Chania Market

I only discovered Chania market late on the Friday afternoon of my last day in Crete. It's housed inside a large cruciform purpose-built building with an elaborately-beamed high roof. The Agora (market in Greek), as it's known, was built between 1911 and 1913 and modelled on the market in Marseille. It was opened as part of the celebrations of the unification of Crete to Greece.

To enter involves climbing wide steps and passing through a temple-like facade. There are other entrances at the back and on each side. Inside are 70+ shops and little cafes selling great slabs of cheese, big bunches of mountain tea, multi-coloured olives, abundant meat and fish varieties, jars and jars of honey, dried fruits, yoghurt, coffee, olive oil, raki, vegetables, snails ...

So many olives

Cretan cheese and honey

Mountain tea

As well as all the food, the market also sells Cretan knives, tourist t-shirts, locally made soaps, leather bags, postcards and scarves. There was even a cat on a shelf, but I don't that was for sale. 

 

It was a shame I'd only discovered so late into my trip as I would have liked to spend more time browsing and to have tried out the food and coffee in the cafes. 

The Agora is open Mon to Sat 8am until 1.30 or 2pm. It's also open on Tue, Thur and Fri evenings from 5pm to 8pm, though we were there before 5pm and everything seemed to be open.

Fish ate my feet

I travelled to Crete with a friend who just happened to have a birthday whilst we were there. To celebrate she decided to get her feet eaten by fish. I have some weird friends.

There were a few places around Chania where, those so inclined, could pay to sit with their feet dangling in a fish tank and let the fish chew (or rather suck) the dead skin from their feet. I've seen these fish spas popping up all over the place in recent years as the experience is considered to be a spa treatment rather than a ghoulish way of serving breakfast to Goldie.

Birthday breakfast

Up until the last moment I ummed and ahhed over whether to join her in being breakfast or settling for being food photographer. I always like the idea of trying something new, but usually shy away from anything involving my feet as they are SO ticklish.

In the end, I couldn't resist trying and slipped off my shoes and rolled up my trouser legs. My lower legs and feet were soaped up and hosed down before I was sat on a bench with a gaping fish tank in lieu of a footstool. 

I was supposed to let them settle on my feet, not kick them away

The fish, which are all freshwater fish imported from a river in Thailand, knew breakfast was about to be served and, piranha like, caused a mini-riot at the surface. I gingerly lowered my feet into the frenzy and squealed as a dozen or so tiny mouths started to pluck at my flesh with the sensation of couple of dozen mini electric hammer drills. At least this is what I imagine a wall must feel like when a hammer drill is used on it. I likened the feeling to a constant vibration; my friend to a series of tiny electric shocks.

Regardless of whether it was more akin to vibration or electrocution, it was definitely ticklish. Really ticklish. I struggled to hold my feet still, sometimes involuntarily kicking out to dislodge the fish. When the timer rang at the end of 15 minutes, I thankfully lifted my feet out making sure no fish were still attached. My non-ticklish friend opted to stay in for another 15 minutes and seemed to find the whole experience quite relaxing. Which I suppose is part of the point of a spa treatment. She was quite impressed with the results too, feeling her feet to be a lot softer afterwards.

I didn't have much dry skin on my feet to start with and as I spent more time kicking the fish off than letting them do their job, I really didn't notice any difference. 

Toe sucking

The fish used are garra rufa, also known as 'doctor fish'. As well as sloughing off dead skin, the fish secrete an enzyme in their saliva (diathanol) which is thought to help heal skin conditions such as psoriasis and eczema. On the downside, concerns are sometimes raised about the hygiene levels of these salons (water is not changed between customers and additives such as chlorine can't be used because they would harm the fish).  It is also thought that there is a very slight chance of the fish passing on HIV or hepatitis, though there is no evidence for this. It is advised that if you have open wounds you pass on this treatment. The salon we chose seemed very clean and our legs were checked for cuts. The therapist found a tiny cut on my friend's leg (so tiny she hadn't noticed it herself) and this was covered with a plaster so the fish couldn't get to it.

Another concern of course, is for the welfare of the fish. I was worried that the sunscreen I'd applied to my legs wouldn't be good for them, and so was pleased with how well my legs and feet were washed before they were allowed into the tank.

We went to Doctor Fish and paid €10 for the first 15 minutes and €9 for the second 15 minutes.

