TACAN

The Sporades Islands, are, well, sporadic. Their name derives from the Greek word, spora, meaning seeds. This chain of islands is scattered randomly across the Aegean sea just like wind-dispersed seeds; a whole bunch very close together and one way off in the distance. So much so that Skyros, out on its own, belongs to a different prefecture in a different region from the 'Northern Sporades', which make up the whole of the rest of the archipelago.

Skyros comes under the administration of Central Greece, whereas the Northern Sporades are governed by Magnisia, Thessaly. The Administrative centre for Thessaly is Larisa. Skyros has an Air Force base, as does Larisa. Skiathos has a civilian airport and Skopelos has a helipad for medical emergencies, plus TACAN, the Tactical Air Navigation beacon for a vast area. This beacon is for both military and civilian purposes and just happens to sit on top of the hill next-door-but-one to our house. It is guarded round the clock by military personnel and dogs and this is what it looks like from home. There is a lot more to it below the point where shrubs on the neighbouring hill cut off our view from here. Photographing from nearer to the site might result in arrest so I'm not going to try it.

If you are somebody who looks at the FlightRadar website you might notice that civilian aircraft tend to bend their route somewhere in the middle of the North Aegean. That is because of this very beacon marking a fixed point in the airspace above. It also happens to be very handy for Skiathos airport and in line between the Air Force bases of Larisa and Skyros. Therefore we are not unaccustomed to charter flights overhead during summer nor F-16s haring their way above us at tremendous speed and incredibly low altitude. The upside is we benefit from superior internet speeds to most remote rural locations.

So, having read the news last night about Russia invading Turkish airspace whilst running bombing sorties into Syria before we retired to bed, it was more than a little disconcerting to hear a great deal of non-civilian aircraft overhead during the night, and sounding quite distinctly different from the familiar F-16s. The roar continued throughout the morning and I was quite disturbed to hear sirens go off while I was shopping in the village this morning.

Apparently the sirens were a Greece-wide test of the alarm system, and the racket all night and into the morning was an Air Force practice exercise. With no prior warning about any of it does make one wonder if we would ever actually know if we were suddenly at war.

And I certainly would not have envied anybody in a flimsy rubber dinghy attempting to escape to safety across the Aegean Sea this morning!