rtfarty
11th September 2007, 08:35 AM
Just got back, last night, from a week in Greece.
We were in a village called Kalamilli which is about an hours drive from Kalamata.
This is the area where they have been having the fires.
One afternoon we were watching 5 of those planes that scoop up water from lakes or the sea and dump it on the fire.
2 of them flew past our apartment, which was on the sea front, probably about 400 metres from us.
They then did about 10 runs further out but we were able to photograph them.
1 plane was a Russian jet that we were told could pick up 150,000 litres of water and the other 4 were turbo props, a lot smaller but pretty fascinating to watch.
Luckily we could not see any of the fires and we were down wind of them.
Had good weather, up in the high 80's, but there was a lot of wind in the afternoons for most days.
We are going to miss being able to get to the Continent in a couple of hours for a long weekend when we return to New Zealand in December.
We came to London for 2 years but have stayed here for 10 so it has been good.
I have just received a good farewell pressie. I was made redundant from my job after 8 years and got 27 weeks gross pay, tax free, plus 8 weeks notice which they paid me out. Great considering we had already booked and paid for our tickets home before this happened.
We were in a village called Kalamilli which is about an hours drive from Kalamata.
This is the area where they have been having the fires.
One afternoon we were watching 5 of those planes that scoop up water from lakes or the sea and dump it on the fire.
2 of them flew past our apartment, which was on the sea front, probably about 400 metres from us.
They then did about 10 runs further out but we were able to photograph them.
1 plane was a Russian jet that we were told could pick up 150,000 litres of water and the other 4 were turbo props, a lot smaller but pretty fascinating to watch.
Luckily we could not see any of the fires and we were down wind of them.
Had good weather, up in the high 80's, but there was a lot of wind in the afternoons for most days.
We are going to miss being able to get to the Continent in a couple of hours for a long weekend when we return to New Zealand in December.
We came to London for 2 years but have stayed here for 10 so it has been good.
I have just received a good farewell pressie. I was made redundant from my job after 8 years and got 27 weeks gross pay, tax free, plus 8 weeks notice which they paid me out. Great considering we had already booked and paid for our tickets home before this happened.