Greek Orthodox Easter - the video

If I ever want to get good at making videos, I need to start actually making videos. Greek Orthodox Easter in Crete provided me with a good opportunity for a first attempt, as photographs alone couldn't do justice to the occasion. I didn't have a tripod or a specialist video camera, so I just pointed my usual camera and pressed the record button. I think I've done okay at capturing some of the sound and atmosphere, but I obviously have a LONG way to go to perfect my filming technique! 

Greek Orthodox Easter

It was all a bit last minute. A friend, who had previously lived in Crete, suddenly found she was free over the Orthodox Easter period and decided to use this unexpected time-off to return to visit friends and join in the celebrations. As my only previous experience of Greece was a rushed and unplanned visit to Athens when I was inter-railing in Western Europe in the '80s, I couldn't resist tagging along. 

My previous trip had happened because someone had enticed me with the information that if I went to Athens I could sleep on a roof. Coming from Manchester where we not only sleep under a roof, but also under a thick duvet and preferably with the central heating on, the idea of sleeping on a roof was, at the time, way out there in terms of adventurous and wacky things one can do with one's life. This time, I was enticed by the slightly more academic reason of learning about a branch of Christianity I know very little about. Ok, thoughts of sunshine and raki had something to do with it as well, but only a little bit. Honestly.

Finding a last-minute cheap flight over the Easter period wasn't easy and so we ended up flying out early on the Saturday morning. The whole week leading up to Easter is celebrated in Greece much more than it is here, so unfortunately we did miss quite a lot. But at least we were there for the main event.

As we'd been up most of the night due to our early flight, once we arrived at our accommodation we had a bit of a snooze in order to gear ourselves up for the night. Consequently, the first I saw of Paleochora, the small town on the south-west coast where we'd chosen to spend the weekend, was after dark. The main street was lined with bars and shops and had mountains looming over one end and the church looming over the other. People were feeding into the main street from the  many side streets and flowing in an ever-growing crowd in the direction of the church. There was a frisson of excitement in the air, probably made more palpable by the dark shadows and my lack of knowledge as to what lay down the darkened narrow streets that peeled off to my left and right. 

We went with the flow and headed towards the church. We'd have known it was the church even without having a crowd to follow, as it was the brightest thing around. Illuminated by numerous spotlights, it glowed whiter than a white shirt in a Persil ad. As we got closer we could hear the chanting from inside and slipped in through the double doors to find out what was going on.

Inside, the church was bathed in a muted golden light. It shimmered off the gold chandeliers and gold-haloed icons. The icons, mostly painted directly onto the walls, covered every inch apart from a section of the ceiling. Men were choosing an icon and kissing it as they came in. Women were taking slim white candles from a box near the door, slipping a coin into the cash box slot, then lighting their candle and offering up a prayer before blowing it out. Children were playing hide and seek in the lectern and behind the curtains of the confessional. The priest was to one side, singing and chanting in the ancient Greek that is the sound of worship. Recent discussion brought up the idea of holding services in modern Greek so more people could understand them and ideally encourage more young people to attend, but this idea was dismissed as the ancient language adds a mystery and tradition far too important to be discarded for the sake of modernity and upping recruitment.

I grew up attending Catholic Mass. I always found it staid, boring and stiff. The service here was anything but staid, boring and stiff. People came and went as they pleased; moved around; chatted quietly to their neighbour; let their children play; all the while seeming to be involved in the devotion. The priest continued to sing. By the end he'd been going for several hours straight and how he wasn't hoarse, I don't know.

After a while, we left the church and wandered back down the main street. The church was getting more crowded now and we were going against the flow. The street was much fuller, but still everyone was going in the same direction. Except us. We went into a bar for a rejuvenating cup of mountain tea and sat on bar stools chatting to the bartender. Just before midnight we left our mugs in his care (he was very trusting as we hadn't yet paid) and went back down to the church.

Burning Judas

As midnight struck, the lights went out and people began to stream out of the church to join the crowd outside who hadn't been able to squeeze in. The priest came out, still singing, and continued his chants at a shrine in the church yard. Fireworks exploded above our heads and the bells donged noisily. On a cliff rising directly behind the church are the remains of the town's old fortress. It was here that the bonfire was lit. As we burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes on Bonfire Night, the Greeks burn a life-size effigy of Judas, Jesus' betrayer, on Easter Saturday night. Gazing up, I could just about make out the humanoid form in the flames. 

