Tag Archives: Corfu

It’s a rainy day that would have been perfect for watching the lads race over a few hills in the Tour de France. However, what with one thing and another, I’ve been out most of the day and missed them. Thank homo sapiens for ITV4’s highlights programme this evening.

Butterflies have been featuring in my life recently. This is not unusual as, when driving the roads of rural France, I am prone to slamming on the anchors, leaping from the car and chasing an unrecognized butterfly across a field or two in an attempt to identify it. I love them; killing them for the purposes of identification is unthinkable.

France has a few more exotic species than we do but some do make it across the English Channel. One such is the Painted Lady butterfly which is apparently here in larger numbers than usual this year. Given our weather since Wimbledon fortnight, were I a Painted Lady, I’d lift up my skirts and high-tail it back to France, it has to be said. Be that as it may, our buddleia was visited by a Painted Lady just yesterday and, though it wasn’t a perfect specimen (it had a slightly ragged hindwing), because I am not used to seeing them at home, I snapped it. At the same time, our buddleia played lunch to a Comma butterfly, which is also less than usual, so I snapped that, too, though less successfully (not the best angle).

Some butterflies are relatively easy to photograph because, when they settle, they do so with their wings open so their markings are readily visible and snappable. The Painted Lady and Comma fall into that category. There are other butterflies that habitually sit with their wings tightly folded shut. Our delightful yellow Brimstone butterfly is one of these less cooperative photographic subjects and the usual readily grabbed picture is of the underside of the wings as shown on the right.

During our trip to Corf in May, we were surrounded by masses of Cleopatra butterflies whilst hiking the Corfu trail. Cleopatras resemble Brimstones in that they are essentially yellow (the males, at least) and, when settled, they sit with their wings firmly shut. This is irritating because the upper surface of their forewings has a striking orange blush. A picture without the blush would be pointless but that meant snapping them in flight. I thought I’d use my day of rest from walking to try.

Armed with my camera and trusty 300mm lens, I dialled the ASA rating up to 800 to get as fast a shutter speed as possible, about 1/2000th, before zooming in on several settled Cleopatras and waiting for them to take to the wing. It quickly became apparent that automatic focus was not going to work. Butterflies are simply much quicker than the reaction time of the lens. I have to confess that my reaction time was also somewhat lacking trying to follow them. I switched to manual focus, focussed on the settled critters and waited for them to take to the wing again. The trouble with this approach is that they fly UP,  out of my narrow plane of focus, and are fuzzy. Finally, I tried focussing on the settled Cleopatras and then backing focus off a tad so that, when they flew, they flew up into the plane of focus. I was still personally slow and missed several but I finally managed to catch a few shots when luck and timing were running in my favour. Both shots are in flight, honest. One shot shows the Cleopatra’s colours well but I love the shot with the wings partially closed showing the curled proboscis and shadow of the legs on the plant.

From about 70 attempts, I kept four. Thankfully it wasn’t film; I was only wasting reusable pixels.

The only bright side to the darn weather that we are currently suffering is that the rain and cold make it appealing to stay indoors for a couple of days processing digital photographs and building a web album. As a result, I now announce the publication of a summary photo album from our recent trip “Walking the Corfu Trail” organized by Explore!.

As usual, you can find it from our photo index page or here’s the direct link:

2009_Corfu

Will somebody please tell the weather that it is June, for Lord’s sake. Padstow celebrated the advent of summer over a month ago.

Well, we’re back home, though neither of us is particularly happy about that given the weather to which we’ve returned. It seems that England had some good weather while we were away but it collapsed to give us our normal wet welcome home. Since then, Suffolk has witnessed a funnel cloud and been covered with so much hail that it looked like snow, and some of our high ground actually has had snow – in June for Christ’s sake! It’s so damn cold. What the hell is going on? It doesn’t seem to be just us, either; our return flight flew for more than two hours over solid cloud covering much of Italy and all we could see of France. We made the right choice.

