This is the first really cold winter we have had since the freak snowfalls of January 2022. There hasn’t been any snow on Rhodes so far this year – all the rain fell in the early part of the winter, long before the temperatures started to plummet. We have had sustained periods of temperatures in single figures, with days that have not risen above 9 degrees centigrade and night time temperatures around 3 degrees.
It’s that time of the year when Symi alternates between clear cold sunny days (4 degrees this morning, folks!) and mild moist ones with rain from the south (14 degrees and 3-dimensional damp). It is the week of Carnival in the run up to Clean Monday and Greek Orthodox Lent so occasionally one may see a fairy princess twinkling through the lanes with her mother but most of the time one just sees snoozing cats, foraging cats, basking cats, distainful cats, tatty cats and loved cats, all looking for a patch of sunshine out of the biting north wind.
Quad Bike Moggies.The ultimate Cat on a Pedestal.Cooker CatHappiness is a warm heating vent.Bin Cats in Lieni.
This is the first really cold winter we have had since the freak snowfalls of January 2022. There hasn’t been any snow on Rhodes so far this year – all the rain fell in the early part of the winter, long before the temperatures started to plummet. We have had sustained periods of temperatures in single figures, with days that have not risen above 9 degrees centigrade and night time temperatures around 3 degrees.
As you may know, central heating is rare in Greece, certainly in the southern regions, and using air conditioning for heating is expensive so many homes have old-style wood burners or new-style pellet stoves to keep warm. We also wear lots and lots of layers of clothing, even indoors! There is no shortage of firewood this year – many trees succumbed to the heat and either died off completely or lost substantial branches. Every afternoon I hear chain saws buzzing away in the Pedi valley and see pick up trucks laden with logs heading in different directions. The air is fragrant with wood smoke.
On a more serious note, this Friday, 28 February, there are country-wide strikes in protest at the poor handling of the investigation of the Tempe train accident which took place on 28 February 2023. There was a head-on collision between two trains. It was a holiday period and there were many students and young people among the 57 fatalities. The families are still waiting for justice. At the same time it is also a holiday long weekend this year as Monday 3 March is Clean Monday. If you are travelling in Greece at this time, please be patient and tolerant.
The last time Symi had any significant rain was on 5 March. I am writing this on 14 April and there is still no rain on the horizon. The spring vegetation is already dying back and the ground cracking in many places. Temperatures have been abnormally warm. Great for the Turkish tourists who came over to celebrate Eid and the end of Ramadan but not so great for a region that has experienced the warmest driest winter since records began. There have already been significant wildfires in parts of Greece and farmers in Crete and Southern Rhodes have cut back on their planting of summer crops due to concerns about the lack of water for irrigation.
There are very few tourists actually staying on the island at the moment and the main seasonal hotels will only be opening around the Greek Easter long weekend, at the beginning of May. Rhodes, however, has been busy since the end of March so Yialos has already seen steady day-time trade in the form of tour groups and day-trippers, arriving on the King Saron and the Sebeco. This has given some of the restaurants and cafes in the harbour the impetus to open up, at least for midday trade. The tourist shops likewise. The recent Eid holiday combined with the new express visa system for Turkish tourists wishing to visit selected border islands for 7 days brought some trade but nothing like the prosperous Eid holidays before the pandemic, when the holiday fell during the tourist months of August and July and the Turkish lira was still relatively strong. In those days the megayachts filled the harbour and Pedi and there were big smiles on the faces of many businessmen in Yialos.
Turkish yachts in Yialos on Thursday last week.The beach at Apostoli’s in Pedi is still a cheerful lineup of wooden caiques.Not much happening on the jetty in Pedi at the moment as the taxi boats are out of the water, having their bottoms painted.The beach at Katsaras is still mostly piles of sand and gravel. The staff have started painting the chairs and tables for the taverna and refurbishing the wooden sunbeds. The tamarisk trees have had their annual decapitation. As you can see, the forecourt of the Pedi Beach Hotel on the right, is still devoid of outside furniture as the hotel doesn’t open until 4 May.The rockface opposite the Asymi Residences hotel in Pedi is a hanging garden of hardy indigenous plants. It might not look like much but there is a feral cat family living in that crevice in the centre of the lower photograph. I only found out because I saw a large ginger cat disappear in there one afternoon. There must be quite a large space in there as the white tip of his tail disappeared completely into the void.Brave poppies in a carpark in Pedi. The little pocket in which they are growing has probably retained more moisture as it is protected by the concrete.