People leaving the church

It is at midnight that the candles are lit to symbolise the resurrection of Jesus and, no doubt, also symbolising the more pagan beliefs of the new life and light heralded by the onset of spring. This is no ordinary lighting of candles. No whipping out a Zippo or striking a match here. Instead, each candle is lit from a flame that originated in Jerusalem a few hours ago.

Waiting for the candlelight to be shared

Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre is believed by Christians to be the site at which Jesus was buried and resurrected. Believers claim a flame spontaneously bursts from his tomb on the day before Easter Day to show that Jesus has not forgotten his followers. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem is the main guardian of this ritual. Each year he enters the small tomb where Jesus is believed to have been buried and waits alone for a blue light to appear and ignite the flame. Before he enters, the tomb is checked to ensure that there is no way the flame can be lit by human hand.

The candlelight is spreading

The flame from this 'Miracle of Holy Fire' is used to light 33 candles - one for each year of Jesus' life - and from these the candles of the many worshippers who attend this ceremony are lit. Also lit are a set of lanterns that depart on a special flight for Athens. From Athens the flames are circulated to churches throughout Greece and it is at midnight that this flame is used to light the candles of the worshippers in each church. The light is passed from candle to candle; people chatting and smiling as they share the sacred flame. Seeing this I understood why the women I'd watched lighting candles earlier, had blown them out once they'd finished their prayer. 

Spreading the joy

Eventually all candles were lit, the flames of the bonfire died down, the bells stopped ringing and the priest stopped singing, the lights were back on and the fireworks had finished. People started to move away sheltering the flame of their candle with a cupped hand. Some would be travelling home in cars with their lighted candles. We weren't so reverential and, blowing our candles out, returned to the bar to finish our tea and pay our bill.

Guarding that flame!

I didn't take photos inside the church as it seemed disrespectful to be taking pictures during the service. I went back during the daytime hoping to get some photos, but it was all locked up.

Hitting the airwaves

Last Friday I did something that was a first for me. A local BBC radio presenter noticed one of my tweets and through this found my blog. She contacted me and asked me to go into the radio studios to record an interview. I've never been into a radio studio before, let alone done a radio interview, so this was all very exciting.


On Friday evening I went along to the posh new Media City in Salford where the BBC are now based. On my way from the car park I strolled past the shiny new glass edifices that have sprung from the wasteland that was the Salford I remember. The buildings reminded me of those in Hong Kong or Canary Wharf; buildings in which billions of dollars are transacted daily. Except the buildings in those places aren't brightly labelled CBeebies.


Once inside, and with a visitor's pass strung round my neck, I was escorted several floors up and into a small studio. I chatted with the presenter for a while and explained what my blog was about. Then she clicked 'record' and the interview started for real. We talked about why I'd started the blog, the types of challenges on my list and how I see having a list as a good motivational tool for life. The whole interview lasted just over eight minutes. This might not seem long in 'real life' terms, but in 'radio life' this was so long that when it went out later that night, it was played in two parts with a music interval midway through. Although I'm very chuffed with getting a radio interview, I think I'm even prouder of the fact my first interview got an interval!

ShAFF travel writing workshop

On Saturday, I attended a travel writing workshop run by Phoebe Smith, editor of Wanderlust magazine. The workshop was one of a varied programme of events at ShAFF (Sheffield Adventure Film Festival) held in Sheffield's Showroom cinema.

The room was full for Phoebe's talk - obviously there are a lot of aspiring travel writers out there! I did notice, however, that very few attendees were taking notes; so either the've got brilliant memories or they're not quite that serious after all.

After telling us a bit about herself, Phoebe spent an hour sharing lots of tips. As part of the workshop we looked through a travel article from the Guardian and discussed the different techniques the author had used. The workshop ended with a Q&A session.  

Throughout, Phoebe was friendly, clear and, even though it was only an hour, managed to impart an awful lot of good information. As I've read so much about writing over the past year and I'm currently taking part in a travel writing course with the London School of Journalism, I had been hesitant about the benefits of attending this workshop and wondered if my time might be better spent at one of the other events. By the end I was so glad I'd made my last-minute decision to go as it was definitely an hour well spent. And I know that if I ever get the chance to do a longer workshop with Phoebe, my name will be first on the list.

