Simply put, Andros is lovely and is easily reached by ferry from Rafina 20 minutes east of the city of Athens.   There are regular bus services from the International Airport of Athens to coincide with the ferries.  Our ferry only took two hours and left us at the port of Gavrio.

Athens, it entered my ‘ken’ of course when I was a child learning about Ancient Greece, and even before that when I read avidly about the mythical Greek Gods and Goddesses and kings and warriors…

Thessaloniki: a name that conjured up an exotic ancient place that was in my imagination for years. Thessaloniki is Greece’s second city with all its antiquity now a beating heart of culture, cuisine and heritage with the diversity of people that have come through millennia.

Magical little island in The Cyclades supposed burial place of the great Homer  the greatest epic poet of all time.

We visited Crete on a press trip in the third week of October and were enchanted.  The weather was warm and sunny and we had the opportunity to see a lot of eastern Crete having flown into Heraklion.  We were centred at Agios Nikolaos which is a lovely town with beaches, a lake, smart shops, nice restaurants and heritage.   Crete is a lovely island  and indeed cradle of western civilisation with so much to see and learn from, and we long to return in the Spring for the famous spring flowers and all the fresh blossoms and colours of spring.

In early October Graham and I flew out to Preveza from Manchester to arrive at Nidri where we had arranged to sail for a week.  The Thomson Airlines flight was trouble free and we transferred to Nidri which is a town on the coast of the island of Lefkada or Lefkas in the Ionian group of Greek Islands.

Visiting four of the Cyclades Islands has been an immense pleasure;  Greece to which I first came 50 years ago will always hold immense charm for me and this time visiting Milos, Sifnos, Los and Paros was hugely enjoyable.