Nafpaktos

The weather for us here in Greece has turned into a bit of a mixed bag, thankfully for us we love the sound of rain on our roof but we've not seen the 35c temperatures for a few days and on an evening the temperature has dropped to 15c - positively freezing by comparison to the last five months!

We arrived fairly late on in the evening and parked on the sea front, joined by a french registered Adria pulling an impressive quad bike and lattery by a dutch Hymer. Motorhomes are a magnet for other motorhomes it would seem.

We did a lap of the town and it was clear something was going on, there were police everywhere and lots of people milling about. From our spot on the sea front we were treated to a fantastic firework display complete with music and involvement from boats. When we asked what was going on we were told it was the Reenactment of the Battle of Lepanto from 1571 which involved over 450 ships (link to Wikipedia). Here are a couple of photos from the local newspaper who had a better vantage point (and zoom lens!) than us.

The next day the clouds rolled over and we were treated to 5 hours of blue skies and the temperatures peaked back into the 30's. We walked down to the habour where we wandered about the fortifications only to find that they are usually locked up and they were only open to allow the remains of the evenings fireworks to be cleaned up, the town official waited patiently while we took the panoramic shot at the top of this blog before locking the gate behind us!

The Venetian Fortress looks down imposingly from its position on the hill above Nafpaktos and despite being free to get in was deserted on the Sunday afternoon as we wandered around its unguarded walls in perfect sunshine. After heading back to the van and downing a liter of ice cold water from the fridge the heavens opened again and the thunder and lightening storm that ensued rivaled the fireworks from the night before!