Some informal photos taken on Symi in late March and early April 2024.
Wild poppies in a garden in Pedi.Wild cyclamens growing out of the rockface behind the bus stop in Yialos.Fishing boats lined up on the beach at Apostoli’s in Pedi. The blue cloth is to protect the hull against the sun. These boats are all wooden and the sun dries out the planking, opening up the seams. In a month or so they will all be in the water and there will be sunbeds along here.The view from the other side. Every day their respective owners come down to sand, grind, spackle, paint and patch. The boats are hauled out and launched using greased ‘ways’ and the only change since Homeric times is that a small bucket shovel and chain winch have replaced man power and brute force.As you can see, the wreck of La Dolce Vita is still there. Greece has been blanketed in dust from Africa for over a week now and visibility is poor.The sailing season has not really started yet. As the month progresses we will probably see more yachts arrive that have been over-wintering in Turkey.With temperatures nudging 30 degrees centigrade everyone is looking for a patch of shade.Including the donkeys in the Pedi valley.Guardian of the six-packs.
The butterflies are enjoying the thyme as much as the bees.
The path from Pedi to St Nicholas beach, fragrant with thyme, oregano and sage.
On a more prosaic note, the new recycling bins have appeared in various places around the island. These ones are in the commercial port in Yialos.
The Nissos Chios, the big car ferry that serves Symi on Wednesdays and Fridays during the summer.
The wall is old but the tree is older. As the tree grows the dry stone wall is adjusted and modified to accommodate its changing shape and dimensions.
Harani at dusk.
Symi has turned into a garden this year. Those long soaking rains for months on end during the winter gave us a spectacular spring and the mountain herbs are putting on a show for far longer this year. Even people who usually come in June are commenting on how bright the thyme flowers are this year. While other countries may be worrying about their bee populations, Symi’s bees are absolutely wallowing in thyme pollen at the moment and the hills are humming.
Recycling has been a big topic for all parties involved in the recent elections. In reality, the bins have obviously been in the pipeline for a while regardless. Rhodes has had them for some time and this is not the first time we have seen bins for collecting aluminium cans on Symi – we covered the same story in the days of the Symi Visitor newspaper, more than a decade ago. The crucial thing is not so much encouraging the locals and tourists to use them but that the contents are then actually taken away and recycled in a sustainable way. Greece has very few recycling facilities and they are all on the mainland, a 17 hour ferry journey away. Rubbish, whatever it is, tends to be high volume, so a cost effective way of transporting paper, bottles, cans, plastic and so on has to be provided to form the next link in the chain. Otherwise we will see yet another recycling initiative fall by the wayside as the contents wind up in a landfill somewhere. In the long term the real solution lies with the packaging industry finding better alternatives that are still effective for their purpose but without the negative environmental implications.
As many of you probably know, I look after holiday homes for various people and provide the services they need to keep them running smoothly. Recently I received a consignment of all the sheets and towels necessary for one particular house. Three sets of everything. They were ordered from an on line source by the owner of the property and arrived in big boxes by courier. Every single individual item, whether it be a sheet or a pillow case or a towel, was folded around a piece of cardboard to give it a neat shape. It was then encased in a printed paper sleeve, giving details of the item. Each of these was then in a separate resealable plastic envelope. That means that for each item of bedding or towels there were 3 items of packaging. What kind of madness is this? Even if those separate pieces of packaging are recyclable, in a place where those particular materials can be recycled, bearing in mind that facilities are not universally available, is it really necessary to fold a pillowcase round a piece of cardboard, wrap it in a piece of printed paper and then put it in a plastic bag? Many of us are old enough to remember when someone would have counted out the appropriate number of items. Laid them on a sheet of brown paper, wrapped it up into a parcel with tape or string and that would have been that.