 

I took pages of notes - below I've included some of the main points.

 

 

Key Tips

 

Make people interested in what you're writing – don’t just assume they’re going to be interested.

How do you get people interested?

• Know who you are writing for:
• Age
• Sex
• Interests 
• Write accurately
• Grammar, punctuation
• Facts
• Write with a purpose – what’s your aim?
• Instructing?
• Educating?
• Write well – get your audience to come back
• Practise, practise, practise ... 

 Common Mistakes

 

• Not reading your finished piece through first – print it and read it on paper as well as on screen; get someone else to read it
• Making it too personal – do your readers care?
• Humour – great if it works; cringeworthy if it doesn’t
• Toilet stories – nobody wants to know about your bowels

 

Getting the Introduction Right

 

• Grab the reader in the first paragraph
• Make it suit the tone of the article
• Try a couple of intros to see which is best – you can make your final decision later
• Look at how other people begin their articles – read the work of others analytically
• You can start with a strong quote, but it has to be good
• Write straight away – don’t worry about what you write, you can change it – just get started
• Go back to the intro at the end – do you need to change it?

 

Story Structure

 

• Beginning – grab your reader with the introduction
• Explain and elaborate – explain why you’re doing the trip or activity – each paragraph has to move the story forward – don’t lose sight of the purpose/reason for your article
• Ending – don’t suddenly end because you’ve got to your destination or the activity has finished – bring it slowly to a conclusion – slow it down over the last few paragraphs before concluding it

 

Getting Started

• You can write about anywhere at all – it doesn’t matter if you’re not travelling – where you are now is a destination for someone else
• Notice everything – e.g. people’s habits – what are they doing with their hands? Are they chewing, fidgeting, limping?
• Record everything – always have a pen and paper – you will forget details if you leave it till later
• Speak to people – get local knowledge
• Start writing

 

Writing the Perfect Journal

 

• Who is your journal for? - Is it just for you? Is it online for friends and family to read?
• When writing your journal think about potential beginnings and endings for articles – circle or highlight them so you can easily find them when you look back
• If it’s a public journal, leaving out things can be as important as what you include – don’t woffle or include every minute detail to the point of boring your readers
• It doesn’t have to be chronological
• Use your senses - what can you smell, taste, etc
• Dialogue – have a ‘cast list’ at the back of your notebook – people's names and notes about their personality, etc – assign a symbol or number to each so you can quickly refer to them in your main text, especially when making a note about what they have said
• Avoid listing everything
• Get out a pencil and sketch
• Scrapbook it – stick tickets, receipts, etc in your journal
• Do use a date
• Do leave gaps so you can make notes on your notes
• Stick to what interests you
• Get it down on paper while it’s fresh
• Enjoy it!

 

Blogging

• Don’t make promises you can’t keep e.g. don’t say you’ll write every day if you can’t
• Be unique
• Write about what you know
• Let the passion show
• Be accurate
• Use photos
• Get to grips with some of the techy stuff e.g. SEO, plugins, etc
• Social media is your best friend
• Do try to get some revenue, but don’t do it for the money!
• Your blog is a great shop window – it’s the portfolio of the modern day

Publishing

 

• Think about your local papers as well as the national press
• Try digital magazines as well as print magazines
• Write for other people's blogs - guest blogging
• Other websites
• Guidebooks and advice books have more need for writers – you need to be very disciplined and write within a strict structure – much more so than a personal travel-writing book

 

What Editors Want / How to Pitch

 

Phoebe used an interesting scenario to explain this -  

 

Imagine a bar full of editors and writers – editors are needy and promiscuous, but getting a lot of offers – as a writer you’re trying to catch an editor's eye – build some trust – let them see who you are and that you're serious and dependable – it can take a long time to get noticed as you have some pretty stiff competition - it took Phoebe two years of trying before she got a freelance article published in Wanderlust even though she was an established writer.

 

Continuing the allegory, Phoebe advised us to start by asking the editor for a drink and not proffering a marriage proposal straight away, no matter what your long-term intentions are. In other words, start by pitching a short article, not a full-blown series.

 

Getting that first date is the hardest - once you've got it, make it a success, then you'll find the second date much easier to get.

