Into the New Year

Its 2013, just, and we are revived from a few days off.

Windbreak - first trees!

When the weather has allowed, we've been busy in the garden.  We've planted 3m cypresses, pine trees and ficus in an embankment of rocks at the North edge of the plot which we had constructed.  We've had to make up our own soil - adding peat, sand & fertilizer, as the native stuff is so full of clay its almost impossible to work.  And each tree has to be staked and secured with stays in three directions to stop the winds blowing them over.  Every morning when we wake up we check to make sure they haven't been blown over during the night!

Inside we've been experimenting with bread making, and have now got a super and reliable country loaf - good texture and crumb, crisp brown crust, and the most wonderful smell of baking when we get up in the morning!  Added to that the aroma of hand crafted coffee - each round individually ground and filtered from beans which we unashamedly say are one of 8 varieties we get from Starbucks (my do they do good beans!), and we hope you are already yearning to be here!

Recipes which have made it include pork loin wrapped in pancetta tray baked over apples with a sauce of dried figs and apricots, poached in concentrated local grape juice, flamed in tsikoudia (the local spirit, made from the remainders of winemaking), spiced with anise, cinnamon and cloves.  Continuing the winter theme, duck on quince slices cooked in a local pomegranate liqueur, with copious saffron.  The cooked duck meat fried in duck fat with raisins & prunes in Amoroso sherry, and the juice of a fresh orange.  Wow, it was lovely, tho I have to say we did drink a splendid full fruity Santa Alicia Cab Sauv from Chile - can't always stretch to Cretan wines!

Over the past month or so, the outside works are virtually complete - a crazy paving driveway up the hill, circling the huge fig tree in an oval island; a splendid pool terrace, linking the basement reception room to the pool, all on the level.

New Pool Terrace, almost finished

The website continues to be embellished - we've now got a small slideshow of pictures of the accommodation on both floors, and have made some contacts with others offering information or activities in the area - more to be added to the website in due course.

Our Aims, in this Blog! And About Panokosmos

What we aim to do in this blog is to give a feel about what its like to live in Crete; to tell you a bit about what's happening around us, as it affects us; and to keep you up to date with Panokosmos so that you want to come and visit us!

So, what is Panokosmos - well the name, rather freely translated from the Greek, means "On top of the World" - what this place is, and how we want to make our guests feel!


Panokosmos is a 2500m2 site 400m high up in the foothills of the White Mountains, the "Lefka Ori".  It is in a tiny - 11 household - village, Xiliomoudou (the name means 1000 peaks), far above the Apokoronas valley.  On this site we bought a rather curious little two bedroom house built in 1995, and, after major efforts to try to retain the original layout, ended up demolishing it back to the concrete frame.  From this, rather depressing and expensive perspective, we designed and built a house which we feel does justice to the fabulous position and views offered by the site.
This took over two years, and was an all consuming and intense activity.  The house is built very precisely to our requirements - we had a set of principles, and every aspect of the house was planned to deliver against them.  The result is, well, just amazing!
Now we want to share our place and our experience with like minded people - people who love nature, who want to reflect and contemplate, to take time out to review what they are about, and to find new direction for their futures.

  And who love to eat and drink, and who want to experience some of the real Crete - the atmosphere, the people, the environment.
We offer an exceptionally personalised and intimate experience, in which we can offer you a tailored programme designed, with you, to give you what you want coming to such a break.

At the moment we are busy trying to complete our website, Panokosmos, to show off what we have, and what our guests can experience.
Its a mammoth effort, as we are doing everything ourselves - building our website, taking our own photos, creating our own descriptions.  Gathering our own experiences, writing down our recipes, our tasting notes, getting together our contacts.  And, yes, that's in addition to furnishing the place, designing and planting the garden, sorting out the last issues with the building programme, and organising everything.

The plan is to produce a blog at least every month, to describe what we've been up to, what's happened to the place, and what is happening in Crete and Greece all around us.  We're going to try to focus on how things affect us, on the ground, to give perspective on what we all hear in the media.  And inbetween, some snippets about life and the world around us - like the first snow on the White Mountains on 5 Dec!

So lets see how it goes...