We succeeded in our ambition. The Corfu Trail is a snaking 220 kms/140 mls path winding its way from the southernmost point on Corfu to the northernmost point covering very varied terrain, crisscrossing the island as it goes (see previous posting for a map). When I say “we succeeded”, what we did was slightly different in that our Explore! group acted as guinea pigs and went from south to north on a modified route. We merged two original days into one, shortcutting a big loop that doubles back on itself at the northeast of the island. That gave us one very long last walking day of about 25 kms/16 mls. I estimate that our route would have been about 190 kms/120 mls covered in 10 days of walking. In retrospect, I’d have preferred to stick to the original route, just to have completed the official Corfu Trail, but it’s a relatively minor point, for me at least.

We flew out to Corfu a day early which gave us time to explore Corfu Town. It’s expensive and not just because of our currently disastrous Euro/Pound exchange rate: €3.50/£3.20 for a small beer. Corfu Town boasts Greece’s only cricket pitch, courtesy of being a British protectorate for a while in the 1800’s, where, I imagine, games are rarely rained off unlike Lords and the Oval, etc. At this time of year the skies above Corfu Town are absolutely full of whirling, screaming and chattering swifts. The screamers are regular swifts and the chatterers are larger alpine swifts which were new to us and quite a thrill being wildlife nuts.

The whole island is filled with magnificent Cleopatra butterflies. I’ve seen them before in southern France but never in such concentrations as in Corfu. Not a day went by without having Cleopatras flutter across or along our path. Neither have I ever seen such concentrations of spent 12-bore cartridge cases. The French have a reputation for blasting away at anything that moves but on this evidence I reckon the Corfiots have got them licked. Masses of colourful wild flowers, a few of which our assembled horticulturalists didn’t recognize, lined most of our route. Well, there has to be something to attract those butterflies. Then, of course, there were the olive groves. The olive trees on Corfu are like no others I’ve ever seen in that they are not pollarded or pruned. Apparently, Saint Spyridon declared that it was cruel to prune the trees so they are left to grow to their natural large size. The olives are harvested by covering the ground beneath the trees with netting and waiting for the olives to drop to be collected. We were frequently walking on net-covered tracks through olive groves trying not to crush the harvest.

Thirsts en route were admirably slaked by the local Greek Mythos beer. Fuel generally came in the form of very good Corfiot food in various restaurants and tavernas along the way. (Do not be tempted to eat at all-inclusive hotels – that’s a different story). The grilled octopus and squid, though, were notably exceptional and everything was washed down with obscene quantities of crown-cap retsina. Excellent!

The weather in the first week was hot and humid. Walking up hills in 35°C/88°F was a little uncomfortable but we got used to it. The humidity made life hazy for vista photography but we snapped away regardless; we were wasting only pixels, after all. We had some cloud cover for some of the second week and, on one morning, rain. Gasp! Greece, June, rain? Doesn’t compute! Naturally, this was when we were walking up to the top of Mount Pantokrator, Corfu’s highest point at 913 metres/3000 feet. The peak was in the cloud so the views were obliterated. At least we’d taken the waterproofs for a reason.

Mostly blue skies, bright blue crystal clear water, white, terracotta and pastel coloured buildings draped with masses of bougainvillea, a lot of sun, a lot of Mythos (Greek beer), a lot of retsina, great group of companions and an excellent leader … what a terrific trip.

This is probably a final post before resorting to mobile phone tweets on Twitter. Later today we’re off down to spend tonight in an airport hotel at Gatwick ready (?) to check in at about 4:00 AM tomorrow. Yuk!

The universally difficult task of selecting and packing appropriate clothing for our activity holiday is well underway. It’s easier when one knows precisely what one is getting into but that’s not as exciting, is it? At least we don’t have to carry the clothing with us (at least, I hope not – yikes!), just the camera gear, water and walking essentials.

