a Dodecanese chronicle
Before the off
The fourth voyage of a standing arrangement.
In Mark’s words · August 2026
Mark was asked why this trip, and why now. This is his answer, kept as he wrote it.
This is the fourth trip with most of this group. That is a long way past coincidence and well into the territory of a standing arrangement — the sort that survives different countries, different lives, and a decade of everyone getting older at the same rate.
From the book of the last cruise, and the reason this one needed no explaining.
To which Mark adds the shopping, the cycling and the hiking, and notes that it all sounds a bit like the Whitsundays too.
In ten years’ time we want to remember this as a celebration of health, life and great friendships.
That sentence is the brief for everything on this site. It is why the ordinary photographs matter as much as the good ones, why the group chat gets quoted, and why nobody is asked to pose. What you want to remember in ten years is almost never the photograph someone stopped to arrange.
Kos to Symi, and whatever the wind allows in between.