The view from the top of the island, looking towards Nissyros and Kos
Agios Andreas Church, next to the Pedi Beach Hotel
A seasonal brook near the Ancient Fortifiation of Old Drakos in the Pedi Valley
A quiet interlude between storms
Double rainbow across Pedi
The same rainbow, as seen from the top of the Pedi valley
The first almond blossoms, in a field behind Taverna Katsaras in Pedi.
A flooded garden near the Pedi Beach Hotel
Lemons in an old walled garden.
Moving a nanny goat.
Walled orchard in Pedi
Rainbow’s end in Pedi bay
Seaweed tide line after a winter storm in Pedi
Vegetable garden in Pedi
Winter in the Mediterranean may conjure up visions of mild temperatures, sunny days and pavement cafes. This can happen, if you are lucky, but most of the time, particularly in January and February, it can be very wet, extremely windy and, on occasion, even snowy.
This year the snow even crept to sea level in places like Corfu, Skopelos and Thessalonica. Rhodes had heavy snowfalls on the mountain tops and the Evzones found themselves strutting their stuff outside Syntagma, Athens, surrounded by the white stuff.
We have had ferry disruptions of one sort or another every week since December and the Best Western Plaza hotel in Rhodes is offering special rates for Symiots hanging about, waiting for boats and doctor’s appointments.
On a personal note, I have been out of circulation for many weeks, due to severe back problems. A strict regime of bed rest, exercises and medication under the supervision of an orthopaedic specialist in Rhodes seems to be working but I have to be very careful about how much time I spend sitting at the computer and have only recently been able to go for short walks, with the help of a stick. It is unfortunate that the Symi bus is out of circulation so I cannot venture further afield. At the moment my perambulations are strictly local but I can at least provide you with some photographs to give you an idea of what Pedi looks like in January.
The weather is turning early this year. The first part of this week shipping was disrupted by northerly gales in the Northern and Central Aegean caused by Storm Xenophon. Now we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the optimistically named Medicane Zorbas. This sounds like some sort of weird Greek pharmaceutical but it is actually a meteorological term for the Mediterranean version of a Category 1 Hurricane.
An old oven near the technical high school in Chorio. There used to be a lot of these communal ovens in the residential areas of Symi but many have been demolished or have literally collapsed in recent years. Symi houses are small and fuel is scarce. The big cast iron range cookers that were fashionable in 19th century Europe never made it to Symi. Instead there was an open hearth in the kitchen with wrought iron trivets for cooking over a small wood fire. Once a week or so or on special occasions an outdoor oven such as this one would be used to bake bread, roast meat and prepare other specialities that required an oven. When I first came here in the 1990s it was still common to see housewives carrying trays of food to the bakeries of Chorio to cook in the ovens as they cool in the afternoon. Nowadays they have modern electric ovens like everyone else – and air conditioning to cool the house after a day’s cooking.
Most doors and windows on Symi are wood. There are, however, quite a few steel courtyard doors around if one looks about. This one is relatively recent in that it was welded rather than riveted. The floral motif on this one caught my eye.
These days the bulls eye on the pediment is usually a solid motif but in the older houses this was an important part of ventilation for the house. Heat rises and escapes from the roof space through the lacy ironwork.
The Blue Star 1 powering past the entrance to Pedi, on her way to Rhodes.
Playtime in Pedi Bay.
The monastery of Profiti Ilias (Prophet Elijah), perched on a crag overlooking the Pedi Valley.
Sand and straw in a builder’s yard in the Pedi valley.
Those brown bottles must have been there for a very long time, probably since long before I started work at the Valanidia on the Pedi road, yet I only noticed them this summer. The labels have washed away and they are held in place by a bit of fencing. They aren’t broken so it is possible that they were originally in boxes or some kind of packaging which has rotted away over the years, leaving the bottles to gently topple over against the pig wire.
Preparing for the rain in one of the walled gardens behind the beach in Pedi.
Pomegranates ripening in a garden up at Megalo Sotiris.
And down at sea level on the north shore of Pedi bay. There is a bit of a cave in the hillside behind the tree which has been waterproofed with cement and secured with a door which you can just see on the right. When houses are small, the occupants tend to spill out into their surroundings and before the advent of the ‘marina’ the north shore of Pedi bay was a picturesque row of outdoor kitchens and living spaces in the summer.
Doesn’t that sparkling water sing you siren songs? Pedi bay last week.