 

Phoebe gets around 100 pitches a day and although she reads every one you're going to have to stand out from the crowd to have any chance of being successful - make sure you have a good subject line and introduction.

 

As for how to pitch, most magazines will have guidelines on their website. The guidelines for Wanderlust can be found on the ‘about us’ tab.

 

Your pitch should include:

• Paragraph about the article/pitch
• Intro of the article
• A bit about you

Other tips when pitching include:

• Photos are not usually essential, but if you have them it's better to include a link rather than clogging up the editor's email box up with attachments.
• There are many reasons why you might not be commissioned – the magazine might already have enough articles; they might have already covered the topic or already commissioned it.
• Magazines plan 6 months/issues ahead   – bear this in mind when pitching, especially if your article is topical
• Newspaper features/articles are usually 700-1000 words
• Magazine features/articles are usually 2000-2500 words
• Multi-pitching – make it different for each pitch – if multi-pitching the same or a similar article and an editor accepts after another one already has, tell the second editor the article is no longer available

 

 

Sheffield Adventure Film Festival

Is it possible to go to a film festival and not see any films? Well, on Saturday I did just that. I spent the day in Sheffield at the Adventure Film Festival (ShAFF). The festival lasted the whole weekend, but Saturday was the only day I could be there as on Sunday I was supposed to be in a hot air balloon floating above Bakewell. It didn't happen AGAIN, but that's another story. Back to ShAFF.




ShAFF has been an annual event for a few years now and is a brilliant showcase for the (usually short) films made by (usually young male, but not necessarily short) people who are making their lives all about adventure. I was really interested to see some of these films and get myself a good dose of inspiration, but was far too distracted by all the great workshops, forums and talks that were on offer.


First up was a travel writing workshop run by Phoebe Smith, editor of Wanderlust magazine. I made lots of notes and was really pleased to hear a lot of what she said tallying with what I've found out from all the research and reading I've been doing over the past year. It's so good to know I'm on the right track!


Rushing back to the 'lecture theatre' (aka the bar area) after a quick lunch of rather tasty fennel and potato soup, I found it already filling up for the cycle touring forum. The only seats left were on the front row, right in front of the panel. As one of my personal mottoes is 'live life on the front row', this was definitely not a problem. 


Leon McCarron (young, male, not particularly short) led the panel which included another solo male cyclist and a couple of couples (half of each couple was female. YES!). The six had done very different tours and had different views on speed with Ed Shoote being the most zoomy. They each spoke a bit about their cycle tours and then answered questions from the audience. Cycle touring is on my list of things to do so it was quite interesting to hear what they had to say. Though I'm not planning on cycling round the world as Laura and Tim Moss did or even cycling 2,500 miles along the Great Divide from New Mexico to Banff in Canada as Hannah Maia did for her megamoon (a longer, more adventurous version of a honeymoon) with new husband Patrick. A week in the Netherlands might be quite enough for me. 


After a coffee and cake break, it was time a film making workshop. In the first half Paul Diffley showed techniques for interviewing people on camera and explained how to set shots up. The second part of the session focussed on sound with Chris Prescott making us aware that good sound engineering is just as much about the sounds you remove as those you leave in. This is all really useful as I've used video a lot in my teaching and at some point I do want to make a short film of my own - this being another item on my list of things of do.


The final session of the day was a series of Shed Talks. These were modelled on the slightly better known TED Talks, but as we were at ShAFF in Sheffield the moniker 'Shed' sounded more appropriate. The talks were all motivational with the most moving speaker being a climber with terminal cancer who, after diagnosis, set up the charity 'Climbers Against Cancer (CAC)'. The charity has raised thousands of pounds internationally and I felt privileged to hear founder John Ellison tell his story in his brief ten minute slot. When diagnosed he was given two years to live. That was three years and four months ago.


I thought of how much he's achieved and how important it is to never waste a second of the life we're given. With that sobering thought we repaired to the bar to sample Abbeydale Brewery's special ShAFF IPA (no, not Indian Pale Ale, but Intrepid Pale Ale of course).






ShAFF is held at the Showroom Cinemas and Workstation close to Sheffield train station. As well as films, workshops and talks, there are stalls advertising or selling adventure related products and a second-hand kit stall where you can sell your old kit and use the proceeds to buy someone else's old kit.




The website for ShAFF can be found here.