We had a comfortable night’s sleep. The predicted thunderstorms never
materialised. The day has started
hot and sunny. We decide we ought
to find out about the town, so we dress in our lightest clothes and start off
to walk to town. The pilot book
says there is a bus you can take, but we find no sign of a bus stop. After a few minutes we realise that the
only way in to town is to walk along the main road, which has no pavement. Neither of us is keen. So after only 10 minutes we decide to
leave the marina and find a berth in the town. We are told in the pilot book that the main disadvantage of
the town berths is that there is a swell coming in which together with the
ferries coming and going mean that the boat rocks around a lot and it is not
comfortable. But given the
seemingly benign conditions we will give it a go.
Like many other of these ports, the berthing is
on individual pontoons run by different people. We haven’t a clue which one to go to, so when we get to the
first and a man waves us in, we go there.
It is a pleasant enough spot.
There are no showers or toilets, but that is par for the course with
these single pontoons. It does
have water and electricity and when we arrive there is not too much swell and
it seems comfortable enough. It
also has free wifi, but we find that we don’t need it because the signal is
still strong from the marina we left!
It is not in the centre of town, but very close
and that will mean it will be a bit quieter. So we dress and go in to sus out the town. I find plenty of shops to buy food and
things we need and indeed there is quite a large well-stocked supermarket in
the middle of the town. It is like
many of these towns. There is the
more modern part (say 1700-1800’s) and then there is the ancient bits up a
hill. So in the heat of the day (Mad Dogs and Englishman like) we walk up. There is a large cathedral with a very
ancient Norman cloister and some very old Greco /Roman ruins- which are just
foundations really. There are lots
of touristy and jewellery shops, but I’m not buying. We do however find the restaurant recommended in the Red Guide,
so we make a booking for this evening.
Back to the lower town where we have a light
lunch and then shop in the supermarket, where I buy much more than I
planned. We note a lot of boats go
out just for the day presumably to anchor and swim, but we haven’t done
that. May we should do more like
that, but we worry about finding a berth when we get back in the evening. However, here that is no problem. Back on the boat we watch the staff
trying (without much success) to lure boats to this pontoon. After such a hot day, it is a
disappointment that the sky clouds over and it gets quite cool. We were going to have another go at
washing the boat and spray each other at the same time, but that isn’t so
appealing in this weather.
By the time we need to get ready to go to dinner
the weather has badly deteriorated.
There is a significant swell coming into the harbour and the boat is
moving about most uncomfortably.
Then the thunder and lightening starts and it is raining - 24 hours
later than forecast! Nonetheless
we are off to the restaurant where we have an excellent fish dinner. Then back to the boat, where the motion
is really bad. I have no stomach
or desire to do anything, but take a sea sick pill and go to bed, which is just
what happened.
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