Holiday Snaps.

Just a few pictures from around Paphos on our recent break and a link or two to sites of interest.

Geology of Cyprus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Cyprus
Courtesy of: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/GeologicalMapOfCyprus_250k_en.jpg

Good people to book a day out with.
http://www.enjoycyprus.com/kayakingcyprus.htm

Our pictures:

Salt encrusted seaweed

Salt Encrusted Seaweed forest and mountains

Rock pool.

Kayaks getting ready to go a kayaking ... there should be some other pictures eventually, but I didn't take them. 

Our bit of coast for Kayaking along and poking around in sea caves.

Amanda, her sister Alison and her fella Yani (they live in Cyprus).

Collapsed edge of a cliff that used to be part of the roof of some sea caves.

Same edge from the inside.

Strata.

Rock pool heaven.

I found what looks like a bit of a sea cave.

But can you get in it and poke around with out being mangled by churn?

Yes you can ... however I went all the way back and swam from the other end first because it may have been the case that this side was nice and safe ... and the other could have been a real pain in the arse.

Her ladyships one woman synchronised swimming show ... photo bombed by sisters boyfriend.

Beach/cove to ourselves.

Same bit of beach from the spit of land opposite.

A hundred yards or so north a secluded inshore fishing fleet, with a tiny tourist beach, some sailing boats and a beach bar ... who knew?

A Week Off

We’ve been in Cyprus for the last week; we needed a break (and it’s been a long time coming). Amanda’s sister lives there and they (the sisters) are all that remains of their birth family (I still have both my parents and three siblings). According to all sources (that’ll be the ex-pat community) it’s been the warmest, fairest start to May for a lot of years. A dust storm that usually blows north east across the Mediterranean, from North Africa around the end of April (the 29^th to be precise), failed to materialise, and we’ve spent the entire week on various beaches north and south of Paphos, in spectacular weather. We’ve done a bit of everything: swimming, snorkelling, cycling, kayaking and the obligatory long walks, we’re knackered ... however that’s good knackered.

I’m starting this post in the departure lounge of Paphos international airport while waiting for a flight home, so things may change as I complete this tomorrow.

Before we left, we’d had a survey done on our home for a prospective buyer (of this I’ve made no mention until now, because these things are want to fall through). Effectively we are six weeks into what appears to be a very positive offer, on what could be a very quick sale. But; there are always buts. When we bought this place the survey came back with half a dozen provisos and a recommendation that we have a full structural survey or abandon the sale. Some of the provisos the surveyor mentioned were wholly inaccurate such as: an unsupported but removed chimney breast in the kitchen down stairs. Had the guy followed his own measurements he would have seen that the people who had the kitchen fitted, had just run a partition from the edge of the “alleged” missing chimney breast to the outer party wall, to make everything square for fitting kitchen cupboards, he’d cited that he thought there may be subsidence ... but he didn’t spot the damp, and so on and so forth.

The surveyor I saw a week and a bit ago, noticed the inconsistent external boundary and internal measurements and questioned me about them; in particular the “apparent”” absence of a chimney breast in the kitchen. I watched him check for damp, and either the beep noise was off, or the job we did last summer was as sound as I hoped it would be.

I guess after last year’s run of bad luck I’m just being a bit paranoid, and expecting bad luck, a bad report or some other upset to throw us off course again. So today is a big day, it’s phone the estate agency day, and phone the van re-sprayer day. I don’t like doing fingers crossed, I don’t like the worry of having other peoples opinions or their need to generate additional income fucking things up, but one has to be prepared thus. By way of explanation, our surveyor was doing a valuation survey. When it was booked in, the lady in the “call centre” said it was just a “valuation survey for now". That is a very telling statement, and it comes back to what’s wrong with this countries current business ethos. The subtext of the call centre reps phrasing strongly suggests that the surveyor needs to complete the survey and in doing so, find a way to push for either a Home Buyer report or a Full Structural survey, thus generating additional income for the umbrella organisation farming out the work to the individual surveyors (I suspected this so I asked the surveyor who he worked for, he said he was independent).

It’s that shite again ... some smart Alec somewhere has set up a company with a staff of hundreds of call centre agents fielding calls from estate agents and buyers, fixing prices for surveyors to do work, and taking a small margin off the top. But instead of being client focused, and getting the market moving, they are focused on generating additional work from the basic survey to increase their margin ... the problem with this is, that as soon a buyer see’s the chance that they may have to spend extra money on additional surveys ... they pull out of the sale, or as happened to our seller, and may now happen to us ... you have to put your hand in your pocket to cover the buyers additional fees because the surveyor’s remit is to drop in certain key words that make the mortgage lender put a stop on the mortgage until you’ve spent more money with the surveyor.