A windy sky. My pomegranate tree is never very productive. This year it is providing support to a random handful of ipomea (morning glory). Reach for the skies…
The weather is turning early this year. The first part of this week shipping was disrupted by northerly gales in the Northern and Central Aegean caused by Storm Xenophon. Now we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the optimistically named Medicane Zorbas. This sounds like some sort of weird Greek pharmaceutical but it is actually a meteorological term for the Mediterranean version of a Category 1 Hurricane. The Mediterranean Sea is over-heating and feeding storms more commonly associated with the tropics. Zorbas is currently revolving over the Ionian and South Peloponnese. Crete is already feeling its effects in the form of storm surges and gale force winds. It is moving slowly towards us and the various computer projections seem undecided as to when and where it will hit the Eastern Aegean and Dodecanese. The bulletins are changing hourly, the shipping companies are struggling to keep up and travellers are worrying about planes, ferries, connections and insurance. Somehow the last weekend in September is behaving like the last week in October.
I had to go down to the harbour this morning to see the dentist. Symi may be a tiny island and somewhat inaccessible but we do have two excellent dentists and, despite the various ferry disruptions, my new bridge arrived in time to be fitted this morning. The harbour, Yialos, was very busy as some late season fancy yachts had decided that retail therapy was the answer on a grey blustery day. The water taxis and excursion boats aren’t running today due to the anticipated storms so late September visitors were also in the coffee shops and boutiques rather than sunning themselves outside the Pedi Beach Hotel. Workmen were banging in battens and balancing on ladders, rigging the plastic ‘tents’ that provide protection against the elements for those hospitality venues that stay open through the winter. This ritual is usually performed in late October or early November, not the last week in September.
It is by no means cold. It is about 28 degrees today and very humid under a heavy blanket of cloud. The day has been punctuated by intermittent showers and the wind is starting to rise, buffeting the yachts at anchor in Pedi bay.
Have a good weekend – and I will let you know if Zorba came to visit or passed us by.
You never know what you are going to spot, walking around Symi. Anyone who knows where these are, please comment on this blog 🙂
Back in the 80s and 90s this was a tourist shop at the bottom of the Pedi road. Now you have to go to Yialos to buy sunhats, sarongs and beach towels.
It may still be hot and the first rains are still about 6 weeks away but this local works on his garden every day. I have noticed a big increase in agricultural activities on Symi in recent years. The only way to survive on an austerity income is by living off the land as far as possible.
Tyres perish in the hot Symi sun. It is not unusual to see various protective improvisations like this one.
If I had not heard the bleat I would never have noticed this nanny goat. She looks almost as weather-beaten as her surroundings.
Beehives. Symi honey is prized for its delicate herbal flavours from wild mountain thyme, sage and rigani. You can find it for sale in limited quantities at several of the supermarkets, grocers and tourist shops.
August is definitely over. There are very few yachts in Pedi now and they are of more modest proportions. The rich and famous have gone to play somewhere else or are back in their counting houses, counting out their money.
The so-called marina in Pedi. As you can see, it is far too narrow to be a marina. Only very small local boats can squeeze inside. Apparently the plans did not take into account the widening of the waterfront between the time the original survey was done and construction actually started so the enclosed area is 4 metres narrower than originally intended. No comments please! Visiting yachts can tie up on the outside. Unfortunately there are no actual amenities available so don’t expect shore power, laundry, wifi or hot showers. It is, however, conveniently solid to tie up to if you are tired of rowing an inflatable full of shopping across the bay in a brisk catabatic.
Fishermen’s cottages on the northern Pedi waterfront, as seen from the head of the marina.
And finally, spotted in the Chorio car park… Cats don’t have the monopoly on cuteness around here.
August is over. The crowds have gone. The children are preparing for another school year. Next week the ferry schedules change as Blue Star reverts to smaller boats on the Symi route. Good bye, Nissos Chios, Welcome Back, Patmos!