We’ve decided to cut down on photographic weight by sharing lenses rather than duplicating them. Carol’s going armed with our “standard” lens (17-85mm) and I’m taking the super-wide (10-22mm) and longer (75-300mm) telephotos. I bet everyone else will have compact cameras, sensible people, but lugging this lot will give us more exercise. At least the tripod isn’t going – thank technology for image stabilized lenses and adjustable ASA settings.

I found this reasonable map of the Corfu Trail itself to follow progress. The path certainly does snake about over the island. The recommended route is from south to north and that’s what we’ll be doing.

We’ll meet the other Explore gang on Saturday evening and the walk itself begins on Sunday after transferring from Corfu Town to the south of the island. The walk is split into two 5-day sections with a rest day between at Liapades Beach. Watch the legs seize up! I suspect the main requirement there will be laundry – what fun. The last couple of northern sections seem to be the toughest but, hopefully, we’ll be a little fitter and a few pounds lighter by then.

Greek salads, here we come. I do hope there’s plenty of crown capped retsina on the island.

Hopefully we will be bound for Corfu at some ungodly hour (5:55 AM take-off) on Friday morning. On Saturday 23rd May we should join the Explore! group in Corfu town to walk the Corfu Trail, a long distance (220 kms/140 mls) footpath running the length of Corfu island. There are several climbs and descents on the trail, the highest point being about 900 mts/3000 ft.

We won’t be able to resist carrying cameras but we most certainly will be able to resist carting a laptop with us. What, no Traveblog? Fear not. Enter a foray into another weird modern communications technology: Twitter. I have signed up for my Twitter id (@jccurd) and have been practicing. Naturally, with a new (to me) piece of technology goes some new vocabulary. Apparently I’ve been tweeting. Hmm. I have even managed to set up tweeting by SMS text messages from my relatively modern, lightweight mobile phone, which I don’t mind carrying with me. I hope to be tweeting about our progress. Marvellous!

As a consequence, I’ve at last found something more constructive that just introductory blurb to put on our home page. http://www.curdhome.co.uk now comes complete with Twitter updates. Check it out.

Not quite as much fun as blogging but useful nonetheless.

Our recently completed trip to Devon and Cornwall started with good weather and ended with good weather but the two weeks in between left a lot to be desired. We did manage to do a reasonable amount of walking up and down the coastal paths but there almost always seemed to be something of a meteorological threat lurking above us.

For our next entertainment, we had our ferry crossing booked on Sunday 24th May for our traditional early summer dose of France. The weather in France for the current week was not looking encouraging, it being wetter than here if anything, and we were not overjoyed at the prospect of further meteorological upsets to our outdoor activities. We are ready for some sun. So we have been looking for some hopefully more reliable alternatives. Our ferry crossings have been put off until late summer. That in no way guarantees any better weather but, if we can get something decent in between time, then we won’t feel as disgruntled.

The Greek islands have been beckoning and there is a relatively new long-distance footpath running the length of the island of Corfu which we’ve been considering for a couple of years. It would be a relatively challenging walk, covering about 220 kms with a few significant climbs and descents but now would be good timing given our recent training exercise in Devon and Cornwall. Also, since nobody is getting any younger, if we really wanted to take this on, sooner would be better than later.

Explore! runs a two-week trip to complete the trek with 11 days of walking and, as luck would have it, there were just two places remaining for their 23rd May departure. All was not entirely wonderful ‘cos they informed us that there was now a thumping great £269 supplement per person to use their scheduled flights (London Stansted – Athens – Corfu). A huge supplement for the honour of flying from Stansted which, let’s face it, sucks.

We debated, decided against it and declined. Then we felt disappointed and that we’d cheated ourselves out of something of an ambition. Grump! Enter easyJet with a daily London Gatwick flight to Corfu direct. Other than a revolting departure time of 05:55 AM, which would mean checking in around 04:30 AM, the price was right, especially if we went a day early, gained some leeway and had an extra night in Corfu town.

We’re booked. We’ll need to figure out the Gatwick early morning (or is it late night?) connection and we’ll need a room in Corfu town but we’re booked.