A gentle morning stroll.........not!

This is Lampros. He owns a tiny little grocery store near my house. Every morning, before he opens, he walks down to the harbour, does whatever errands he needs to do, collects some supplies for the shop and climbs back up to the village with the box of groceries on his back. This is no mean feat. If you mention that you are about to climb the Kataraktis to most people on Symi, they will look at you as if you're mad. (I climb it twice a day, I've seen that look hundreds of times!) The point is though that Lampros is in his seventies and he's still following this routine everyday. A few years ago when I broke my ankle, I couldn't have managed without his help in delivering shopping to my house. I suppose you could say that he is my Symi hero.

I chose to upload this image in black and white today to emphasize that this snap could've been taken at any time over the last 40 or 50 years and the scene probably wouldn't have changed very much.

Thankyou Lampros for being a constant in an ever changing and uncertain world.