Greece is the Word

September wouldn't be the same without my annual post about my holiday in Greece (sorry, no writing post today).

As many of you will know, if you've been following my blog for a while, Greece and its islands are my favourite place to holiday (apart from the Lake District). We try to go every year, picking somewhere new each time - although we are finding it harder and harder to find new places to fit our tough brief: quiet, scenic, green, little harbour, pretty beach.

To date, I have holidayed in Stoupa, Kardamilli and Parga on the mainland along with the islands of Corfu, Thassos, Kefalonia, Samos, Skopelos and Ithaca. All lovely. 

This year's choice was Paxos, a little island off Corfu, and what a delight it was - although at one stage we weren't sure we were ever going to get there. Due to the inefficiency of the long term car park staff at Gatwick (resulting in a wait of 50 minutes to hand in our car keys) we missed our flight. This also meant that by the time we'd caught another, at five in the evening, we'd missed our hydrofoil connection and had to stay overnight in Corfu Town. Not a great start to our holiday. Anyway, we got there in the end and it didn't spoil the rest of our beautiful week.

We stayed in a house just outside the harbour village of Loggos on the side of an olive-clad hill. This is the view of our pool.

The position was perfect, just fifteen minutes walk through the olive groves to Loggos and ten minutes to a choice of four small pebble beaches.

This is one of them. September is the perfect time to visit as the summer crowds have left and when we walked down to the beach for a swim at six o'clock, we had the beach practically to ourselves. What a treat. We're quite used to pebbly beaches, so the lack of sand didn't bother us. In fact, it's nice not to have sandy towels and feet!

Of course, as usual, we ate much too much. When we first holidayed in Greece we'd buy our lunch and eat it at wherever we were staying but in recent years we've found we can't resist the lunches in the tavernas: tatziki, tiropita (cheese pie) Greek salad, fried courgettes and saganaki (fried cheese) washed down with some Mythos beer. No wonder we always come home heavier than we arrive! I'd better not mention the bakery in the village which sold orange or walnut cake steeped in Greek honey and the best baklavas ever.

In the evenings, we were spoilt for choice as there are several lovely tavernas. In fact we never had a bad meal and after we'd eaten, we'd wander along to a bar on the harbour front for coffee and baklava and to watch the world go by.

I'm home now and my week in Paxos has given me the motivation to work on my first novel which is set on a Greek island. It's been put away while I wrote my second novel but now it's time for an airing... I can't wait!

If any of you have any recommendations for our next Greek holiday, do let me know.