gordongilmore.uk

Personal Websites The Gilmore/Bradshaw/Hinchley Family website The Douris Family Website Companion Website for Practical Gamma-Ray Spectrometry 3 Ikaria Past and Present - a Celebration of a Beautiful Aegean Island

Update 8th October 2025 The last major update was in March 2018. Since then a lot has been going on in the owners life: holidays, work on my wife Topsy's second book (Ikarian Tales II), enjoying life on Ikaria and getting married. (For the record: that was 14th January 20170). Recent times have been dominated by selling my house in Moore, outside Warrington, and buying a new one within Warrington more suitable for oldies. Unfortunately that is still under way, with less than diligent solicitors being involved in the delays. In 2023, the book publishing company, Wiley, asked me to update my book 'Practical Gamma-Ray Spectrometry' for the second time. Not having been near a gamma spectrometer for ten years, that seemed a ridiculous thing for me to do, but Wiley had found a willing Professor in physics (David Joss) to cover the recent times update, so that I was able amend and update the bees-in-my-bonnet left over from the previous update. It's now in print and hopefully selling as well as the second edition did.

As I've got older, now being 83, my enthusiasm for keeping websites updated has waned. Most of my recent websites have incorporated easy update facilities. But 'Explore with Gordon Gilmore' was one that didn't have those and was not easy to update. Bearing in mind that I only ever had two feedback messages since I set it up, I had no reason to believe that anyone ever looked at that website, so I deleted it. For similar reasons of disinterest Topsy's Family Tree website was allowed to slide into the web abbys when her domain renewal expired. But, because the website was still on the servers and useable, I have made it available on my rather rudimentary website as www.dourisfamily.gordongilmore.uk. I had been also wondering whether even my own family website was worth the bother of maintaining. But, having now made the Douris website available, I have decided to leave my own family website available in the same way as www.familyof.gordongilmore.uk. So now, although I ditched the 'ikaria-pnp.com' website some time age when it became irrelevant, I decided that I should also add it to my graveyard of abandoned websites as www.ikaria.gordongilmore.uk The www.gammaspec.gordongilmore.uk website, which had become the companion website for the Practical Gamma-Ray Spectrometer book, has been updated to make it relevant to the 3rd editions and is now accessible in the links here and above. Sic transit gloria! Making all these websites available became a problem because, although some appeared on other external domains, all were located on my gordongilmore.org.uk servers related to that domains and I had decided to move all my Internet activities to my gordongilmore.uk domain - on the basis that I couldn't be regarded as an 'org.uk' (i.e. organisation) any more. That turned out to be problematic, because when I incautiously made the .uk domain the prominent domain, all contact with the .org.uk domain was immediately lost, including contact with many .org.uk email addresses embedded in various accounts. It took many months for me to restore access to my Microsoft account because it insisted in sending confirmatory codes to a dead .org.uk email! Restoration of the order is still going on, close to finishing.

Why Visit (or even Live on) Ikaria?

Ikaria is an island in the Agean, close to Samos. Aligned on an East-West axis, it is about 39 km long and 9 km across at its widest. It has a spine of mountains about 950 m (about 3000 ft) high, which is closer to the southern side of the island. (The highest is Mt. Atheras at 3400 ft.) That means the whole of the southern side is backed by the very steep mountainside, while the northern side has deep gorges cutting into the mountain. They are fantastically picturesque, but do mean that the roads are very convoluted as they go in and out of the gorges. From the airport to Evdilos is 16 km away as the crow flies, but in practice it i s a 47 km drive, including a climb over a 604 m hill, taking 45 minutes on average. The island has some fantastic beaches, a lot of very fine walking (including a walk along the whole length of the mountain spine if you have the enthusiasm - and fitness.) The pace of life is slow and thoughtful. Ikaria was designated as one of the Blue Zones - an area of the world where the inhabitants live significantly longer average. Obviously, the climate is warmer than the UK, but we do have a winter and it might even snow - but only just. In July and August the weather can be very hot and, for some, unpleasant. Easter, Spring and September are great times to be on the island. In the winter, when many people retreat to their apartments in Athens, the island is quiet. In July and August, when Greeks tend to go on holiday, the prime beach areas are very busy. Yes, we do have tourists, but very seldom the objectionable type. Apart from the way of life - friendliness, politeness, concern for friends and family, almost total lack of crime and freedom - I love the way that, apart from July and August, every day is different - the sea and the mountains are never quite the same. Sunny days, calm days, stormy days come and go, always giving something to marvel at. Even over a series of sunny days, the cloud on the mountain will be different. One thing we don't get, I'm glad to say, is day-after-day-after-day of gloomy grey skies. Google knows all about Ikaria. If you intend to visit the island, beware! You could fall in love with it! Photographs of Ikaria