23 April 2023 - Stari Grad

There was going to be little wind day, so a day for just motoring the relatively short distance to Stari Grad, a town on the north side of the island of Hvar.

Stari Grad is one of Europe’s oldest towns, founded in 384BC. Inland from the town is the Stari Grad Plain, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. It is a cultural landscape that has remained practically intact since it was first colonized by Ionian Greeks from Paros in the 4th century BC. The original agricultural activity of this fertile plain, mainly centring on grapes and olives, has been maintained since Greek times to the present. The site is also a nature reserve. The landscape features ancient stone walls and small stone shelters, and bears testimony to the ancient geometrical system of land division used by the ancient Greeks, the chora which has remained virtually intact over 24 centuries.




We had a delightful walk around the U-shaped harbour and out along the coastal path under pine trees, in the late afternoon sunshine. It had been very quiet, but later the locals came out promenading, which is always lovely to see.

Miles today         14

Miles in 2023    261

Tricia (& Steve)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

24 - 27 March 2023 - Amersham / Zagreb / Biograd

Image
Our Spring / Summer adventures started when the alarm went off at 04:20 on 24th March. The flight to Zagreb was completely full, the passengers including Welsh football supporters going to watch their team play Croatia in the Euro qualifiers, and a Para-Olympic Boccia team going to play-offs for next year’s Olympics. We had a superb 22 hours with our friends Stevo and Jasna in Zagreb, during which we managed to walk around the centre of the city. There are lots of late 19th century buildings, making it very attractive, along with the outside cafes and restaurants of European café society. The centre being largely pedestrianised and serviced by trams just adds to it’s appeal. The cathedral is undergoing some repairs after the earthquake a couple of years ago Ties were invented in Croatia, and there is a shop selling beautiful examples If you want a Tesla, this guy was the original On the way to the bus station, on Saturday morning, the taxi driver had said that, as we were travelling
Read more

24 - 30 October 2023 - Bari

Image
Now that we are back to our base for the winter, we have stopped blogging regularly.  We are spending our time working through the checklist of things to do, and this is probably not that interesting to write or read about. The weather is still great, tee shorts and shorts.  we don't think that England will be like this when we arrive back. Over the weekend there was a big end of season race, with about 100 boats competing. The guy from the yard was trying to persuade us to enter, saying that it was all pretty light hearted.  It didn't seem so when boats turned up from other ports, with full race crew.  Anyway, we had decided not to participate for a number of reasons. The racing fleet heading out So we will draw this a close for this year, and pick up from a new blog address next year. Thank you for reading.    Miles today                0    Miles in 2023       1349 Steve (and  Tricia) 
Read more

20 September 2023 - Benitses and Kerkyra (Corfu Town)

Image
As we had booked into the marina for 2 days, but completed the necessary maintenance tasks in 1 day, we took the opportunity to go into Corfu town for some site seeing. The bus stop was right outside the marina, so it was very easy,  there was even a ticket machine at the bus stop (of which more later). Alighting from the bus, we started to wander through the narrow streets and alleyways of the old town. It was the sort of place to ignore the maps and just wander and see what you would find. Like many other places in this part of the world, Corfu has a very long history.   It was one of three Greek naval powers in the fifth century BC, with Athens and Corinth. Since then it has changed hands multiple times. It was part of the Republic of Venice from the 12th century, and there are still many buildings and avenues which seem typically Venetian. They built two huge forts to guard the city against pirates and the Ottomans, making it one of the most fortified places in Europe.   In Nov
Read more