ABC Wednesday: Umbrellas

It's ABC Wednesday again and U is for umbrella. Here's another summer shot of a Cretan beach.

Umbrellas are more called for in the summer than in the winter here in Hania, a town which gets 300 days of sunshine. This is true more so in Paleohora than any other place in Western Crete.

Despite the fact that the whole of Crete is one long never-ending beach, the best place for a holiday in my family's opinion is Paleohora on the south coast of the province of Hania. The pancake hill above the beach is actually the site of a former fortress now in ruins, appropriately called Fortezza, which was once a lookout for pirates and invaders. Paleohora is tucked neatly away from the main centre by a beautiful but windy route; in the winter when it snows in Hania, the road becomes inaccessible.

Paleohora is also a town that never sleeps: in the winter, the greenhouses work overtime, supplying the whole country with hothouse tomatoes and other vegetables, while in the summer, it becomes the hottest place to be, literally and metaphorically: its location and landscape can raise temperatures up to 45 degrees Celsius, which is what happened last year during the heatwaves.

The best export from this slow-paced town are the people (as I said before, the tomatoes are full of chemical fertilisers). I should know, because I used to work there in my youth; I spent three years teaching English to its youngsters. And now, one of those little girls has grown up and become my son's computer teacher!!!