Bobby Gilbert Adventures

We stayed on the Greek island of Spetses for a long week,18th-29th September, next door to Sally’s sister Jane. We hired mountain bikes. It was the perfect size island for a relaxing week with bursts of cycling. The only tarmac road is around the coast and is 15 miles long. There are almost no cars allowed on Spetses apart from Taxis and a few of the more remote residences. There are however a huge number of mopeds and quad bikes, often not under particularly good control. However, it is mostly quiet on the island so you can hear them coming.

The centre of the island is a mountain (big hill) criss-crossed with tracks that range from landrover to goat tracks. We did lots of exploring of these by bike and walking Jane’s dog. There were lots of trails marked on the map. I think we ticked most of the obvious ones, often while cycling out to one of the beaches. Plenty more to come back for though.

Sally: I’ve been coming to Spetses fairly regularly since my sister, Jane, moved here in 1985. Safe to say, I have never explored the island quite so thoroughly as I did this week with Bobby! Virtually no trail was left unblazed, at least by him, if not always by me.  Spetses is a great little island to explore by mountain bike as there are tracks to suit all abilities. Loads of fun to be had, and whichever way you descend you can soon find a nice beach to spend the rest of the day. 

Our apartment looked over Spetses town. The balcony was hailing distance from Jane’s balcony. Very handy when it was time for Gin and Tonic.

Spetses town is about the size of our home town, Wirksworth, though it feels larger because of all the holiday homes.

I did loads of cycling, but based on the evidence of the pictures it was all Sally…

Sally: So annoying! I’m always on the lookout for tortoises whenever I’m on Spetses. I used to say to Jane’s kids ‘first to find a tortoise, gets an ice-cream’. The same applied to Bobby and when he was out on his own he didn’t just find one, but two. As you can see, he got the ice-cream!

Based again on the evidence of the pictures, I did all the eating. It was delicious food! I love all the ways Greeks do vegetables and salads. The pastries were addictive too, particularly a custard filled Bougatsa which went very well with an intense Greek coffee.

We had a couple of sessions water skiing. Sally had done it in recent memory and after a couple of failures did a complete lap of the bay. It was my first time since I was aged 10 but I managed to get up first time, to Sally’s disappointment, but she was happy 30 seconds later when I fell in. I’m keen to do this again. Maybe I won’t wait 50 years for the next go.

Sally: ‘A couple of failures’?! It was more like a dozen! I got totally shown up at this game. I’ll get him on a horse yet…

Greek words learnt:

• Bougatsa
• Efcharistó (a fairy’s toe)
• dýo megáles býres parakaló (which got me a lovely smile from the waitress and an extra bowl of crisps – good result)