locally. We have centred our new life around the Spanish community and have perhaps unfortunately ignored the British ex-pats, but that is the way that it is – we came to integrate, not just to be seen as another couple of English holidaymakers.  Now, we are not short of friends, and most days we take a morning coffee in one of the many cafés in the villages around our valley.

In the book, you take us to many of your favourite places to eat out in North Tenerife. Have you had any memorable meals lately? What is your favourite local dish?

I research the restaurants that I think will be suitable for entry into the newspaper. I very seldom include ones that are on a tourist trail or those that will be found by a casual visitor just by walking round the next corner whilst on their holiday. Often people will come to me and tell me of a favourite. 

I am particularly taken by Guachinches, and make no apology for that despite the local furores created by traditional Spanish restaurants in the main towns. Guachinches – a completely new phenomenon to us, are small family run restaurants up in the hills, often in what can best be described as large garages. Spotlessly clean and ridiculously inexpensive, they are required by law to limit their choice of menu, and their wine too. The wine must be from their own harvest, and when it runs out, the Guachinche must close until the next harvest is ready to drink. I have had some of the best pork chops ever, anywhere in the world, in those Guachinches. Sublime!

What else should I single out? Well, paella is a hugely overblown dish in any tourist restaurant, and never worthy of the money. But, in a place that knows how to cook it properly, just so, it can reach extraordinary culinary heights. Look in my book for a perfect example at Los Silos.

Oh, and lastly, I am going to highlight the humble limpet. Scorned, derided and ignored because of its chewy consistency, much like trying to eat your old school eraser, it again can reach for the stars when prepared by one who knows. A good fish restaurant will have one of those small white sacks of fresh limpets, alive, alive-oh, ready for you to savour. Either local, or flown in on the plane every day from Galicia.

Has life there changed you?

We just love it here. Our lives have changed immeasurably. It is warm every day of the year, and the tourist beaches are busy. It rains, of course it does, but mostly in showers, soon passed over. The food is superb, the people friendly, the service outstanding, and we have no need for central heating. All those years ago, when we bought our apartment, we really did make the right choice. All three of us would agree with that!

You can find out more (and buy his delightful book!) on John’s website, www.johnsearancke.com.

A Tilos Shaggy Dog Tale

In early spring, I was preparing to leave Tilos for two months, and Lisa, the lovely half-Labrador (ahem... dubbed by young Kyriakos the 'Tilos Devil') would need to be walked and cared for when I was away. Ideally I wanted her to stay in her own house, where she has a local fan club.

A friend introduced me to the magical world of house-sitting websites. You list the assignment (‘seeking dog-sitter for affectionate Labrador in quirky house on small Greek island’) and offer your home for free to someone who in return will care for your pet. Within 24 hours of the listing going live, I had as many enthusiastic responses. 

Some, I guessed, were basing their love of the Greek islands on a five-star honeymoon in Santorini and perhaps wouldn't be cut out for the rigours of Tilos out of season. But there were plenty of suitable-sounding applicants, and the very first people to write sounded perfect: experienced, adaptable, nature-lovers, looking for a peace and quiet... They were keen to have their next assignment settled, so we had a long chat on Skype, in which I told them about the challenges of living on a tiny, fairly remote island, but nothing seemed to faze them. We shook hands on the arrangement. I was thrilled to bits.

Three weeks later, they changed their minds. 

Panicking, I scrambled through the list of previous applicants. One was still available. He seemed solid, reliable and had experience of living on a Greek island. As I gave him a Skype tour of the house, however, he got quieter and quieter. He didn’t seem too excited by the Byzantine chapel my office overlooks or the ruined castle visible from the terrace, or the view of mountains and sea; I think he might have been hoping for an infinity pool. 

I wanted someone who would be happy: whatever the challenges of life on Tilos, it’s surely one of the most beautiful places in the world. When I told him I sensed it wasn’t quite right for him, his relief was palpable. 

Back to the drawing board.

As various house-sitters said they were no longer available, it suddenly seemed a ludicrous idea to go away for two months and hope to find someone to look after my dog. I got so stressed that twice I managed to leave the key in the ignition of my car and let the battery go flat. Leaving Tilos was causing me a lot of grief.

Then the first people came back and said they'd made a mistake by cancelling, and still wanted the assignment after all. There were extenuating circumstances, as they were living on an ashram and could only speak for an hour a day. Better the devil you know, perhaps? They seemed keen, and I had just three weeks before I flew out. We agreed again, and I relaxed and started packing. I caught up on the work I'd been missing during all this, and for good karma I booked them a fancy room for the stopover in Rhodes.

Over the next couple of weeks, emails kept arriving from them. 

‘Which internet site should we use to book our flights?'
'Have you got a couple of mountain bikes?’ 

I’ve got one bike, I replied. 

‘Could you get us another one?’
‘Have you got a juicer?’ 

Unfortunately not, I replied. 

‘Could you see if anyone has one they're not using?'

And then, six days before I was due to leave:
‘I’ve been diagnosed with a serious health condition. Several members of my family have died from it. Do you think it’s a good idea to be on Tilos?’
A two-hour ferry journey from the nearest island with a hospital, and there isn’t a ferry every day...? I had to say, 'No, don't come.'

The clock was ticking. I had just one card up my sleeve. A French couple had emailed to say they were travelling in the region, and to let them know if my plans fell through. What were the chances of them still being available? I emailed them at once. 

They were in Istanbul. They dropped everything, got on a bus the next day, travelled down through Turkey, slept a few hours, hopped on a ferry to Kos, and another ferry to Tilos, and arrived 24 hours later. 

Within a few days, they’d settled right in, and none of us could quite believe our luck. I’d been rescued at the eleventh hour, and they were very happy with their temporary home. Lisa seemed increasingly delighted with the new arrangement. By the time they dropped me at the ferry, she barely acknowledged my presence. 

Five weeks on? They've had a wonderful time exploring the island. And Lisa's had an amazing adventure with her new friends, as Guillaume's photos below show...

The final twist in the shaggy dog tale is best of all. They love Tilos so much that they are searching for another place so they can stay on for a few more months.