There is also far less traffic on the roads. British tourists tend to be apprehensive about hiring cars and driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. The holidaymakers from other parts of Greece and further afield who arrive with their cars on the Blue Star have also gone home again. If you do visit Symi in September it is well worth hiring a car for a day or so to explore the interior of the island and visit Kokkimides monastery, Roukoniotis monastery and Toli Bay. While there are organised mini-bus excursions if there are enough of you, having your own wheels gives you more freedom to stop and take photographs as well as linger at places that take your fancy. On a clear day you can see as far as Kos on one side and Rhodes on the other with the islands of Halki, Tilos and Nissyros also visible.
As the continent of Europe starts to cool to the north of us, so has the breeze that blows down the Aegean, bringing welcome relief from the searing temperatures of the Symi summer. It is still around 30 degrees at midday but after days in the forties, 30 seems quite mild. Nights are cooling off too. We plugged our boiler in for hot water yesterday for the first time since May. Not quite time to dig out the duvet and woolly jumpers just yet though. That doesn’t happen until early November!
These days I so seldom go down into the harbour, when I do it feels like a different island altogether. They may be baling hay in the Pedi Valley but in Yialos they are selling sunhats to pink-faced tourists and cold beers go down like iced water in the desert. The thermometer nudged forty degrees last week and rows of thunder storms are marching through Greece, from the Ionian, across the Aegean to Turkey and beyond. The Mediterranean never really cooled down last winter and the rising temperatures are spawning lots of storm activity. It is not usual for the Greek met office to be issuing severe weather warnings in June.
A chance seed scattering is turning into a jungle of morning glory. As the island turns gold under the summer sun, puddles of green provide welcome relief to dazzled eyes.
Plumbago finds support in an olive tree.
Down on the Pedi road, the draught beer is ready to head out to bars and tavernas around the island.
Some things have changed – the old Symi Visitor office is now cherry red and a new Symi laundry has opened up in place of Wendy’s Sunflower laundry. Other things will never change – like the town hall’s futile attempts to prevent people from parking along the front in the summer. The big red plastic bollards filled with water that were reasonably successful last summer have been deployed elsewhere, preventing motorists from going over various bits of road undercut or washed away in the November storm.
Yes, he is talking on a mobile phone and yes, that is a lavatory seat in the single-use blue plastic bag (I wonder if he was charged the obligatory 4 cents?).
The yachts are getting bigger and the harbour busier.
These days I so seldom go down into the harbour, when I do it feels like a different island altogether. They may be baling hay in the Pedi Valley but in Yialos they are selling sunhats to pink-faced tourists and cold beers go down like iced water in the desert. The thermometer nudged forty degrees last week and rows of thunder storms are marching through Greece, from the Ionian, across the Aegean to Turkey and beyond. The Mediterranean never really cooled down last winter and the rising temperatures are spawning lots of storm activity. It is not usual for the Greek met office to be issuing severe weather warnings in June.
As Sean Damer once observed, in his notorious Ethnography on Tourism on Symi, when we aren’t talking about the weather, we are talking about the ferries. Well, if you live on a small island without an airport and heavily dependent on tourism for survival, everything depends on both. The Attica Group who own Superfast Ferries and Blue Star Ferries have now bought Hellenic Seaways. This has had some significant implications for Symi for the summer. The Patmos has been moved to a different route and the Nissos Chios is now doing the Wednesday and Friday routes, with rather drastic changes in arrival and departure times. For more information, please go to Andy’s excellent travel blog. The other change is the return of the ANES Symi II to Symi waters. This is to replace the Sea Dreams Symi which is now running the Skopelos route. The Symi II does not have a ferry license and is only running excursions from Rhodes. There are also photographs circulating on social media of a new shuttle boat built for ANES that is supposed to be serving the Rhodes Symi route on a passenger only basis. As this is still to complete sea trials and licensing procedures, there is no real information about when it will actually come into service and what the actual schedule will be. As usual the only more or less consistent player in the field is Dodecanese Seaways.
Meanwhile, my new property management business now has a logo and business cards which should be ready next week. My website needs a bit more tweaking. I am still sorting out some logistical issues with my business premises in Pedi so I am currently still working from home. The people whose Symi holidays I managed to salvage seem very happy which can only be a Good Thing. Various of the old Symi Visitor properties can now be found on AirBnB and other on line booking platforms. If you can’t find the one you are looking for, please email me on symipropertyservices@gmail.com and I will put you in touch with the relevant person.
Adriana Shum 