Skopeos (and 39 steps) is now ready to open for the season. If you are safe and intend to travel, then start planning your vacation by the sea on our beautiful island. Skopelos offers a great variety of fun and interest which, hopefully, will help to get you over the difficulties the world has been going through.

Photography, nature walks, cycling, dining out or picnics, sea sports, local history, local traditions, culture, monuments, intoxicating nature: all of this is here to enjoy and to take back home with you in memories.

I know many who come here enjoy walks, long or short. There are a number of marked trails, which you can follow, or you can be even more adventurous, discovering old paths which have faded away with disuse since mechanised transport became norm! With social distancing, cycling is now a fashionable sport even for the small children of our community.

In one of my earlier blogs, I mentioned Skopelos Cycling, a cycle-hire shop run by Panos and Manolis, both keen and experienced cyclists; Manolis cycled several times to Switzerland! They operate a cycling programme by which they introduce the visitor to the island on bicycles. I presume the water sports line of work; the SUP, stand-up-and-paddle, the diving, kayaking and others will not be left behind in getting their businesses started this season.

There is a lively bustle of activity at the water front right now as the tavernas and coffee shops, gift and craft shops prepare to open. The gourmets will be happy to learn that, among other favoured establishments the well-known Perivoli Garden restaurant in Skopelos town will open at the end of June. In their beautiful, already-full-of-blooms garden, the scent of the flowers mingle with the aromas of the herbs and vegetables grown exclusively for use in their kitchens.

If you are interested in history, culture, traditional lives of the islanders and landmarks in the island's history, then Skopelos is rich in these, although here, stunning nature is what dominates: our small island is a place of clean air and seas, beautiful beach coves, harbours, marine vistas as well as a mountainous interior terrain, valleys and far away mirage of coastlines and islands. It is an island of natural beauty and health.

Come and see for yourself and Stay safe!

It's a habit by now, in season or out of season, to maintain and whitewash the steps leading to and around 39steps, be that for a name day, a holiday, or just for the heck of it because I like attractive places and things!

This time the motivation came from all the mostly-white blossoms around our area. The lemon and orange trees in the tiny yards of the houses opposite are full of white aromatic blooms and their aroma is heady. The pomegranate buds in the neighboring yard are bursting to open and show off their beautiful crimson chalice like petals and the sculptured jasmine in the corner opposite my entrance, is a joy to behold for the chance passers and neighbourhood residents alike.

Many stop and admire this beauty, but missing are the passers by from beyond the islands shores: our visitors! They would do one thing more we, the residents, do not: take a photo of this beauty, sit on the steps, stand at the corner.........and so, here I am, doing it for you.

It is spring time!

Out of lock down, I ventured out to look for seasonal herbs out at this time. It has been a capricious year and I wasn't sure what can be found. The nettles, my favourite, are almost at their end with their stalks getting woody. The tips with the seeds are still OK to dry and use in soups or in a tea mix. Uncanny how the nettle seed pods resemble the corona capsule we are so used to seeing. The hawthorn bush was in full bloom and I gathered some of the blooms, along with malveas and chamomile blooms to dry and use as my daily tea.

There are so many beautiful botanical plants on the island, especialy at this time of year. We know and use only very few, mostly enjoying them as myriad of flowers which adorn our island's roadside, olive groves, meadows and swamps.

For those who love Skopelos and the flowers of Greece, my friend, Sue Warren, has compiled an extensive study of the Wild Flowers of Skopelos, which she keeps updating and adding to annually, and seasonally. If you are interested you might like to look at this work of love. It has a wealth of information on the Skopelos flora.

http://wildflowersofskopelos.org.uk/Blog.html

When I arrived back to Skopelos in March, I noticed that a beautiful plant, Jackman's Rue Blue which graced the courtyard for years, was not in a good condition and might not survive the winter.

Sadly, that was the case and at first I was upset. The best thing about this plant was that apart from not needing much care, year after year it attracted the most exotic butterflies, which adopted the plant as their home. They would appear sometime in the spring (once as early as March), breeze around the garden showing off their exotic wings and generally floating from flower to flower feeding on nectar. True, in the autumn, when they laid their eggs on the rue it was a messy nuisance as the hungry grubs denuded much of the foliage, but the plants always recovered. Against the pleasure gained in the long run it did not matter.

Sad that the Jackman's Rue Blue had died, I was delighted to see, when I removed the stump of the dried trunk, its seedlings germinating through the ground. New life! It will be some time before the seedlings reach the size of the mother plant but it pleases me nevertheless that the next generation of the rue will be there to grace my garden and be a home to clouds of butterflies.

Especially in these strange times (but also, to be honest, at any time) I refect how lucky to have this space to simply walk out and observe nature at work.

Always one of the world's more pleasantly-quiet settings, an even greater calm has spread across Skopelos Old Town in these strange times. Yet even this reached new levels only the other day...

When sending a message to my friend John in Scotland, there was a brief power cut. I stayed connected to John and shared with him this moment of the world cloaking itself in a mantle of darkness and deep silence.

Street lights went off, background noises one is used to and accepts as not being there - like thermostats and timer switches - all fell silent! A comfortable darkness spread, immersing my world in a loud silence. It was not at all foreboding or frightening, but the safe absolute silence that can only be the loud voice of nature coming alive.

Silence has never been as loud!