Clearly this isn’t a new practice, but when you add in the “call centre effect”, suddenly you are dealing with a purely process and profit driven machine. As I’ve blathered on about elsewhere, this ethos, despite all the bullshit in the “About Us” section of these web fronted, call centre centric businesses, about client care, customer satisfaction, core values blah blah fucking blah, there is one thing that’s key ... generate additional income, no matter the cost to the client.

Rant over. Time to make some calls.

Flaming June

So here we are 3^rd of June 2012, the big Jubilee weekend. It’s a shame about the weather for her Maj down on the Thames, you’d think the Giant Intergalactic Spider would have parted the clouds today so she could bask in sunshine, but hey ho Britain is famous for rainy days, so from a philosophical point of view... it’s perfect Queens River Pageant weather.

For ourselves this weekend so far has been hard work. A friend of ours popped round with a Kango to help us break up the screed floor in the dinning room. It took about three hours to “gun up” and will take a fair few trips to dispose of, but it’s done. There’s good news as well with regards to the state of the DPC (damp-proof course), it hasn’t been breached and is set at the correct level on the external wall underneath what’s known as the Bell Render stop. The entire damp issue is due to a lack of diligence on the original builders part, when the original DPM was laid. This means that with good conscience we can PVA and seal the walls once they’ve dried out a little more, then use Synthaprufe; http://www.epms-supplies.co.uk/admin/products/documents/Ruberoid/Data/IKOpro%20Synthaprufe%20LAC.pdf to provide a final seal and lap joint across the subfloor, then as noted earlier lay in the new DMP, insulation and 60mm of new hard screed; followed eventually with the installation of a new 7kw radiator, a complete plaster skim to all the walls and final redecoration.

I can’t overstate how this light at the end of the tunnel moment changes things. It’s exactly the same sense of relief finding the DPC intact and in the right place, as the day I tracked back the damp in the Moho and found the extent and the cause of the leak. Everything that follows is either just graft, or cosmetics (cost is obviously in there but but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, so c’est la vie).

I can’t say I’m happy about all the extra work and distractions of the last few months; three going on four before we get back to on track and deal with all the travel niggles such as: how do you get from mainland Europe across to Cyprus in September and early October with a motorhome? The answer it seems at first glance appears to be, drive down and across Western Europe through the Balkan countries, into Turkey and then catch a boat from Turkey to Northern Cyprus, and then drive the two and a bit hours from and through Northern (Turkish) Cyprus into Southern (Greek) Cyprus to Paphos on the South Western tip, and there overwinter with Amanda’s sister before, turning round and reversing the process the following spring. “Simples” as the Russian??? Meerkat Aleksandr Orlov would say... one has to wonder how a little Herpestidae like the Meerkat managed to get all the way from the southern tip of Africa to the heart of Moscow, and then become a television celebrity in Britain with his own range of cuddly toys and book available on Amazon; proving if nothing else, that anything is achievable... maybe I need a change of medication. Anyway, crossing the Balkan countries in October could be problematic, not because they were at war just a decade or so ago and the UK, UN and USA intervened with the usual Tomahawk missile based diplomacy (Jokes aside it was the right thing to do).

No the reason going through the Balkan countries at that time of year is an aggravation, is that the weather can be inclement at times, October is Albania’s wettest month with temperature lows of 5 degrees as an example and there can be border crossing issues (often to do with corrupt border guards and random fees). This is why you have to plan your routes and your times well in advance.

Without going into too much depth, the options are take your time and see some sights, or do a five to six day mad rush. Other alternatives include finding a boat service from Southern Italy that goes direct to Limmasol in Southern Cyprus or some other tramp steamer adventure; it’s all very much up in the air. And I bet now you’re asking: why not bypass the Balkans and Turkey and just go from mainland Greece? And the answer is, there isn’t a direct single route ferry from mainland Greece to Cyprus. And Island hoping across may not be an option because of the size of the vehicle we are travelling with. And this brings us full circle, there is a tonne of research to get done, and for three months all we’ve really done is mend and prepare our motorhome (which is still ongoing), and then mend our house and sell it, and these things coupled with workaday life, have left very little time or space to do the essential research.

Today: today is a corner day; we just turned one. No doubt there will be more, but for the first time in a good few weeks, the mind can turn to the cerebral matters applicable to the long game.

Three Cheers for the Queen.