Welcome to the A to Z challenge, a blog post everyday of April apart from Sundays, covering every letter of the alphabet. My theme is travel, that thing that we haven’t been able to do over the last 12 months, so it seemed appropriate to reminisce about past travels we’ve taken, looking forward to when we can travel freely again.

The final letter of the alphabet on the last day of the month, and we’re visiting a monastery and looking at some crazy people.

The monastery of Zoodochou Pigis is in the hills of the Greek island of Samos, and it is one of the great walks we did on the island. Starting in Samos town the walk is 15km taking most of the day – it was quite hot as it was the middle of summer, and we did say we must be crazy doing a hill walk in 30+degrees.

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The monastery was founded in 1756 and is still a working place of worship. Here is where research (R is for Research & Richmond) came in handy again. I made sure I knew about the monastery beforehand, and just like with any sacred space, it’s important for women not to show too much flesh, so I’d made sure that in our backpack I had a long skirt that I could pull over my shorts. When we reached the monastery there were several tourists who were very disgruntled because they weren’t being let in, and then we just walked straight in. It’s a beautiful space and set in such a peaceful spot.

Z is also for zany, and probably one of the zaniest things we’ve seen when we’ve been on holiday, was the World Bog Snorkelling Championships. Just outside the town of Llanwrtyd Wells, people from around the world gather to watch crazy people snorkel up and down a length of the bog. I particularly love how on one of the websites it says that fancy dress is optional but encouraged.

You have to swim two lengths of the bog and if you take more than 2 minutes for the first length you get stopped. Also, you’re only allowed to swim doggy style, no proper swimming strokes allowed, and you have to keep your face in the water which must be awful as it’s really muddy.

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This was our favourite competitor – can you guess why? An Australian covered in Australian flags, and really good at getting the crowd behind him. In 2019 when the last championships were held, there were over 160 participants.

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If you’re ever in Wales at the right time of year I definitely recommend you go as it’s absolutely crazy and really fun. Thanks for sharing the A to Z challenge with me and visiting our blog.

Thanks for stopping by and make sure you visit other bloggers who are crazy enough to be doing the challenge with me – Click Here to visit the master list of participants.

Stay safe and have a wonderful day.

Previous A to Z posts:

2018 – Z is for Zombie Apocalypse

2017 – Z is for Zero

2016 – Z is for Zoetic